Kabanata Kabanata 59 · For eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily

. 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 gates, and where the casks. I had done so, and was

looking along the desolate garden walk, 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.