FOR eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily
eyes-though they had both been often before my fancy in the East-when, upon an
evening in December, an hour or two after dark, I laid my hand softly on the
latch of the old kitchen door. I touched it so softly that I was not heard, and
looked in unseen. There, smoking his pipe in the old place by the kitchen
firelight, as hale and as strong as ever though a little grey, sat Joe; and
there, fenced into the corner with Joe's leg, and sitting on my own little stool
looking at the fire, was - I again!
`We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap,' said Joe,
delighted when I took another stool by the child's side (but I did not rumple
his hair), `and we hoped he might grow a little bit like you, and we think he
do.'
I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next morning, and we talked
immensely, understanding one another to perfection. And I took him down to the
churchyard, and set him on a certain tombstone there, and he showed me from that
elevation which stone was sacred to the memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this
Parish, and Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above.
`Biddy,' said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her little girl lay
sleeping in her lap, `you must give Pip to me, one of these days; or lend him,
at all events.'
`No, no,' said Biddy, gently. `You must marry.'
`So Herbert and Clara say, but I don't think I shall, Biddy. I have so
settled down in their home, that it's not at all likely. I am already quite an
old bachelor.'
Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand to her lips, and then
put the good matronly hand with which she had touched it, into mine. There was
something in the action and in the light pressure of Biddy's wedding-ring, that
had a very pretty eloquence in it.
`Dear Pip,' said Biddy, `you are sure you don't fret for her?'
`O no-I think not, Biddy.'
`Tell me as an old, old friend. Have you quite forgotten her?
`My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever had a foremost
place there, and little that ever had any place there. But that poor dream, as I
once used to call it, has all gone by, Biddy, all gone by!'
Nevertheless, I knew while I said those words, that I secretly intended to
revisit the site of the 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, without hurrying
my talk with Biddy, 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 gates, 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.
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