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

hand now, and with the other lightly touched my shoulder as we

walked. We walked round the ruined garden twice or thrice more, and

it was all in bloom for me. If the green and yellow growth of weed

in the chinks of the old wall had been the most precious flowers

that ever blew, it could not have been more cherished in my

remembrance.

There was no discrepancy of years between us to remove her far

from me; we were of nearly the same age, though of course the age

told for more in her case than in mine; but the air of

inaccessibility which her beauty and her manner gave her, tormented

me in the midst of my delight, and at the height of the assurance I

felt that our patroness had chosen us for one another. Wretched

boy!

At last we went back into the house, and there I heard, with

surprise, that my guardian had come down to see Miss Havisham on

business, and would come back to dinner. The old wintry branches of

chandeliers in the room where the mouldering table was spread had

been lighted while we were out, and Miss Havisham was in her chair

and waiting for me.

It was like pushing the chair itself back into the past, when we

began the old slow circuit round about the ashes of the bridal

feast. But, in the funereal room, with that figure of the grave

fallen back in the chair fixing its eyes upon her, Estella looked

more bright and beautiful than before, and I was under stronger

enchantment.

The time so melted away, that our early dinner-hour drew close at

hand, and Estella left us to prepare herself. We had stopped near

the centre of the long table, and Miss Havisham, with one of her

withered arms stretched out of the chair, rested that clenched hand

upon the yellow cloth. As Estella looked back over her shoulder

before going out at the door, Miss Havisham kissed that hand to

her, with a ravenous intensity that was of its kind quite dreadful.

Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she turned to me,

and said in a whisper,—

“Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do you admire her?”

“Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham.”

She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head close down to hers

as she sat in the chair. “Love her, love her, love her! How does

she use you?”

Before I could answer (if I could have answered so difficult a

question at all) she repeated, “Love her, love her, love her! If

she favors you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she

tears your heart to pieces,—and as it gets older and stronger it

will tear deeper,—love her, love her, love her!”

Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined to her

utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of the thin arm

round my neck swell with the vehemence that possessed her.

“Hear me, Pip! I adopted her, to be loved. I bred her and educated

her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might

be loved. Love her!”

She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt that

she meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been hate

instead of love—despair—revenge—dire death—it could not

have sounded from her lips more like a curse.

“I’ll tell you,” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper,

“what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning

self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against

yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart

and soul to the smiter—as I did!”

When she came to that, and to a wild cry that followed that, I

caught her round the waist. For she rose up in the chair, in her

shroud of a dress, and struck at the air as if she would as soon

have struck herself against the wall and fallen dead.

All this passed in a few seconds. As I drew her down into her

chair, I was conscious of a scent that I knew, and turning, saw my

guardian in the room.

He always carried (I have not yet mentioned it, I think) a

pocket-handkerchief of rich silk and of imposing proportions, which

was of great value to him in his profession. I have seen him so

terrify a client or a witness by ceremoniously unfolding this

pocket-handkerchief as if he were immediately going to blow his

nose, and then pausing, as if he knew he should not have time to do

it before such client or witness committed himself, that the

self-committal has followed directly, quite as a matter of course.

When I saw him in the room he had this expressive

pocket-handkerchief in both hands, and was looking at us. On meeting

my eye, he said plainly, by a momentary and silent pause in that

attitude, “Indeed? Singular!” and then put the handkerchief to its

right use with wonderful effect.

Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was (like everybody

else) afraid of him. She made a strong attempt to compose herself,

and stammered that he was as punctual as ever.

“As punctual as ever,” he repeated, coming up to us. “(How do you

do, Pip? Shall I give you a ride, Miss Havisham? Once round?)

And so you are here, Pip?”

I told him when I had arrived, and how Miss Havisham had wished me

to come and see Estella. To which he replied, “Ah! Very fine young

lady!” Then he pushed Miss Havisham in her chair before him, with

one of his large hands, and put the other in his trousers-pocket as

if the pocket were full of secrets.

“Well, Pip! How often have you seen Miss Estella before?” said he,

when he came to a stop.

“How often?”

“Ah! How many times? Ten thousand times?”

“Oh! Certainly not so many.”

“Twice?”

“Jaggers,” interposed Miss Havisham, much to my relief, “leave my

Pip alone, and go with him to your dinner.”

He complied, and we groped our way down the dark stairs together.

While we were still on our way to those detached apartments across

the paved yard at the back, he asked me how often I had seen Miss

Havisham eat and drink; offering me a breadth of choice, as usual,

between a hundred times and once.

I considered, and said, “Never.”

“And never will, Pip,” he retorted, with a frowning smile. “She has

never allowed herself to be seen doing either, since she lived this

present life of hers. She wanders about in the night, and then lays

hands on such food as she takes.”

“Pray, sir,” said I, “may I ask you a question?”

“You may,” said he, “and I may decline to answer it. Put your

question.”

“Estella’s name. Is it Havisham or—?” I had nothing to add.

“Or what?” said he.

“Is it Havisham?”

“It is Havisham.”

This brought us to the dinner-table, where she and Sarah Pocket

awaited us. Mr. Jaggers presided, Estella sat opposite to him, I

faced my green and yellow friend. We dined very well, and were

waited on by a maid-servant whom I had never seen in all my comings

and goings, but who, for anything I know, had been in that

mysterious house the whole time. After dinner a bottle of choice

old port was placed before my guardian (he was evidently well

acquainted with the vintage), and the two ladies left us.

Anything to equal the determined reticence of Mr. Jaggers under that

roof I never saw elsewhere, even in him. He kept his very looks to

himself, and scarcely directed his eyes to Estella’s face once

during dinner. When she spoke to him, he listened, and in due

course answered, but never looked at her, that I could see. On the

other hand, she often looked at him, with interest and curiosity,

if not distrust, but his face never, showed the least

consciousness. Throughout dinner he took a dry delight in making

Sarah Pocket greener and yellower, by often referring in

conversation with me to my expectations; but here, again, he showed

no consciousness, and even made it appear that he extorted—and

even did extort, though I don’t know how—those references out of

my innocent self.

And when he and I were left alone together, he sat with an air upon

him of general lying by in consequence of information he possessed,

that really was too much for me. He cross-examined his very wine

when he had nothing else in hand. He held it between himself and

the candle, tasted the port, rolled it in his mouth, swallowed it,

looked at his glass again, smelt the port, tried it, drank it,

filled again, and cross-examined the glass again, until I was as

nervous as if I had known the wine to be telling him something to

my disadvantage. Three or four times I feebly thought I would start

conversation; but whenever he saw me going to ask him anything, he

looked at me with his glass in his hand, and rolling his wine about

in his mouth, as if requesting me to take notice that it was of no

use, for he couldn’t answer.

I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of me involved her

in the danger of being goaded to madness, and perhaps tearing off

her cap,—which was a very hideous one, in the nature of a muslin

mop,—and strewing the ground with her hair,—which assuredly had

never grown on her head. She did not appear when we afterwards went

up to Miss Havisham’s room, and we four played at whist. In the

interval, Miss Havisham, in a fantastic way, had put some of the

most beautiful jewels from her dressing-table into Estella’s hair,

and about her bosom and arms; and I saw even my guardian look at

her from under his thick eyebrows, and raise them a little, when

her loveliness was before him, with those rich flushes of glitter

and color in it.

Of the manner and extent to which he took our trumps into custody,

and came out with mean little cards at the ends of hands, before

which the glory of our Kings and Queens was utterly abased, I say

nothing; nor, of the feeling that I had, respecting his looking

upon us personally in the light of three very obvious and poor

riddles that he had found out long ago. What I suffered from, was

the incompatibility between his cold presence and my feelings

towards Estella. It was not that I knew I could never bear to speak

to him about her, that I knew I could never bear to hear him creak

his boots at her, that I knew I could never bear to see him wash

his hands of her; it was, that my admiration should be within a

foot or two of him,—it was, that my feelings should be in the same

place with him,—that, was the agonizing circumstance.

We played until nine o’clock, and then it was arranged that when

Estella came to London I should be forewarned of her coming and

should meet her at the coach; and then I took leave of her, and

touched her and left her.

My guardian lay at the Boar in the next room to mine. Far into the

night, Miss Havisham’s words, “Love her, love her, love her!”

sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said

to my pillow, “I love her, I love her, I love her!” hundreds of

times. Then, a burst of gratitude came upon me, that she should be

destined for me, once the blacksmith’s boy. Then I thought if she

were, as I feared, by no means rapturously grateful for that

destiny yet, when would she