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The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due time, and I took my box-seat again, and arrived in London safe – but not sound, for my heart was gone. As soon as I arrived, I sent a codfish and barrel of oysters to Joe, and then went on to Barnard’s Inn.
I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted to welcome me back. I felt that I must open my breast that very evening to my friend.
Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the fender, I said to Herbert, “My dear Herbert, I have something very particular to tell you.”
“My dear Handel,” he returned, “I shall esteem and respect your confidence.”
“It concerns myself, Herbert,” said I, “and one other person.”
Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head on one side, and looked at me because I didn’t go on.
“Herbert,” said I, laying my hand upon his knee, “I love – I adore – Estella.”
Herbert replied in an easy way, “Exactly. Well?”
“Well, Herbert? Is that all you say? Well?”
“What next, I mean?” said Herbert. “Of course I know that.”
“How do you know it?” said I.
“How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you.”
“I never told you.”
“Told me! You have always adored her, ever since I have known you. You brought your adoration and your bag here together. Told me! Why, you have always told me all day long. When you told me your own story, you told me plainly that you began adoring her the first time you saw her, when you were very young indeed.”
“Very well, then,” said I, to whom this was a new and not unwelcome light, “I have never left off adoring her. And she has come back, a most beautiful and most elegant creature. And I saw her yesterday. And if I adored her before, I now adore her more and more.”
“Lucky for you then, Handel,” said Herbert, “Have you any idea yet, of Estella’s views on the adoration question?”
I shook my head. “Oh! She is thousands of miles away, from me,” said I.
“Patience, my dear Handel: time enough, time enough.”
“What a hopeful disposition you have!” said I, admiring his cheery ways.
“I ought to have,” said Herbert, “for I have not much else. I was going to say a word or two, Handel, concerning my feelings.”
“Then you are?” said I.
“I am,” said Herbert; “but it’s a secret.”
I assured him of my keeping the secret.
“May I ask the name?” I said.
“Name of Clara,” said Herbert.
“Live in London?”
“Yes. Perhaps I ought to mention,” said Herbert, “that she is rather below my mother’s family notions. Her father is an invalid now.”
“Living on —?”
“On the first floor,” said Herbert. Which was not at all what I meant, for I had intended my question to apply to his means. “I have never seen him, since I have known Clara. But I have heard him constantly. He makes tremendous rows – roars, and pegs at the floor with some frightful instrument.” Herbert looked at me and then laughed heartily.
At night I miserably thought of Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert’s Clara, or play Hamlet before twenty thousand people, without knowing twenty words of it.
One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a note by the post. It had no beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip, or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything, but ran thus: —
“I am to come to London the day after tomorrow by the midday coach. I believe it was settled you should meet me? At all events Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write in obedience to it. She sends you her regard.
Yours, ESTELLA.”
If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several suits of clothes for this occasion. My appetite vanished instantly, and I knew no peace or rest until the day arrived. I was worse than ever, and began haunting the coach-office in Wood Street, Cheapside, before the coach had left the Blue Boar in our town. I had performed the first half-hour of a watch of four or five hours, when Wemmick ran against me.
“Halloa, Mr. Pip,” said he; “how do you do?”
I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.
“Both flourishing thank you,” said Wemmick, “and particularly the Aged. He’s a wonderful father. He’ll be eighty-two next birthday. I plan to fire eighty-two times. Where do you think I am going to?”
“To the office?” said I, for he was tending in that direction.
“Next thing to it,” returned Wemmick, “I am going to Newgate. Mr. Pip! Would you like to have a look at Newgate? Have you time to spare?”
I had so much time to spare, that the proposal came as a relief. I joined Mr. Wemmick, and I had received, accepted his offer.
We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through the lodge into the interior of the jail. It was visiting time when Wemmick took me in, and the prisoners, behind bars in yards, were talking to friends; and a frowzy, ugly, disorderly, depressing scene it was.
It struck me that Wemmick walked among the prisoners much as a gardener might walk among his plants. He was saying, “What, Captain Tom? Are you there? Ah, indeed!” and also, “Is that Black Bill behind the cistern? Why I didn’t look for you these two months; how do you find yourself?” Wemmick was highly popular.
We walked through Wemmick’s greenhouse, until he turned to me and said, “Notice the man I shall shake hands with.”
“Colonel, to you!” said Wemmick; “how are you, Colonel?”
“All right, Mr. Wemmick.”
“Everything was done that could be done, but the evidence was too strong for us, Colonel.”
“Yes, it was too strong, sir – but I don’t care.”
“No, no,” said Wemmick, coolly, “you don’t care.” Then, turning to me, “Served His Majesty this man. Was a soldier in the line and bought his discharge.”
I said, “Indeed?” and the man’s eyes looked at me, and then looked over my head, and then looked all round me, and then he drew his hand across his lips and laughed.
“By the way,” said Wemmick. “You were quite a pigeon-fancier.” The man looked up at the sky. “Could you commission any friend of yours to bring me a pair, of you’ve no further use for them?”
“It shall be done, sir.”
“All right,” said Wemmick, “they shall be taken care of. Good afternoon, Colonel. Good bye!”
They shook hands again, and as we walked away Wemmick said to me, “A Coiner, a very good workman. The Recorder’s report is made to-day, and he is sure to be executed on Monday. Still you see, a pair of pigeons are portable property all the same.”
Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little Britain, and I returned to my watch in the street of the coach-office, with some three hours on hand. I thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud, coming towards me, and I thought with absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her. At last, I saw her face at the coach window and her hand waving to me.
In her travelling-dress, Estella seemed more delicately beautiful than she had ever seemed yet, even in my eyes. I thought I saw Miss Havisham’s influence in the change.
“I am going to Richmond,” she told me. “There are two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in Yorkshire, and mine is the Surrey Richmond. The distance is ten miles. I am to have a carriage. 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.”
As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped there was an inner meaning in her words. She said them 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.”
“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. How is your life at Mr. Pocket’s?”
“I live quite pleasantly there.”
“Your friend Mr. Matthew, I believe, is superior to the rest of his family?”
“Very superior indeed. He is nobody’s enemy – ”
“He really is disinterested,” interposed Estella, “and above small jealousy and spite, I have heard?”
“I am sure I have every reason to say so.”
She gave me her hand. 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.”
“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.”
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.”
“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 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.
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