Chapter 33

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 clew 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. 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 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 clew, 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 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 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 neighborhood 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-colored 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.