Vampir Estella Havisham
Charakterbeschreibung
She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, with her two hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and her eyes on the fire. Sitting near her, with the white shoe that had never been worn in her hand, and her head bent as she looked at it, was an elegant lady whom I had never seen.
‘Come in, Pip,’ Miss Havisham continued to mutter, without looking round or up; ‘come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip? So you kiss my hand as if I were a queen, eh? - Well?’ She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and repeated in a grimly playful manner, ‘Well?’ - ‘I heard, Miss Havisham,’ said I, rather at a loss, ‘that you were so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came directly.’ - ‘Well?’
The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella’s eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so much more womanly, in all things winning admiration had made such wonderful advance, that I seemed to have made none. I fancied, as I looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again. O the sense of distance and disparity that came upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about her!
She gave me her hand. I stammered something about the pleasure I felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it for a long, long time. ‘Do you find her much changed, Pip?’ asked Miss Havisham, with her greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair that stood between them, as a sign to me to sit down there.
‘When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing of Estella in the face or figure; but now it all settles down so curiously into the old—‘ - ‘What? You are not going to say into the old Estella?’ Miss Havisham interrupted. ‘She was proud and insulting, and you wanted to go away from her. Don’t you remember?’ I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I knew no better then, and the like. Estella smiled with perfect composure, and said she had no doubt of my having been quite right, and of her having been very disagreeable.
‘Is he changed?’ Miss Havisham asked her. ‘Very much,’ said Estella, looking at me. ‘Less coarse and common?’ said Miss Havisham, playing with Estella’s hair. Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed again, and looked at me, and put the shoe down. She treated me as a boy still, but she lured me on.
We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange influences which had so wrought upon me, and I learnt that she had but just come home from France, and that she was going to London. Proud and wilful as of old, she had brought those qualities into such subjection to her beauty that it was impossible and out of nature - or I thought so - to separate them from her beauty. Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence from all those wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my boyhood - from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me ashamed of home and Joe - from all those visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the wooden window of the forge and flit away. In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.
It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day, and return to the hotel at night, and to London tomorrow. When we had conversed for a while, Miss Havisham sent us two out to walk in the neglected garden: on our coming in by-and-by, she said, I should wheel her about a little as in times of yore.
So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through which I had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentleman, now Herbert; I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of her dress; she, quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping the hem of mine. As we drew near to the place of encounter, she stopped and said: ‘I must have been a singular little creature to hide and see that fight that day: but I did, and I enjoyed it very much.’ - ‘You rewarded me very much.’ - ‘Did I?’ she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way. ‘I remember I entertained a great objection to your adversary, because I took it ill that he should be brought here to pester me with his company.’ - ‘He and I are great friends now.’ - ‘Are you? I think I recollect though, that you read with his father?’ - ‘Yes.’
I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed to have a boyish look, and she already treated me more than enough like a boy.
‘Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed your companions,’ said Estella. ‘Naturally,’ said I. ‘And necessarily,’ she added, in a haughty tone; ‘what was fit company for you once, would be quite unfit company for you now.’
In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had any lingering intention left, of going to see Joe; but if I had, this observation put it to flight.
‘You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in those times?’ said Estella, with a slight wave of her hand, signifying in the fighting times. ‘Not the least.’
The air of completeness and superiority with which she walked at my side, and the air of youthfulness and submission with which I walked at hers, made a contrast that I strongly felt. It would have rankled in me more than it did, if I had not regarded myself as eliciting it by being so set apart for her and assigned to her.
The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in with ease, and after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we came out again into the brewery yard. I showed her to a nicety where I had seen her walking on the casks, that first old day, and she said, with a cold and careless look in that direction, ‘Did I?’ I reminded her where she had come out of the house and given me my meat and drink, and she said, ‘I don’t remember.’ - ‘Not remember that you made me cry?’ said I. ‘No,’ said she, and shook her head and looked about her. I verily believe that her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly - and that is the sharpest crying of all.
‘You must know,’ said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant and beautiful woman might, ‘that I have no heart - if that has anything to do with my memory.’
I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the liberty of doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no such beauty without it. ‘Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,’ said Estella, ‘and, of course, if it ceased to beat I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no - sympathy - sentiment - nonsense.’
What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she stood still and looked attentively at me? Anything that I had seen in Miss Havisham? No. In some of her looks and gestures there was that tinge of resemblance to Miss Havisham which may often be noticed to have been acquired by children, from grown person with whom they have been much associated and secluded, and which, when childhood is passed, will produce a remarkable occasional likeness of expression between faces that are otherwise quite different. And yet I could not trace this to
Miss Havisham. I looked again, and though she was still looking at me, the suggestion was gone.
What was it?
‘I am serious,’ said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her brow was smooth) as with a darkening of her face; ‘if we are to be thrown much together, you had better believe it at once. No!’ imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips. ‘I have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing.’
In another moment we were in the brewery so long disused, and she pointed to the high gallery where I had seen her going out on that same first day, and told me she remembered to have been up there, and to have seen me standing scared below. As my eyes followed her white hand, again the same dim suggestion that I could not possibly grasp, crossed me. My involuntary start occasioned her to lay her hand upon my arm. Instantly the ghost passed once more, and was gone.
What was it?
‘What is the matter?’ asked Estella. ‘Are you scared again?’ - ‘I should be, if I believed what you said just now,’ I replied, to turn it off. ‘Then you don’t? Very well. It is said, at any rate. Miss Havisham will soon be expecting you at your old post, though I think that might be laid aside now, with other old belongings. Let us make one more round of the garden, and then go in. Come! You shall not shed tears for my cruelty to-day; you shall be my Page, and give me your shoulder.’
Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground. She held it in one hand now, and with the other lightly touched my shoulder as we walked. We walked round the ruined garden twice or thrice more, and it was all in bloom for me. If the green and yellow growth of weed in the chinks of the old wall had been the most precious flowers that ever blew, it could not have been more cherished in my remembrance. There was no discrepancy of years between us, to remove her far from me; we were of nearly the same age, though of course the age told for more in her case than in mine; but the air of inaccessibility which her beauty and her manner gave her, tormented me in the midst of my delight, and at the height of the assurance I felt that our patroness had chosen us for one another. Wretched boy!
At last we went back into the house, and there I heard, with surprise, that my guardian had come down to see Miss Havisham on business, and would come back to dinner. The old wintry branches of chandeliers in the room where the mouldering table was spread, had been lighted while we were out, and Miss Havisham was in her chair and waiting for me.
It was like pushing the chair itself back into the past, when we began the old slow circuit round about the ashes of the bridal feast. But, in the funereal room, with that figure of the grave fallen back in the chair fixing its eyes upon her, Estella looked more bright and beautiful than before, and I was under stronger enchantment.
The time so melted away, that our early dinner-hour drew close at hand, and Estella left us to prepare herself.
We had stopped near the centre of the long table, and Miss Havisham, with one of her withered arms stretched out of the chair, rested that clenched hand upon the yellow cloth. As Estella looked back over her shoulder before going out at the door, Miss Havisham kissed that hand to her, with a ravenous intensity that was of its kind quite dreadful.
Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she turned to me, and said in a whisper: ‘Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do you admire her?’ - ‘Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham.’ She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head close down to hers as she sat in the chair. ‘Love her, love her, love her! How does she use you?’
Before I could answer (if I could have answered so difficult a question at all), she repeated, ‘Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces - and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper - love her, love her, love her!’
Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined to her utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of the thin arm round my neck, swell with the vehemence that possessed her.
‘Hear me, Pip! I adopted her to be loved. I bred her and educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might be loved. Love her!’
She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt that she meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been hate instead of love - despair - revenge - dire death - it could not have sounded from her lips more like a curse.
‘I’ll tell you,’ said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, ‘what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter - as I did!’
We played until nine o’clock, and then it was arranged that when Estella came to London I should be forewarned of her coming and should meet her at the coach; and then I took leave of her, and touched her and left her.
Far into the night, Miss Havisham’s words, ‘Love her, love her, love her!’ sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said to my pillow, ‘I love her, I love her, I love her!’ hundreds of times.
~*~
‘Estella,’ said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my trembling voice, ‘you know I love you. You know that I have loved you long and dearly.’
She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, and her fingers plied their work, and she looked at me with an unmoved countenance. I saw that Miss Havisham glanced from me to her, and from her to me.
‘I should have said this sooner, but for my long mistake. It induced me to hope that Miss Havisham meant us for one another. While I thought you could not help yourself, as it were, I refrained from saying it. But I must say it now.’
Preserving her unmoved countenance, and with her fingers still going, Estella shook her head. ‘I know,’ said I, in answer to that action; ‘I know. I have no hope that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what may become of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may go. Still, I love you. I have loved you ever since I first saw you in this house.’
Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers busy, she shook her head again. ‘It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.’
I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and hold it there, as she sat looking by turns at Estella and at me.
‘It seems,’ said Estella, very calmly, ‘that there are sentiments, fancies - I don’t know how to call them - which I am not able to comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a form of words; but nothing more. You address nothing in my breast, you touch nothing there. I don’t care for what you say at all. I have tried to warn you of this; now, have I not?’
I said in a miserable manner, ‘Yes.’ - ‘Yes. But you would not be warned, for you thought I did not mean it. Now, did you not think so?’ - ‘I thought and hoped you could not mean it. You, so young, untried, and beautiful, Estella! Surely it is not in Nature.’ - ‘It is in my nature,’ she returned. And then she added, with a stress upon the words, ‘It is in the nature formed within me. I make a great difference between you and all other people when I say so much. I can do no more.’
‘Is it not true,’ said I, ‘that Bentley Drummle is in town here, and pursuing you?’ - ‘It is quite true,’ she replied, referring to him with the indifference of utter contempt. ‘That you encourage him, and ride out with him, and that he dines with you this very day?’ She seemed a little surprised that I should know it, but again replied, ‘Quite true.’ - ‘You cannot love him, Estella!’
Her fingers stopped for the first time, as she retorted rather angrily, ‘What have I told you? Do you still think, in spite of it, that I do not mean what I say?’ - ‘You would never marry him, Estella?’
She looked towards Miss Havisham, and considered for a moment with her work in her hands. Then she said, ‘Why not tell you the truth? I am going to be married to him.’
I dropped my face into my hands, but was able to control myself better than I could have expected, considering what agony it gave me to hear her say those words. When I raised my face again, there was such a ghastly look upon Miss Havisham’s, that it impressed me, even in my passionate hurry and grief.
‘Estella, dearest dearest Estella, do not let Miss Havisham lead you into this fatal step. Put me aside for ever - you have done so, I well know - but bestow yourself on some worthier person than Drummle. Miss Havisham gives you to him, as the greatest slight and injury that could be done to the many far better men who admire you, and to the few who truly love you. Among those few, there may be one who loves you even as dearly, though he has not loved you as long, as I. Take him, and I can bear it better, for your sake!’
My earnestness awoke a wonder in her that seemed as if it would have been touched with compassion, if she could have rendered me at all intelligible to her own mind.
‘I am going,’ she said again, in a gentler voice, ‘to be married to him. The preparations for my marriage are making, and I shall be married soon. Why do you injuriously introduce the name of my mother by adoption? It is my own act.’
‘Your own act, Estella, to fling yourself away upon a brute?’
‘On whom should I fling myself away?’ she retorted, with a smile. ‘Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the soonest feel (if people do feel such things) that I took nothing to him? There! It is done. I shall do well enough, and so will my husband. As to leading me into what you call this fatal step, Miss Havisham would have had me wait, and not marry yet; but I am tired of the life I have led, which has very few charms for me, and I am willing enough to change it. Say no more. We shall never understand each other.’
‘Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute!’ I urged in despair. ‘Don’t be afraid of my being a blessing to him,’ said Estella; ‘I shall not be that. Come! Here is my hand. Do we part on this, you visionary boy - or man?’
‘O Estella!’ I answered, as my bitter tears fell fast on her hand, do what I would to restrain them; ‘even if I remained in England and could hold my head up with the rest, how could I see you Drummle’s wife?’
‘Nonsense,’ she returned, ‘nonsense. This will pass in no time.’
‘Never, Estella!’
‘You will get me out of your thoughts in a week.’
‘Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since - on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!’
In what ecstasy of unhappiness I got these broken words out of myself, I don’t know. The rhapsody welled up within me, like blood from an inward wound, and gushed out. I held her hand to my lips some lingering moments, and so I left her. But ever afterwards, I remembered - and soon afterwards with stronger reason - that while Estella looked at me merely with incredulous wonder, the spectral figure of Miss Havisham, her hand still covering her heart, seemed all resolved into a ghastly stare of pity and remorse.
~*~
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 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.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
‘Come in, Pip,’ Miss Havisham continued to mutter, without looking round or up; ‘come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip? So you kiss my hand as if I were a queen, eh? - Well?’ She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and repeated in a grimly playful manner, ‘Well?’ - ‘I heard, Miss Havisham,’ said I, rather at a loss, ‘that you were so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came directly.’ - ‘Well?’
The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella’s eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so much more womanly, in all things winning admiration had made such wonderful advance, that I seemed to have made none. I fancied, as I looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again. O the sense of distance and disparity that came upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about her!
She gave me her hand. I stammered something about the pleasure I felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it for a long, long time. ‘Do you find her much changed, Pip?’ asked Miss Havisham, with her greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair that stood between them, as a sign to me to sit down there.
‘When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing of Estella in the face or figure; but now it all settles down so curiously into the old—‘ - ‘What? You are not going to say into the old Estella?’ Miss Havisham interrupted. ‘She was proud and insulting, and you wanted to go away from her. Don’t you remember?’ I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I knew no better then, and the like. Estella smiled with perfect composure, and said she had no doubt of my having been quite right, and of her having been very disagreeable.
‘Is he changed?’ Miss Havisham asked her. ‘Very much,’ said Estella, looking at me. ‘Less coarse and common?’ said Miss Havisham, playing with Estella’s hair. Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed again, and looked at me, and put the shoe down. She treated me as a boy still, but she lured me on.
We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange influences which had so wrought upon me, and I learnt that she had but just come home from France, and that she was going to London. Proud and wilful as of old, she had brought those qualities into such subjection to her beauty that it was impossible and out of nature - or I thought so - to separate them from her beauty. Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence from all those wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my boyhood - from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me ashamed of home and Joe - from all those visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the wooden window of the forge and flit away. In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.
It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day, and return to the hotel at night, and to London tomorrow. When we had conversed for a while, Miss Havisham sent us two out to walk in the neglected garden: on our coming in by-and-by, she said, I should wheel her about a little as in times of yore.
So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through which I had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentleman, now Herbert; I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of her dress; she, quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping the hem of mine. As we drew near to the place of encounter, she stopped and said: ‘I must have been a singular little creature to hide and see that fight that day: but I did, and I enjoyed it very much.’ - ‘You rewarded me very much.’ - ‘Did I?’ she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way. ‘I remember I entertained a great objection to your adversary, because I took it ill that he should be brought here to pester me with his company.’ - ‘He and I are great friends now.’ - ‘Are you? I think I recollect though, that you read with his father?’ - ‘Yes.’
I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed to have a boyish look, and she already treated me more than enough like a boy.
‘Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed your companions,’ said Estella. ‘Naturally,’ said I. ‘And necessarily,’ she added, in a haughty tone; ‘what was fit company for you once, would be quite unfit company for you now.’
In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had any lingering intention left, of going to see Joe; but if I had, this observation put it to flight.
‘You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in those times?’ said Estella, with a slight wave of her hand, signifying in the fighting times. ‘Not the least.’
The air of completeness and superiority with which she walked at my side, and the air of youthfulness and submission with which I walked at hers, made a contrast that I strongly felt. It would have rankled in me more than it did, if I had not regarded myself as eliciting it by being so set apart for her and assigned to her.
The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in with ease, and after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we came out again into the brewery yard. I showed her to a nicety where I had seen her walking on the casks, that first old day, and she said, with a cold and careless look in that direction, ‘Did I?’ I reminded her where she had come out of the house and given me my meat and drink, and she said, ‘I don’t remember.’ - ‘Not remember that you made me cry?’ said I. ‘No,’ said she, and shook her head and looked about her. I verily believe that her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly - and that is the sharpest crying of all.
‘You must know,’ said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant and beautiful woman might, ‘that I have no heart - if that has anything to do with my memory.’
I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the liberty of doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no such beauty without it. ‘Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,’ said Estella, ‘and, of course, if it ceased to beat I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no - sympathy - sentiment - nonsense.’
What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she stood still and looked attentively at me? Anything that I had seen in Miss Havisham? No. In some of her looks and gestures there was that tinge of resemblance to Miss Havisham which may often be noticed to have been acquired by children, from grown person with whom they have been much associated and secluded, and which, when childhood is passed, will produce a remarkable occasional likeness of expression between faces that are otherwise quite different. And yet I could not trace this to
Miss Havisham. I looked again, and though she was still looking at me, the suggestion was gone.
What was it?
‘I am serious,’ said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her brow was smooth) as with a darkening of her face; ‘if we are to be thrown much together, you had better believe it at once. No!’ imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips. ‘I have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing.’
In another moment we were in the brewery so long disused, and she pointed to the high gallery where I had seen her going out on that same first day, and told me she remembered to have been up there, and to have seen me standing scared below. As my eyes followed her white hand, again the same dim suggestion that I could not possibly grasp, crossed me. My involuntary start occasioned her to lay her hand upon my arm. Instantly the ghost passed once more, and was gone.
What was it?
‘What is the matter?’ asked Estella. ‘Are you scared again?’ - ‘I should be, if I believed what you said just now,’ I replied, to turn it off. ‘Then you don’t? Very well. It is said, at any rate. Miss Havisham will soon be expecting you at your old post, though I think that might be laid aside now, with other old belongings. Let us make one more round of the garden, and then go in. Come! You shall not shed tears for my cruelty to-day; you shall be my Page, and give me your shoulder.’
Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground. She held it in one hand now, and with the other lightly touched my shoulder as we walked. We walked round the ruined garden twice or thrice more, and it was all in bloom for me. If the green and yellow growth of weed in the chinks of the old wall had been the most precious flowers that ever blew, it could not have been more cherished in my remembrance. There was no discrepancy of years between us, to remove her far from me; we were of nearly the same age, though of course the age told for more in her case than in mine; but the air of inaccessibility which her beauty and her manner gave her, tormented me in the midst of my delight, and at the height of the assurance I felt that our patroness had chosen us for one another. Wretched boy!
At last we went back into the house, and there I heard, with surprise, that my guardian had come down to see Miss Havisham on business, and would come back to dinner. The old wintry branches of chandeliers in the room where the mouldering table was spread, had been lighted while we were out, and Miss Havisham was in her chair and waiting for me.
It was like pushing the chair itself back into the past, when we began the old slow circuit round about the ashes of the bridal feast. But, in the funereal room, with that figure of the grave fallen back in the chair fixing its eyes upon her, Estella looked more bright and beautiful than before, and I was under stronger enchantment.
The time so melted away, that our early dinner-hour drew close at hand, and Estella left us to prepare herself.
We had stopped near the centre of the long table, and Miss Havisham, with one of her withered arms stretched out of the chair, rested that clenched hand upon the yellow cloth. As Estella looked back over her shoulder before going out at the door, Miss Havisham kissed that hand to her, with a ravenous intensity that was of its kind quite dreadful.
Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she turned to me, and said in a whisper: ‘Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do you admire her?’ - ‘Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham.’ She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head close down to hers as she sat in the chair. ‘Love her, love her, love her! How does she use you?’
Before I could answer (if I could have answered so difficult a question at all), she repeated, ‘Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces - and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper - love her, love her, love her!’
Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined to her utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of the thin arm round my neck, swell with the vehemence that possessed her.
‘Hear me, Pip! I adopted her to be loved. I bred her and educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might be loved. Love her!’
She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt that she meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been hate instead of love - despair - revenge - dire death - it could not have sounded from her lips more like a curse.
‘I’ll tell you,’ said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, ‘what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter - as I did!’
We played until nine o’clock, and then it was arranged that when Estella came to London I should be forewarned of her coming and should meet her at the coach; and then I took leave of her, and touched her and left her.
Far into the night, Miss Havisham’s words, ‘Love her, love her, love her!’ sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said to my pillow, ‘I love her, I love her, I love her!’ hundreds of times.
~*~
‘Estella,’ said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my trembling voice, ‘you know I love you. You know that I have loved you long and dearly.’
She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, and her fingers plied their work, and she looked at me with an unmoved countenance. I saw that Miss Havisham glanced from me to her, and from her to me.
‘I should have said this sooner, but for my long mistake. It induced me to hope that Miss Havisham meant us for one another. While I thought you could not help yourself, as it were, I refrained from saying it. But I must say it now.’
Preserving her unmoved countenance, and with her fingers still going, Estella shook her head. ‘I know,’ said I, in answer to that action; ‘I know. I have no hope that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what may become of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may go. Still, I love you. I have loved you ever since I first saw you in this house.’
Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers busy, she shook her head again. ‘It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.’
I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and hold it there, as she sat looking by turns at Estella and at me.
‘It seems,’ said Estella, very calmly, ‘that there are sentiments, fancies - I don’t know how to call them - which I am not able to comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a form of words; but nothing more. You address nothing in my breast, you touch nothing there. I don’t care for what you say at all. I have tried to warn you of this; now, have I not?’
I said in a miserable manner, ‘Yes.’ - ‘Yes. But you would not be warned, for you thought I did not mean it. Now, did you not think so?’ - ‘I thought and hoped you could not mean it. You, so young, untried, and beautiful, Estella! Surely it is not in Nature.’ - ‘It is in my nature,’ she returned. And then she added, with a stress upon the words, ‘It is in the nature formed within me. I make a great difference between you and all other people when I say so much. I can do no more.’
‘Is it not true,’ said I, ‘that Bentley Drummle is in town here, and pursuing you?’ - ‘It is quite true,’ she replied, referring to him with the indifference of utter contempt. ‘That you encourage him, and ride out with him, and that he dines with you this very day?’ She seemed a little surprised that I should know it, but again replied, ‘Quite true.’ - ‘You cannot love him, Estella!’
Her fingers stopped for the first time, as she retorted rather angrily, ‘What have I told you? Do you still think, in spite of it, that I do not mean what I say?’ - ‘You would never marry him, Estella?’
She looked towards Miss Havisham, and considered for a moment with her work in her hands. Then she said, ‘Why not tell you the truth? I am going to be married to him.’
I dropped my face into my hands, but was able to control myself better than I could have expected, considering what agony it gave me to hear her say those words. When I raised my face again, there was such a ghastly look upon Miss Havisham’s, that it impressed me, even in my passionate hurry and grief.
‘Estella, dearest dearest Estella, do not let Miss Havisham lead you into this fatal step. Put me aside for ever - you have done so, I well know - but bestow yourself on some worthier person than Drummle. Miss Havisham gives you to him, as the greatest slight and injury that could be done to the many far better men who admire you, and to the few who truly love you. Among those few, there may be one who loves you even as dearly, though he has not loved you as long, as I. Take him, and I can bear it better, for your sake!’
My earnestness awoke a wonder in her that seemed as if it would have been touched with compassion, if she could have rendered me at all intelligible to her own mind.
‘I am going,’ she said again, in a gentler voice, ‘to be married to him. The preparations for my marriage are making, and I shall be married soon. Why do you injuriously introduce the name of my mother by adoption? It is my own act.’
‘Your own act, Estella, to fling yourself away upon a brute?’
‘On whom should I fling myself away?’ she retorted, with a smile. ‘Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the soonest feel (if people do feel such things) that I took nothing to him? There! It is done. I shall do well enough, and so will my husband. As to leading me into what you call this fatal step, Miss Havisham would have had me wait, and not marry yet; but I am tired of the life I have led, which has very few charms for me, and I am willing enough to change it. Say no more. We shall never understand each other.’
‘Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute!’ I urged in despair. ‘Don’t be afraid of my being a blessing to him,’ said Estella; ‘I shall not be that. Come! Here is my hand. Do we part on this, you visionary boy - or man?’
‘O Estella!’ I answered, as my bitter tears fell fast on her hand, do what I would to restrain them; ‘even if I remained in England and could hold my head up with the rest, how could I see you Drummle’s wife?’
‘Nonsense,’ she returned, ‘nonsense. This will pass in no time.’
‘Never, Estella!’
‘You will get me out of your thoughts in a week.’
‘Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since - on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!’
In what ecstasy of unhappiness I got these broken words out of myself, I don’t know. The rhapsody welled up within me, like blood from an inward wound, and gushed out. I held her hand to my lips some lingering moments, and so I left her. But ever afterwards, I remembered - and soon afterwards with stronger reason - that while Estella looked at me merely with incredulous wonder, the spectral figure of Miss Havisham, her hand still covering her heart, seemed all resolved into a ghastly stare of pity and remorse.
~*~
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 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.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Statistik
| Beute insgesamt: | 529,70 Liter Blut |
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| Kämpfe: | 82 |
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| Trefferpunkte verteilt: | 28.61 |
| Trefferpunkte eingesteckt: | 11493.81 |
Die Eigenschaftswerte von Estella Havisham:
| Charakterlevel: | Stufe 3 |
| Stärke: |    (12) |
| Verteidigung: | (11) |
| Gewandtheit: | (11) |
| Ausdauer: | (11) |
| Geschicklichkeit: | (11) |
| Erfahrung: |   (102|45) |
Die Urahnenstatistik von Estella Havisham
| Angetretene Prüfungen: | 0 |
| Bestandene Prüfungen: | 0 |
| Gescheiterte Prüfungen: | 0 |
Profildaten
| Geschlecht: | weiblich |
| Alter: | 21-25 Jahre |
| Wohnort: | Satis House |
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