Dickens' Women (7 page)

Many years later I tapped in my old way at the door of Miss Havisham's room. ‘Pip's rap,' I heard her say, immediately; ‘Come in, Pip.'

She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress. 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.

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, that I fancied, as I looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again.

‘Do you find her much changed, Pip? She was proud and insulting, and you wanted to go away from her. Don't you remember?'

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.

Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, Miss Havisham turned to me and said in a whisper: ‘Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do you admire her? 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!'

‘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!'

‘I'll tell you 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!'

‘I have lived here many years. I pass my days in court; my evenings and my nights here. I find the nights long, for I sleep but little, and think much. That is, of course, unavoidable; being in Chancery.

Miss Flite – Phiz

‘I am sorry I cannot offer chocolate. I expect a judgement shortly, and shall then place my establishment on a superior footing.

‘At present, I don't mind confessing (in strict confidence), that I sometimes find it difficult to keep up a genteel appearance. I have felt the cold here. I have felt something sharper than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse the introduction of such mean topics.

‘Ah, my birds. I began to keep the little creatures with an object that you will readily comprehend. With the intention of restoring them to liberty. When my judgement should be given. Ye-es! They die in prison, though.

‘Their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings, that, one by one, the whole collection has died over and over again.

‘But I expect a judgement. Shortly. My father expected a
judgement
. My brother. My sister. They all expected a judgement. The same that I expect. Ye–es. Dead of course.

‘I must tell you a secret. I have added to my collection of birds. Two more. I call them the Wards in Jarndyce. They are caged up with all the others.

‘With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon and Spinach!'

 

My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady but by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and austere. I particularly noticed that she had a quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was grey, was arranged in two plain divisions, under what I believed would be called a mob-cap; I mean a cap much more common then than now, with side pieces fastening under the chin. Her dress was of a lavender colour, and perfectly neat, but scantily made, as if she desired to be as little encumbered as possible. I remember that I thought it, in form, more like a riding-habit, with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else. She wore, at her side, a
gentleman's
gold watch, if I might judge from its size and make, with an appropriate chain and seals; she had some linen at her throat not unlike a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists like little shirt-wristbands.

My father often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like any ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and looked in at the identical window, pressing the end of her nose to that extent, that my poor dear mother used to say that it became flat and white in an instant.

She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced that I am indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday.

Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor mother always called her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread of this formidable personage to mention her at all (which was seldom), had been married to a husband younger than herself, who was very handsome, except in the sense of the homely adage, ‘handsome is, as handsome does,' – for he
was strongly suspected of having beaten Miss Betsey and even once, on a disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs' window.

‘The baby,' said my aunt, ‘How is she?'

‘Ma'am,' returned Mr Chillip ‘I apprehended you had known. It's a boy.'

My aunt never said a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr Chillip's head with it, put it on bent, and walked out and never came back.

I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything; but it is a matter of some surprise to me even now, that I can have been so easily thrown away at such an age. A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems wonderful to me that nobody should have made a sign on my behalf. But none was made; and I became at ten years old, a little labouring hind in the service of Murdstone and Grinsby.

Again and again, and a hundred times again, since the night when the thought first occurred to me and banished sleep, I had gone over that old story of my poor mother's about my birth, which it had been one of my great delights in the old time, to hear tell, and which I knew by heart. My aunt walked into that story, and walked out of it, a dread and awful personage; but there was one little trait in her behaviour which I liked to dwell on, and which gave me some faint shadow of encouragement. I could not forget how my mother had thought that she felt her touch her pretty hair with no ungentle hand; and though it might have been altogether my mother's fancy, and might have had no foundation whatever, in fact, I made a little picture out of it, of my terrible aunt relenting towards the girlish beauty that I recollected so well and loved so much, which softened the whole narrative. It is very possible that it had been in my mind a long while, and had gradually
engendered
my determination.

‘I won't be trespassed upon, I won't allow it. Go away! Janet, turn him round. Lead him off!' and I saw from behind my aunt, a sort of hurried battle-piece, in which the donkey stood, resisting everybody, with all his four legs planted different ways, while Janet tried to lead him round by the bridle, Mr Murdstone tried to lead him on, Miss Murdstone struck at Janet with her parasol, and several boys who had come to see the engagement, shouted vigorously. But my aunt suddenly descrying among them the young malefactor who was the donkey's guardian, and who was one of the most inveterate offenders against her, though hardly in his teens, rushed out to the scene of action, pounced upon him, captured him, dragged him, with his jacket over his head, and his heels grinding into the ground into the garden, and, calling upon Janet to fetch the constables and justices, that he might be taken, tried, and executed on the spot, held him at bay there. This part of the business, however, did not last long; for the young rascal, being expert at a variety of feints and dodges, of which my aunt has no conception, soon went whooping away, leaving some deep impression of his nailed boots in the flower-beds, and taking his donkey in triumph with him.

‘Betsey Trotwood don't look a likely subject for the tender passion,' said my aunt, composedly, ‘but the time was, Trot, when she believed in that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given him. He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly breaking her heart. So she put all that sentiment in a grave, and filled it up, and flattened it down.'

‘My dear, good Aunt!'

‘I left him,' my aunt proceeded laying her hand as usual on the back of mine, ‘generously. I may say at this distance of time, Trot, that I left him, generously. He had been so cruel to me, that I might have effected a
separation
on easy terms for myself; but I did not. He soon made ducks and drakes of what I gave him, sank lower and lower, married another woman. I believe, became an adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat. What he is now you see. But he was a fine looking man when I married him,' said my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone, ‘and I believed him – I was a fool! – to be the soul of honour!

‘… I give him more money than I can afford, at
intervals
, when he reappears, to go away. I was a fool when I married him; and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I wouldn't have this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman was.'

My aunt dismissed the matter, with a heavy sigh, and smoothed her dress.

‘There my dear,' she said. ‘Now you know the
beginning
, middle, and end, and all about it. We won't mention the subject to one another any more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is my grumpy, frumpy story and we'll keep it to ourselves, Trot.'  

‘Mrs Jellyby,' said Mr Kenge, standing with his back to the fire, and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth rug as if it were Mrs Jellyby's biography, ‘is a lady of very
remarkable
strength of character, who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted herself to an excessive variety of public subjects, at various times, and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the subject of Africa; with a view to the general cultivation of the coffee berry – and the natives – and the happy settlement on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population.'

There was a confused little crowd of people, principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped, which had a tarnished brass plate upon the door, with the inscription, JELLYBY.

‘Don't be frightened!' said Mr Guppy, looking in at the coach window, ‘One of the young Jellybys gone and got his head through the area railings.'

Mrs Jellyby had very good hair, but was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The shawl in which she had been loosely muffled, dropped onto her chair when she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we could not help noticing that her dress didn't nearly meet up across the back, and that the open space was railed across with a lattice work of stay-lace – like a summer-house…

‘You find me, my dears, as usual very busy; but that you will excuse. The African project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in correspondence with public bodies, and with private individuals anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. I am happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger.'