Chapter 59

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

For eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily
eyes-though they had both been often before my fancy in the
East-when, upon an evening in December, an hour or two after dark, I
laid my hand softly on the latch of the old kitchen door. I touched
it so softly that I was not heard, and looked in unseen. There,
smoking his pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight, as hale
and as strong as ever though a little grey, sat Joe; and there,
fenced into the corner with Joe's leg, and sitting on my own little
stool looking at the fire, was - I again!

"We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap," said
Joe, delighted when I took another stool by the child's side (but I
did not rumple his hair), "and we hoped he might grow a little bit
like you, and we think he do."

I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next morning,
and we talked immensely, understanding one another to perfection.
And I took him down to the churchyard, and set him on a certain
tombstone there, and he showed me from that elevation which stone was
sacred to the memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this Parish, and Also
Georgiana, Wife of the Above.

"Biddy," said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her
little girl lay sleeping in her lap, "you must give Pip to me, one of
these days; or lend him, at all events."

"No, no," said Biddy, gently. "You must marry."

"So Herbert and Clara say, but I don't think I shall, Biddy. I
have so settled down in their home, that it's not at all likely. I
am already quite an old bachelor."

Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand to her
lips, and then put the good matronly hand with which she had touched
it, into mine. There was something in the action and in the light
pressure of Biddy's wedding-ring, that had a very pretty eloquence in
it.

"Dear Pip," said Biddy, "you are sure you don't fret for
her?"

"O no - I think not, Biddy."

"Tell me as an old, old friend. Have you quite forgotten
her?

"My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever
had a foremost place there, and little that ever had any place there.
But that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by,
Biddy, all gone by!"

Nevertheless, I knew while I said those words, that I secretly
intended to revisit the site of the old house that evening, alone,
for her sake. Yes even so. For Estella's sake.

I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being
separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty, and
who had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, avarice,
brutality, and meanness. And I had heard of the death of her
husband, from an accident consequent on his ill-treatment of a horse.
This release had befallen her some two years before; for anything I
knew, she was married again.

The early dinner-hour at Joe's, left me abundance of time,
without hurrying my talk with Biddy, to walk over to the old spot
before dark. But, what with loitering on the way, to look at old
objects and to think of old times, the day had quite declined when I
came to the place.

There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left,
but the wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been enclosed
with a rough fence, and, looking over it, I saw that some of the old
ivy had struck root anew, and was growing green on low quiet mounds
of ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed it open, and
went in.

A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was
not yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the
mist, and the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. I could
trace out where every part of the old house had been, and where the
brewery had been, and where the gate, and where the casks. I had
done so, and was looking along the desolate gardenwalk, when I beheld
a solitary figure in it.

The figure showed itself aware of me, as I advanced. It had
been moving towards me, but it stood still. As I drew nearer, I saw
it to be the figure of a woman. As I drew nearer yet, it was about
to turn away, when it stopped, and let me come up with it. Then, it
faltered as if much surprised, and uttered my name, and I cried
out:

"Estella!"

"I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me."

The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its
indescribable majesty and its indescribable charm remained. Those
attractions in it, I had seen before; what I had never seen before,
was the saddened softened light of the once proud eyes; what I had
never felt before, was the friendly touch of the once insensible
hand.

We sat down on a bench that was near, and I said, "After so many
years, it is strange that we should thus meet again, Estella, here
where our first meeting was! Do you often come back?"

"I have never been here since."

"Nor I."

The moon began to rise, and I thought of the placid look at the
white ceiling, which had passed away. The moon began to rise, and I
thought of the pressure on my hand when I had spoken the last words
he had heard on earth.

Estella was the next to break the silence that ensued between
us.

"I have very often hoped and intended to come back, but have
been prevented by many circumstances. Poor, poor old place!"

The silvery mist was touched with the first rays of the
moonlight, and the same rays touched the tears that dropped from her
eyes. Not knowing that I saw them, and setting herself to get the
better of them, she said quietly:

"Were you wondering, as you walked along, how it came to be left
in this condition?"

"Yes, Estella."

"The ground belongs to me. It is the only possession I have not
relinquished. Everything else has gone from me, little by little,
but I have kept this. It was the subject of the only determined
resistance I made in all the wretched years."

"Is it to be built on?"

"At last it is. I came here to take leave of it before its
change. And you," she said, in a voice of touching interest to a
wanderer, "you live abroad still?"

"Still."

"And do well, I am sure?"

"I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore -
Yes, I do well."

"I have often thought of you," said Estella.

"Have you?"

"Of late, very often. There was a long hard time when I kept
far from me, the remembrance, of what I had thrown away when I was
quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been
incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given it
a place in my heart."

"You have always held your place in my heart," I answered.

And we were silent again, until she spoke.

"I little thought," said Estella, "that I should take leave of
you in taking leave of this spot. I am very glad to do so."

"Glad to part again, Estella? To me, parting is a painful
thing. To me, the remembrance of our last parting has been ever
mournful and painful."

"But you said to me," returned Estella, very earnestly, 'God
bless you, God forgive you!' And if you could say that to me then,
you will not hesitate to say that to me now - now, when suffering has
been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to
understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken,
but - I hope - into a better shape. Be as considerate and good to me
as you were, and tell me we are friends."

"We are friends," said I, rising and bending over her, as she
rose from the bench.

"And will continue friends apart," said Estella.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place;
and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the
forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad
expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of
another parting from her.