Kabanata Kabanata 33 · In her furred travelling-dress, Estella seemed more delicately

. 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. O, 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 upstairs, 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 realise 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. O, 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 a 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 to 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), salt-cellars, a meek

little muffin confined with the utmost precaution under a strong iron

cover, Moses in the bulrushes 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 fireplace 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 recognising 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.

“O 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 diamond-hilted

sword, Here are the shoes with red heels and the blue solitaire—sounded

gravely in the moonlight, and two cherry-coloured 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 heart-ache 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.