Chapter 49


P
utting Miss Havisham’s note in my pocket, that it might serve as my
credentials for so soon reappearing at Satis House, in case her waywardness
should lead her to express any surprise at seeing me, I went down again by the
coach next day. But I alighted at the Halfway House, and breakfasted there, and
walked the rest of the distance; for I sought to get into the town quietly by
the unfrequented ways, and to leave it in the same manner.



The best light of the day was gone when I passed along the quiet echoing courts
behind the High Street. The nooks of ruin where the old monks had once had their
refectories and gardens, and where the strong walls were now pressed into the
service of humble sheds and stables, were almost as silent as the old monks in
their graves. The cathedral chimes had at once a sadder and a more remote sound
to me, as I hurried on avoiding observation, than they had ever had before; so,
the swell of the old organ was borne to my ears like funeral music; and the
rooks, as they hovered about the gray tower and swung in the bare high trees of
the priory garden, seemed to call to me that the place was changed, and that
Estella was gone out of it for ever.



An elderly woman, whom I had seen before as one of the servants who lived in the
supplementary house across the back courtyard, opened the gate. The lighted
candle stood in the dark passage within, as of old, and I took it up and
ascended the staircase alone. Miss Havisham was not in her own room, but was in
the larger room across the landing. Looking in at the door, after knocking in
vain, I saw her sitting on the hearth in a ragged chair, close before, and lost
in the contemplation of, the ashy fire.



Doing as I had often done, I went in, and stood touching the old chimney-piece,
where she could see me when she raised her eyes. There was an air of utter
loneliness upon her, that would have moved me to pity though she had wilfully
done me a deeper injury than I could charge her with. As I stood compassionating
her, and thinking how, in the progress of time, I too had come to be a part of
the wrecked fortunes of that house, her eyes rested on me. She stared, and said
in a low voice, "Is it real?"



"It is I, Pip. Mr. Jaggers gave me your note yesterday, and I have lost no
time."



"Thank you. Thank you."



As I brought another of the ragged chairs to the hearth and sat down, I remarked
a new expression on her face, as if she were afraid of me.



"I want," she said, "to pursue that subject you mentioned to me when you were
last here, and to show you that I am not all stone. But perhaps you can never
believe, now, that there is anything human in my heart?"



When I said some reassuring words, she stretched out her tremulous right hand,
as though she was going to touch me; but she recalled it again before I
understood the action, or knew how to receive it.



"You said, speaking for your friend, that you could tell me how to do something
useful and good. Something that you would like done, is it not?"



"Something that I would like done very much."



"What is it?"



I began explaining to her that secret history of the partnership. I had not got
far into it, when I judged from her looks that she was thinking in a discursive
way of me, rather than of what I said. It seemed to be so; for, when I stopped
speaking, many moments passed before she showed that she was conscious of the
fact.



"Do you break off," she asked then, with her former air of being afraid of me,
"because you hate me too much to bear to speak to me?"



"No, no," I answered, "how can you think so, Miss Havisham! I stopped because I
thought you were not following what I said."



"Perhaps I was not," she answered, putting a hand to her head. "Begin again, and
let me look at something else. Stay! Now tell me."



She set her hand upon her stick in the resolute way that sometimes was habitual
to her, and looked at the fire with a strong expression of forcing herself to
attend. I went on with my explanation, and told her how I had hoped to complete
the transaction out of my means, but how in this I was disappointed. That part
of the subject (I reminded her) involved matters which could form no part of my
explanation, for they were the weighty secrets of another.



"So!" said she, assenting with her head, but not looking at me. "And how much
money is wanting to complete the purchase?"



I was rather afraid of stating it, for it sounded a large sum. "Nine hundred
pounds."



"If I give you the money for this purpose, will you keep my secret as you have
kept your own?"



"Quite as faithfully."



"And your mind will be more at rest?"



"Much more at rest."



"Are you very unhappy now?"



She asked this question, still without looking at me, but in an unwonted tone of
sympathy. I could not reply at the moment, for my voice failed me. She put her
left arm across the head of her stick, and softly laid her forehead on it.



"I am far from happy, Miss Havisham; but I have other causes of disquiet than
any you know of. They are the secrets I have mentioned."



After a little while, she raised her head, and looked at the fire again.



"It is noble in you to tell me that you have other causes of unhappiness, Is it
true?"



"Too true."



"Can I only serve you, Pip, by serving your friend? Regarding that as done, is
there nothing I can do for you yourself?"



"Nothing. I thank you for the question. I thank you even more for the tone of
the question. But there is nothing."



She presently rose from her seat, and looked about the blighted room for the
means of writing. There were none there, and she took from her pocket a yellow
set of ivory tablets, mounted in tarnished gold, and wrote upon them with a
pencil in a case of tarnished gold that hung from her neck.



"You are still on friendly terms with Mr. Jaggers?"



"Quite. I dined with him yesterday."



"This is an authority to him to pay you that money, to lay out at your
irresponsible discretion for your friend. I keep no money here; but if you would
rather Mr. Jaggers knew nothing of the matter, I will send it to you."



"Thank you, Miss Havisham; I have not the least objection to receiving it from
him."



She read me what she had written; and it was direct and clear, and evidently
intended to absolve me from any suspicion of profiting by the receipt of the
money. I took the tablets from her hand, and it trembled again, and it trembled
more as she took off the chain to which the pencil was attached, and put it in
mine. All this she did without looking at me.



"My name is on the first leaf. If you can ever write under my name, "I forgive
her," though ever so long after my broken heart is dust pray do it!"



"O Miss Havisham," said I, "I can do it now. There have been sore mistakes; and
my life has been a blind and thankless one; and I want forgiveness and direction
far too much, to be bitter with you."



She turned her face to me for the first time since she had averted it, and, to
my amazement, I may even add to my terror, dropped on her knees at my feet; with
her folded hands raised to me in the manner in which, when her poor heart was
young and fresh and whole, they must often have been raised to heaven from her
mother’s side.



To see her with her white hair and her worn face kneeling at my feet gave me a
shock through all my frame. I entreated her to rise, and got my arms about her
to help her up; but she only pressed that hand of mine which was nearest to her
grasp, and hung her head over it and wept. I had never seen her shed a tear
before, and, in the hope that the relief might do her good, I bent over her
without speaking. She was not kneeling now, but was down upon the ground.



"O!" she cried, despairingly. "What have I done! What have I done!"



"If you mean, Miss Havisham, what have you done to injure me, let me answer.
Very little. I should have loved her under any circumstances. Is she married?"



"Yes."



It was a needless question, for a new desolation in the desolate house had told
me so.



"What have I done! What have I done!" She wrung her hands, and crushed her white
hair, and returned to this cry over and over again. "What have I done!"



I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her. That she had done a grievous
thing in taking an impressionable child to mould into the form that her wild
resentment, spurned affection, and wounded pride found vengeance in, I knew full
well. But that, in shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely
more; that, in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and
healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as
all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker,
I knew equally well. And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her
punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on
which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania,
like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness,
and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world?



"Until you spoke to her the other day, and until I saw in you a looking-glass
that showed me what I once felt myself, I did not know what I had done. What
have I done! What have I done!" And so again, twenty, fifty times over, What had
she done!



"Miss Havisham," I said, when her cry had died away, "you may dismiss me from
your mind and conscience. But Estella is a different case, and if you can ever
undo any scrap of what you have done amiss in keeping a part of her right nature
away from her, it will be better to do that than to bemoan the past through a
hundred years."



"Yes, yes, I know it. But, Pip—my dear!" There was an earnest womanly compassion
for me in her new affection. "My dear! Believe this: when she first came to me,
I meant to save her from misery like my own. At first, I meant no more."



"Well, well!" said I. "I hope so."



"But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I gradually did worse, and
with my praises, and with my jewels, and with my teachings, and with this figure
of myself always before her, a warning to back and point my lessons, I stole her
heart away, and put ice in its place."



"Better," I could not help saying, "to have left her a natural heart, even to be
bruised or broken."



With that, Miss Havisham looked distractedly at me for a while, and then burst
out again, What had she done!



"If you knew all my story," she pleaded, "you would have some compassion for me
and a better understanding of me."



"Miss Havisham," I answered, as delicately as I could, "I believe I may say that
I do know your story, and have known it ever since I first left this
neighborhood. It has inspired me with great commiseration, and I hope I
understand it and its influences. Does what has passed between us give me any
excuse for asking you a question relative to Estella? Not as she is, but as she
was when she first came here?"



She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the ragged chair, and her head
leaning on them. She looked full at me when I said this, and replied, "Go on."



"Whose child was Estella?"



She shook her head.



"You don’t know?"



She shook her head again.



"But Mr. Jaggers brought her here, or sent her here?"



"Brought her here."



"Will you tell me how that came about?"



She answered in a low whisper and with caution: "I had been shut up in these
rooms a long time (I don’t know how long; you know what time the clocks keep
here), when I told him that I wanted a little girl to rear and love, and save
from my fate. I had first seen him when I sent for him to lay this place waste
for me; having read of him in the newspapers, before I and the world parted. He
told me that he would look about him for such an orphan child. One night he
brought her here asleep, and I called her Estella."



"Might I ask her age then?"



"Two or three. She herself knows nothing, but that she was left an orphan and I
adopted her."



So convinced I was of that woman’s being her mother, that I wanted no evidence
to establish the fact in my own mind. But, to any mind, I thought, the
connection here was clear and straight.



What more could I hope to do by prolonging the interview? I had succeeded on
behalf of Herbert, Miss Havisham had told me all she knew of Estella, I had said
and done what I could to ease her mind. No matter with what other words we
parted; we parted.



Twilight was closing in when I went down stairs into the natural air. I called
to the woman who had opened the gate when I entered, that I would not trouble
her just yet, but would walk round the place before leaving. For I had a
presentiment that I should never be there again, and I felt that the dying light
was suited to my last view of it.



By the wilderness of casks that I had walked on long ago, and on which the rain
of years had fallen since, rotting them in many places, and leaving miniature
swamps and pools of water upon those that stood on end, I made my way to the
ruined garden. I went all round it; round by the corner where Herbert and I had
fought our battle; round by the paths where Estella and I had walked. So cold,
so lonely, so dreary all!



Taking the brewery on my way back, I raised the rusty latch of a little door at
the garden end of it, and walked through. I was going out at the opposite
door,—not easy to open now, for the damp wood had started and swelled, and the
hinges were yielding, and the threshold was encumbered with a growth of
fungus,—when I turned my head to look back. A childish association revived with
wonderful force in the moment of the slight action, and I fancied that I saw
Miss Havisham hanging to the beam. So strong was the impression, that I stood
under the beam shuddering from head to foot before I knew it was a fancy,—though
to be sure I was there in an instant.



The mournfulness of the place and time, and the great terror of this illusion,
though it was but momentary, caused me to feel an indescribable awe as I came
out between the open wooden gates where I had once wrung my hair after Estella
had wrung my heart. Passing on into the front courtyard, I hesitated whether to
call the woman to let me out at the locked gate of which she had the key, or
first to go up stairs and assure myself that Miss Havisham was as safe and well
as I had left her. I took the latter course and went up.



I looked into the room where I had left her, and I saw her seated in the ragged
chair upon the hearth close to the fire, with her back towards me. In the moment
when I was withdrawing my head to go quietly away, I saw a great flaming light
spring up. In the same moment I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl
of fire blazing all about her, and soaring at least as many feet above her head
as she was high.



I had a double-caped great-coat on, and over my arm another thick coat. That I
got them off, closed with her, threw her down, and got them over her; that I
dragged the great cloth from the table for the same purpose, and with it dragged
down the heap of rottenness in the midst, and all the ugly things that sheltered
there; that we were on the ground struggling like desperate enemies, and that
the closer I covered her, the more wildly she shrieked and tried to free
herself,—that this occurred I knew through the result, but not through anything
I felt, or thought, or knew I did. I knew nothing until I knew that we were on
the floor by the great table, and that patches of tinder yet alight were
floating in the smoky air, which, a moment ago, had been her faded bridal dress.



Then, I looked round and saw the disturbed beetles and spiders running away over
the floor, and the servants coming in with breathless cries at the door. I still
held her forcibly down with all my strength, like a prisoner who might escape;
and I doubt if I even knew who she was, or why we had struggled, or that she had
been in flames, or that the flames were out, until I saw the patches of tinder
that had been her garments no longer alight but falling in a black shower around
us.



She was insensible, and I was afraid to have her moved, or even touched.
Assistance was sent for, and I held her until it came, as if I unreasonably
fancied (I think I did) that, if I let her go, the fire would break out again
and consume her. When I got up, on the surgeon’s coming to her with other aid, I
was astonished to see that both my hands were burnt; for, I had no knowledge of
it through the sense of feeling.



On examination it was pronounced that she had received serious hurts, but that
they of themselves were far from hopeless; the danger lay mainly in the nervous
shock. By the surgeon’s directions, her bed was carried into that room and laid
upon the great table, which happened to be well suited to the dressing of her
injuries. When I saw her again, an hour afterwards, she lay, indeed, where I had
seen her strike her stick, and had heard her say that she would lie one day.



Though every vestige of her dress was burnt, as they told me, she still had
something of her old ghastly bridal appearance; for, they had covered her to the
throat with white cotton-wool, and as she lay with a white sheet loosely
overlying that, the phantom air of something that had been and was changed was
still upon her.



I found, on questioning the servants, that Estella was in Paris, and I got a
promise from the surgeon that he would write to her by the next post. Miss
Havisham’s family I took upon myself; intending to communicate with Mr. Matthew
Pocket only, and leave him to do as he liked about informing the rest. This I
did next day, through Herbert, as soon as I returned to town.



There was a stage, that evening, when she spoke collectedly of what had
happened, though with a certain terrible vivacity. Towards midnight she began to
wander in her speech; and after that it gradually set in that she said
innumerable times in a low solemn voice, "What have I done!" And then, "When she
first came, I meant to save her from misery like mine." And then, "Take the
pencil and write under my name, ’I forgive her!’" She never changed the order of
these three sentences, but she sometimes left out a word in one or other of
them; never putting in another word, but always leaving a blank and going on to
the next word.



As I could do no service there, and as I had, nearer home, that pressing reason
for anxiety and fear which even her wanderings could not drive out of my mind, I
decided, in the course of the night that I would return by the early morning
coach, walking on a mile or so, and being taken up clear of the town. At about
six o’clock of the morning, therefore, I leaned over her and touched her lips
with mine, just as they said, not stopping for being touched, "Take the pencil
and write under my name, ’I forgive her.’"



Reading Settings


Background Color