Chapter 33

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

In her furred travelling-dress, Estella seemed more delicately
beautiful than she had ever seemed yet, even in my eyes. Her manner
was more winning than she had cared to let it be to me before, and I
thought I saw Miss Havisham's influence in the change.

We stood in the Inn Yard while she pointed out her luggage to
me, and when it was all collected I remembered - having forgotten
everything but herself in the meanwhile - that I knew nothing of her
destination

"I am going to Richmond," she told me. "Our lesson is, that
there are two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in Yorkshire, and that
mine is the Surrey Richmond. The distance is ten miles. I am to
have a carriage, and you are to take me. This is my purse, and you
are to pay my charges out of it. Oh, you must take the purse! We
have no choice, you and I, but to obey our instructions. We are not
free to follow our own devices, you and I."

As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped there was an
inner meaning in her words. She said them slightingly, but not with
displeasure.

"A carriage will have to be sent for, Estella. Will you rest
here a little?"

"Yes, I am to rest here a little, and I am to drink some tea,
and you are to take care of me the while."

She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be done, and I
requested a waiter who had been staring at the coach like a man who
had never seen such a thing in his life, to show us a private
sitting-room. Upon that, he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a
magic clue without which he couldn't find the way up-stairs, and led
us to the black hole of the establishment: fitted up with a
diminishing mirror (quite a superfluous article considering the
hole's proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet, and somebody's pattens.
On my objecting to this retreat, he took us into another room with a
dinner-table for thirty, and in the grate a scorched leaf of a
copy-book under a bushel of coal-dust. Having looked at this extinct
conflagration and shaken his head, he took my order: which, proving
to be merely "Some tea for the lady," sent him out of the room in a
very low state of mind.

I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this chamber, in its
strong combination of stable with soup-stock, might have led one to
infer that the coaching department was not doing well, and that the
enterprising proprietor was boiling down the horses for the
refreshment department. Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella
being in it. I thought that with her I could have been happy there
for life. (I was not at all happy there at the time, observe, and I
knew it well.)

"Where are you going to, at Richmond?" I asked Estella.

"I am going to live," said she, "at a great expense, with a lady
there, who has the power - or says she has - of taking me about, and
introducing me, and showing people to me and showing me to
people."

"I suppose you will be glad of variety and admiration?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

She answered so carelessly, that I said, "You speak of yourself
as if you were some one else."

"Where did you learn how I speak of others? Come, come," said
Estella, smiling delightfully, "you must not expect me to go to
school to you; I must talk in my own way. How do you thrive with Mr.
Pocket?"

"I live quite pleasantly there; at least--" It appeared to me
that I was losing a chance.

"At least?" repeated Estella.

"As pleasantly as I could anywhere, away from you."

"You silly boy," said Estella, quite composedly, "how can you
talk such nonsense? Your friend Mr. Matthew, I believe, is superior
to the rest of his family?"

"Very superior indeed. He is nobody's enemy--"

"Don't add but his own," interposed Estella, "for I hate that
class of man. But he really is disinterested, and above small
jealousy and spite, I have heard?"

"I am sure I have every reason to say so."

"You have not every reason to say so of the rest of his people,"
said Estella, nodding at me with an expression of face that was at
once grave and rallying, "for they beset Miss Havisham with reports
and insinuations to your disadvantage. They watch you, misrepresent
you, write letters about you (anonymous sometimes), and you are the
torment and the occupation of their lives. You can scarcely realize
to yourself the hatred those people feel for you."

"They do me no harm, I hope?"

Instead of answering, Estella burst out laughing. This was very
singular to me, and I looked at her in considerable perplexity. When
she left off - and she had not laughed languidly, but with real
enjoyment - I said, in my diffident way with her:

"I hope I may suppose that you would not be amused if they did
me any harm."

"No, no you may be sure of that," said Estella. "You may be
certain that I laugh because they fail. Oh, those people with Miss
Havisham, and the tortures they undergo!" She laughed again, and
even now when she had told me why, her laughter was very singular to
me, for I could not doubt its being genuine, and yet it seemed too
much for the occasion. I thought there must really be something more
here than I knew; she saw the thought in my mind, and answered it.

"It is not easy for even you." said Estella, "to know what
satisfaction it gives me to see those people thwarted, or what an
enjoyable sense of the ridiculous I have when they are made
ridiculous. For you were not brought up in that strange house from a
mere baby. - I was. You had not your little wits sharpened by their
intriguing against you, suppressed and defenceless, under the mask of
sympathy and pity and what not that is soft and soothing. - I had.
You did not gradually open your round childish eyes wider and wider
to the discovery of that impostor of a woman who calculates her
stores of peace of mind for when she wakes up in the night. - I
did."

It was no laughing matter with Estella now, nor was she
summoning these remembrances from any shallow place. I would not
have been the cause of that look of hers, for all my expectations in
a heap.

"Two things I can tell you," said Estella. "First,
notwithstanding the proverb that constant dropping will wear away a
stone, you may set your mind at rest that these people never will -
never would, in hundred years - impair your ground with Miss
Havisham, in any particular, great or small. Second, I am beholden
to you as the cause of their being so busy and so mean in vain, and
there is my hand upon it."

As she gave it me playfully - for her darker mood had been but
momentary - I held it and put it to my lips. "You ridiculous boy,"
said Estella, "will you never take warning? Or do you kiss my hand
in the same spirit in which I once let you kiss my cheek?"

"What spirit was that?" said I.

"I must think a moment A spirit of contempt for the fawners and
plotters."

"If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?"

"You should have asked before you touched the hand. But, yes,
if you like."

I leaned down, and her calm face was like a statue's. "Now,"
said Estella, gliding away the instant I touched her cheek, "you are
to take care that I have some tea, and you are to take me to
Richmond."

Her reverting to this tone as if our association were forced
upon us and we were mere puppets, gave me pain; but everything in our
intercourse did give me pain. Whatever her tone with me happened to
be, I could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it; and yet I
went on against trust and against hope. Why repeat it a thousand
times? So it always was.

I rang for the tea, and the waiter, reappearing with his magic
clue, brought in by degrees some fifty adjuncts to that refreshment
but of tea not a glimpse. A teaboard, cups and saucers, plates,
knives and forks (including carvers), spoons (various), saltcellars,
a meek little muffin confined with the utmost precaution under a
strong iron cover, Moses in the bullrushes typified by a soft bit of
butter in a quantity of parsley, a pale loaf with a powdered head,
two proof impressions of the bars of the kitchen fire-place on
triangular bits of bread, and ultimately a fat family urn: which the
waiter staggered in with, expressing in his countenance burden and
suffering. After a prolonged absence at this stage of the
entertainment, he at length came back with a casket of precious
appearance containing twigs. These I steeped in hot water, and so
from the whole of these appliances extracted one cup of I don't know
what, for Estella.

The bill paid, and the waiter remembered, and the ostler not
forgotten, and the chambermaid taken into consideration - in a word,
the whole house bribed into a state of contempt and animosity, and
Estella's purse much lightened - we got into our post-coach and drove
away. Turning into Cheapside and rattling up Newgate-street, we were
soon under the walls of which I was so ashamed.

"What place is that?" Estella asked me.

I made a foolish pretence of not at first recognizing it, and
then told her. As she looked at it, and drew in her head again,
murmuring "Wretches!" I would not have confessed to my visit for any
consideration.

"Mr. Jaggers," said I, by way of putting it neatly on somebody
else, "has the reputation of being more in the secrets of that dismal
place than any man in London."

"He is more in the secrets of every place, I think," said
Estella, in a low voice.

"You have been accustomed to see him often, I suppose?"

"I have been accustomed to see him at uncertain intervals, ever
since I can remember. But I know him no better now, than I did
before I could speak plainly. What is your own experience of him? Do
you advance with him?"

"Once habituated to his distrustful manner," said I, "I have
done very well."

"Are you intimate?"

"I have dined with him at his private house."

"I fancy," said Estella, shrinking "that must be a curious
place."

"It is a curious place."

I should have been chary of discussing my guardian too freely
even with her; but I should have gone on with the subject so far as
to describe the dinner in Gerrard-street, if we had not then come
into a sudden glare of gas. It seemed, while it lasted, to be all
alight and alive with that inexplicable feeling I had had before; and
when we were out of it, I was as much dazed for a few moments as if I
had been in Lightning.

So, we fell into other talk, and it was principally about the
way by which we were travelling, and about what parts of London lay
on this side of it, and what on that. The great city was almost new
to her, she told me, for she had never left Miss Havisham's
neighbourhood until she had gone to France, and she had merely passed
through London then in going and returning. I asked her if my
guardian had any charge of her while she remained here? To that she
emphatically said "God forbid!" and no more.

It was impossible for me to avoid seeing that she cared to
attract me; that she made herself winning; and would have won me even
if the task had needed pains. Yet this made me none the happier,
for, even if she had not taken that tone of our being disposed of by
others, I should have felt that she held my heart in her hand because
she wilfully chose to do it, and not because it would have wrung any
tenderness in her, to crush it and throw it away.

When we passed through Hammersmith, I showed her where Mr.
Matthew Pocket lived, and said it was no great way from Richmond, and
that I hoped I should see her sometimes.

"Oh yes, you are to see me; you are to come when you think
proper; you are to be mentioned to the family; indeed you are already
mentioned."

I inquired was it a large household she was going to be a member
of?

"No; there are only two; mother and daughter. The mother is a
lady of some station, though not averse to increasing her income."

"I wonder Miss Havisham could part with you again so soon."

"It is a part of Miss Havisham's plans for me, Pip," said
Estella, with a sigh, as if she were tired; "I am to write to her
constantly and see her regularly and report how I go on - I and the
jewels - for they are nearly all mine now."

It was the first time she had ever called me by my name. Of
course she did so, purposely, and knew that I should treasure it
up.

We came to Richmond all too soon, and our destination there, was
a house by the Green; a staid old house, where hoops and powder and
patches, embroidered coats rolled stockings ruffles and swords, had
had their court days many a time. Some ancient trees before the
house were still cut into fashions as formal and unnatural as the
hoops and wigs and stiff skirts; but their own allotted places in the
great procession of the dead were not far off, and they would soon
drop into them and go the silent way of the rest.

A bell with an old voice - which I dare say in its time had
often said to the house, Here is the green farthingale, Here is the
diamondhilted sword, Here are the shoes with red heels and the blue
solitaire, - sounded gravely in the moonlight, and two cherrycoloured
maids came fluttering out to receive Estella. The doorway soon
absorbed her boxes, and she gave me her hand and a smile, and said
good night, and was absorbed likewise. And still I stood looking at
the house, thinking how happy I should be if I lived there with her,
and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always miserable.

I got into the carriage to be taken back to Hammersmith, and I
got in with a bad heart-ache, and I got out with a worse heart-ache.
At our own door, I found little Jane Pocket coming home from a little
party escorted by her little lover; and I envied her little lover, in
spite of his being subject to Flopson.

Mr. Pocket was out lecturing; for, he was a most delightful
lecturer on domestic economy, and his treatises on the management of
children and servants were considered the very best text-books on
those themes. But, Mrs. Pocket was at home, and was in a little
difficulty, on account of the baby's having been accommodated with a
needle-case to keep him quiet during the unaccountable absence (with
a relative in the Foot Guards) of Millers. And more needles were
missing, than it could be regarded as quite wholesome for a patient
of such tender years either to apply externally or to take as a
tonic.

Mr. Pocket being justly celebrated for giving most excellent
practical advice, and for having a clear and sound perception of
things and a highly judicious mind, I had some notion in my heartache
of begging him to accept my confidence. But, happening to look up at
Mrs. Pocket as she sat reading her book of dignities after
prescribing Bed as a sovereign remedy for baby, I thought - Well -
No, I wouldn't.