Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (speed reading book TXT) 📕

for whom it was fitted up,—as indeed he was.

“I never saw this room before,” I remarked; “but there used to be

no Porter here.”

“No,” said he; “not till it got about that there was no protection

on the premises, and it come to be considered dangerous, with

convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down. And then I

was recommended to the place as a man who could give another man as

good as he brought, and I took it. It’s easier than bellowsing and

hammering.—That’s loaded, that is.”

My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass-bound stock over the

chimney-piece, and his eye had followed mine.

“Well,” said I, not desirous of more conversation, “shall I go up

to Miss Havisham?”

“Burn me, if I know!” he retorted, first stretching himself and

then shaking himself; “my orders ends here, young master. I give

this here bell a rap with this here hammer, and you go on along the

passage till you meet somebody.”

“I am expected, I believe?”

“Burn me twice over, if I can say!” said he.

Upon that, I turned down the long passage which I had first trodden

in my thick boots, and he made his bell sound. At the end of the

passage, while the bell was still reverberating, I found Sarah

Pocket, who appeared to have now become constitutionally green and

yellow by reason of me.

“Oh!” said she. “You, is it, Mr. Pip?”

“It is, Miss Pocket. I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pocket and

family are all well.”

“Are they any wiser?” said Sarah, with a dismal shake of the head;

“they had better be wiser, than well. Ah, Matthew, Matthew! You know

your way, sir?”

Tolerably, for I had gone up the staircase in the dark, many a

time. I ascended it now, in lighter boots than of yore, and tapped

in my old way at the door of Miss Havisham’s room. “Pip’s rap,” I

heard her say, immediately; “come in, Pip.”

She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, with her

two hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and her

eyes on the fire. Sitting near her, with the white shoe, that had

never been worn, in her hand, and her head bent as she looked at

it, was an elegant lady whom I had never seen.

“Come in, Pip,” Miss Havisham continued to mutter, without looking

round or up; “come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip? so you kiss my hand

as if I were a queen, eh?—Well?”

She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and repeated in

a grimly playful manner,—

“Well?”

“I heard, Miss Havisham,” said I, rather at a loss, “that you were

so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came directly.”

“Well?”

The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and

looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella’s

eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so

much more womanly, in all things winning admiration, had made such

wonderful advance, that I seemed to have made none. I fancied, as I

looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and

common boy again. O the sense of distance and disparity that came

upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about her!

She gave me her hand. I stammered something about the pleasure I

felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it,

for a long, long time.

“Do you find her much changed, Pip?” asked Miss Havisham, with her

greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair that stood between

them, as a sign to me to sit down there.

“When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing of

Estella in the face or figure; but now it all settles down so

curiously into the old—”

“What? You are not going to say into the old Estella?” Miss

Havisham interrupted. “She was proud and insulting, and you wanted

to go away from her. Don’t you remember?”

I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I knew no better

then, and the like. Estella smiled with perfect composure, and said

she had no doubt of my having been quite right, and of her having

been very disagreeable.

“Is he changed?” Miss Havisham asked her.

“Very much,” said Estella, looking at me.

“Less coarse and common?” said Miss Havisham, playing with

Estella’s hair.

Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed

again, and looked at me, and put the shoe down. She treated me as a

boy still, but she lured me on.

We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange influences which

had so wrought upon me, and I learnt that she had but just come

home from France, and that she was going to London. Proud and

wilful as of old, she had brought those qualities into such

subjection to her beauty that it was impossible and out of nature—

or I thought so—to separate them from her beauty. Truly it was

impossible to dissociate her presence from all those wretched

hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my boyhood,

—from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me

ashamed of home and Joe,—from all those visions that had raised

her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the

anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the

wooden window of the forge, and flit away. In a word, it was

impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present,

from the innermost life of my life.

It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day,

and return to the hotel at night, and to London tomorrow. When we

had conversed for a while, Miss Havisham sent us two out to walk in

the neglected garden: on our coming in by and by, she said, I

should wheel her about a little, as in times of yore.

So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through

which I had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentleman,

now Herbert; I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of

her dress; she, quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping

the hem of mine. As we drew near to the place of encounter, she

stopped and said,—

“I must have been a singular little creature to hide and see that

fight that day; but I did, and I enjoyed it very much.”

“You rewarded me very much.”

“Did I?” she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way. “I

remember I entertained a great objection to your adversary, because

I took it ill that he should be brought here to pester me with his

company.”

“He and I are great friends now.”

“Are you? I think I recollect though, that you read with his

father?”

“Yes.”

I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed to have a

boyish look, and she already treated me more than enough like a

boy.

“Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed your

companions,” said Estella.

“Naturally,” said I.

“And necessarily,” she added, in a haughty tone; “what was fit

company for you once, would be quite unfit company for you now.”

In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had any lingering

intention left of going to see Joe; but if I had, this observation

put it to flight.

“You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in those times?”

said Estella, with a slight wave of her hand, signifying in the

fighting times.

“Not the least.”

The air of completeness and superiority with which she walked at my

side, and the air of youthfulness and submission with which I

walked at hers, made a contrast that I strongly felt. It would have

rankled in me more than it did, if I had not regarded myself as

eliciting it by being so set apart for her and assigned to her.

The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in with ease, and

after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we came out

again into the brewery yard. I showed her to a nicety where I had

seen her walking on the casks, that first old day, and she said,

with a cold and careless look in that direction, “Did I?” I

reminded her where she had come out of the house and given me my

meat and drink, and she said, “I don’t remember.” “Not remember

that you made me cry?” said I. “No,” said she, and shook her head

and looked about her. I verily believe that her not remembering and

not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly,—and that is

the sharpest crying of all.

“You must know,” said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant

and beautiful woman might, “that I have no heart,—if that has

anything to do with my memory.”

I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the liberty of

doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no such

beauty without it.

“Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,”

said Estella, “and of course if it ceased to beat I should cease

to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no—

sympathy-sentiment—nonsense.”

What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she stood still and

looked attentively at me? Anything that I had seen in Miss

Havisham? No. In some of her looks and gestures there was that

tinge of resemblance to Miss Havisham which may often be noticed to

have been acquired by children, from grown person with whom they

have been much associated and secluded, and which, when childhood

is passed, will produce a remarkable occasional likeness of

expression between faces that are otherwise quite different. And

yet I could not trace this to Miss Havisham. I looked again, and

though she was still looking at me, the suggestion was gone.

What was it?

“I am serious,” said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her

brow was smooth) as with a darkening of her face; “if we are to be

thrown much together, you had better believe it at once. No!”

imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips. “I have not bestowed

my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing.”

In another moment we were in the brewery, so long disused, and she

pointed to the high gallery where I had seen her going out on that

same first day, and told me she remembered to have been up there,

and to have seen me standing scared below. As my eyes followed her

white hand, again the same dim suggestion that I could not possibly

grasp crossed me. My involuntary start occasioned her to lay her

hand upon my arm. Instantly the ghost passed once more and was

gone.

What was it?

“What is the matter?” asked Estella. “Are you scared again?”

“I should be, if I believed what you said just now,” I replied, to

turn it off.

“Then you don’t? Very well. It is said, at any rate. Miss Havisham

will soon be expecting you at your old post, though I think that

might be laid aside now, with other old belongings. Let us make one

more round of the garden, and then go in. Come! You shall not shed

tears for my cruelty to-day; you shall be my Page, and give me your

shoulder.”

Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground. She