I must admit you were not a part of my book
But now if you open it up and take a look
You're the beginning and the end of every chapter
You're the best thing I never knew I needed
~Never Knew I Needed, Ne-Yo
A man may have learned much about women in flirtation and yet still be ignorant of first love.
~Heretics, Gilbert K. Chesterson
Until he established himself as a legitimate businessman and bought a proper home, the only way they could love each other without restraint was through words. Without words, Harold would have nothing. And he needed something.
~The Poem, Marianne Greenleaf
XXX
It all started when Harold Hill arrived to the library one balmy Saturday evening in late August, fresh after band practice, to find Marian Paroo daydream-deep in a novel.
Harold grinned and wagged a finger at her. "Ah, ah, ah, Madam Librarian – here I find you shirking at your post, once again!"
Donning her most intimidating "prim librarian" expression, she raised her eyebrows and tartly retorted, "I'm assessing the collections, Mister Hill. A new shipment of books arrived this afternoon."
"I see," the music professor chuckled, playing along. "And just what exactly are we assessing so thoroughly, page by page and word by word?" He deftly tugged the book out of her hands, avoiding her attempted swat with ease. "Ah – Great Expectations! As I recall, I enjoyed that one quite a bit when I was a kid."
Marian stopped being the haughty librarian as a spark of genuine curiosity and interest came into her eyes. "Really?"
He nodded. "Yes – I found myself feeling a lot like Pip, wanting better prospects than was my ordained lot in life."
The former conman realized he'd given the clever librarian a dangerous opening for further questions about things he wasn't entirely ready to divulge – it was still rather early in their courtship, after all, and his fledgling boys band hadn't yet performed the second concert that would definitively prove the Think System wasn't merely a lucky fluke – and regarded Marian with a winking smirk, as if this conversation was little more to him than light, diverting flirtation.
In return, she regarded him with a gleam of fun in her gaze and an arch smile. His ruse worked – or perhaps it hadn't. "And who was the Estella your heart yearned after, Harold?"
"My Estella was always the next train out of town," he said, not untruthfully even if it was a bit of a dodge. "That is, until I met you."
If Marian had been any other woman, she would have swooned at this line – especially given that it was an honest sentiment in this case. Instead, she regarded him with a rather inscrutable look that seemed to indicate she wasn't sure whether she should be flattered or suspicious. "You compare me to Estella?"
Harold's eyes widened as he belatedly realized that it wasn't exactly a compliment to be likened to an unabashed heartbreaker of men – especially given the previous untrue rumors about her supposed reputation – and he quickly spoke to allay the damage. "No no no, of course not! At least, not in the way you're thinking. What I meant, but expressed clumsily, is that you became what my heart yearned after, rather than the next train out of River City." He probably should have stopped there, as the conversation was getting decidedly dangerous – and it wasn't the kind of danger that he enjoyed engaging in with a woman. But something in him wanted to keep going, perhaps that same treacherous instinct that delighted in taking risks, to keep pursuing this topic to see where it led. Still, at least he had the good sense to turn the discussion back to literary criticism. "In all honesty, Pip's infatuation Estella was my least favorite part of the story. He ought to have realized a lot sooner that she was a cipher that proved a costly distraction to his dreams."
"Estella was much more than a cipher to Pip's journey," the librarian replied with measured but undeniable fervor. "She was the one who inspired his dreams in the first place – and what's more, she was one of the most complex and fascinating female characters Dickens ever wrote."
A bit surprised by the librarian's passionate defense of a woman whose character was so diametrically opposed to her own – whereas Estella was warm on the outside and cold on the inside, Marian was cold on the outside and warm on the inside – Harold raised an eyebrow. At first, Marian smiled enigmatically and turned to give the front desk one final look-over. It wasn't until she took his arm and they were leaving the library that she explained, "Before Pip met Estella, he was perfectly content with becoming a blacksmith and working in the forge alongside his brother-in-law Joe. It wasn't until he was exposed to Estella's beauty and Miss Havisham's wealth that he became dissatisfied with his station and yearned for more. Not only did she represent the gentility he craved, he wanted to become a gentleman to be worthy of her." Her brow crinkled. "Although why he should fall in love with a girl who treated him so horribly, I never quite understood."
Being a well-traveled man of the world, Harold could easily see what the attraction was. "Because Estella was a challenge – a beautiful and unattainable prize. If he could win her admiration and love, he could prove to himself that he was a gentleman."
"Which would be especially important to him after she bruised his self-respect by mocking his manners and clothing as being too common," Marian said, nodding in understanding.
The conversation could have ended there. But now that the sun had dipped below the horizon, the warmth of the atmosphere was pleasant rather than stifling – the perfect weather for an idle stroll. As neither the music professor nor the librarian were in a particular hurry that evening, the debate continued as they languidly made their way to the Paroo front porch.
"It's still too bad Pip wasted so much time pining over her," Harold continued, shaking his head in pity and disgust. "Estella was a cold and unrepentant flirt who played games with everyone – especially him."
"Estella tried to warn him of her true nature on multiple occasions," Marian countered, just as game as he was.
"Her 'warnings' were part of the game," Harold maintained. He stopped short of telling her that in his travels, he'd encountered many women like Estella. Mostly, these were the women he met in cities during the periods he'd cooled his heels after a successful con and had money to burn. This type of gal was great fun to go to bed with, but a man must never make the mistake of developing feelings – he'd seen exactly what happened to too many poor fools who didn't understand what they were dealing with, and it wasn't pretty. The trick to getting anywhere with a woman like that was to refrain from sentimentality – where honorable men like Pip failed, worldly men like Harold succeeded. These were the women he'd felt absolutely no compunction about seducing, as they relished the chase just as much as he did, and for all the airs of diffidence and decorum they put on in public, they proved just as experienced and adept between the sheets as he was. And the morning after, they were as eager to part ways as he was, having gotten what pleasure they sought out of the liaison. No false pretense, no empty declarations, no bitter misunderstanding, no lingering guilt. Not like with the wide-eyed daughters of farmers (who he rarely deflowered completely, though he went much further with them than any decent suitor would consider), or even with the more seasoned but unsatisfied wives of farmers (who had only ever experienced bad lovemaking and were not only inept, but often scandalized as well as aroused whenever he introduced them to acts beyond the purview of the missionary position).
Marian shook her head in spirited disagreement. "Well, I think Estella warned Pip because she was genuinely frustrated by his insistence on courting her. She may have been a cold flirt who played games, but she did not play them for her own pleasure. For all her flaws, she had an unflagging sense of filial obligation. Miss Havisham rescued her from a life of poverty and delinquency – she felt duty-bound to be her guardian's proxy for revenge on men's hearts. Estella eventually came to loathe playing this role even as she continued to believe, thanks to Miss Havisham's teachings and the grasping behavior of her hypocritical relatives, that all men deserved heartbreak and ruin. And for all Pip's flaws, he had a good heart, so he became something of a friend with whom she could be herself – she was too warped to understand what true friendship and love were until great suffering humbled her. But Pip, blinded by his own longing, refused to take Estella at her word. Women know too well of dismissiveness and disparagement when, for their own purposes, men do not wish to believe their words are true," Marian said darkly.
Harold looked away, humbled by the reminder that, even though the librarian wasn't as well-traveled as he was, she'd also seen something of the callousness and cruelty men were capable of perpetrating. But he still thought Marian gave Estella far too much credit. Yet he did not offer a rebuttal, as they had just about reached the Paroo front gate. Not that he was inclined to continue discussing this topic further. Now that he had reformed, he no longer wanted to contemplate the Estellas of the world. Such liaisons seemed unsavory now, like gorging on too many sweets. He craved a richer, more satisfying meal, a roast dinner with all the trimmings.
"Touché, Madam Librarian," Harold said with a grin as Winthrop threw open the front door and ran excitedly up to the two of them.
XXX
Nothing more was spoken of the matter until the following Sunday afternoon, when Harold called on Marian at her home after church. At first, their previous conversation was the furthest thing from his thoughts, as he was too busy appreciating how particularly fetching the librarian was in her pale pink silk gown trimmed with lace. (The clusters of ribbon roses at her shoulders were especially enchanting, as they had given Harold the perfect excuse to bury his nose into the crook of Marian's neck under the flimsy pretense of perusing their aroma.) The day was sultry, and he was sweltering even in his lightest seersucker suit, but she looked effortlessly elegant and composed, not a hair out of place.
They had just finished a delectable Sunday dinner and, as it was too hot to sit in the parlor, Harold and Marian retired to the back porch. Winthrop, being young enough to indulge in such luxuries, ran off to the swimming hole with his friends, so the two of them were alone, or nearly so, as Mrs. Paroo was doing the washing up in the kitchen and the windows were wide open. The air was heavy but there was at least a breeze, which gave the illusion of relief from the heat. The soothing shh-shh-shh and clinking sounds emanating from the kitchen and the chirps of the chickens clucking lazily in their pen contributed to the soporific atmosphere, and Harold might have nodded off where he sat if Marian had not turned to him with a gleam in her eye and produced the volume of Great Expectations he hadn't realized she was carrying.
"Why don't we read a few of the most significant conversations between Pip and Estella?" she suggested.
Harold could only chuckle at this turn of events. He ought to have known the librarian had something like this up her sleeve, as she'd pointedly raised her eyebrow at him yesterday when he conceded the argument entirely to her, though Winthrop's entrance had curtailed further banter between the two of them. Although this ploy wasn't likely to change his opinion, the prospect of sitting extremely close to the librarian and reading charged passages was too enticing to pass up.
"I'm game," he said with a grin, scooting right up next to her and wrapping his arm around her waist. "Where did you want to start?"
With a triumphant smile, as if she had already won the battle, Marian opened the book to chapter 29 and spread it across their laps. "Let's begin where Pip and Estella first meet again in adulthood."
XXX
It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day, and return to the hotel at night, and to London to-morrow. 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!
XXX
"Wretched boy, indeed," Harold remarked in wry sympathy after they'd finished reading the scene.
Marian's response was no less wry. "It is entirely his own fault for not taking Estella at her word."
Admittedly, Harold no longer felt as strongly that Estella's confession was merely a game to entice Pip onward – most likely because of the inflection Marian had given her words. Though her tone had been haughty as you please, there was also a straightforward matter-of-factness in it that he found both interesting and thought-provoking.
Still, he wasn't about to let the librarian win their little debate that easily. "Pride goeth before the fall, my dear," he chuckled. "We've only just begun to read – where to, next?"
Her smile still triumphant, Marian flipped to chapter 33.
XXX
In her furred travelling-dress, Estella seemed more delicately beautiful than she had ever seemed yet, even in my eyes. Her manner was more winning than she had cared to let it be to me before, and I thought I saw Miss Havisham's influence in the change.
We stood in the Inn Yard while she pointed out her luggage to me, and when it was all collected I remembered – having forgotten everything but herself in the meanwhile – that I knew nothing of her destination.
"I am going to Richmond," she told me. "Our lesson is, that there are two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in Yorkshire, and that mine is the Surrey Richmond. The distance is ten miles. I am to have a carriage, and you are to take me. This is my purse, and you are to pay my charges out of it. Oh, you must take the purse! We have no choice, you and I, but to obey our instructions. We are not free to follow our own devices, you and I."
As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped there was an inner meaning in her words. She said them slightingly, but 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."
She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be done, and I requested a waiter who had been staring at the coach like a man who had never seen such a thing in his life, to show us a private sitting-room. Upon that, he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a magic clue without which he couldn't find the way up-stairs, and led us to the black hole of the establishment: fitted up with a diminishing mirror (quite a superfluous article considering the hole's proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet, and somebody's pattens. On my objecting to this retreat, he took us into another room with a dinner-table for thirty, and in the grate a scorched leaf of a copy-book under a bushel of coal-dust. Having looked at this extinct conflagration and shaken his head, he took my order: which, proving to be merely "Some tea for the lady," sent him out of the room in a very low state of mind.
I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this chamber, in its strong combination of stable with soup-stock, might have led one to infer that the coaching department was not doing well, and that the enterprising proprietor was boiling down the horses for the refreshment department. Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella being in it. I thought that with her I could have been happy there for life. (I was not at all happy there at the time, observe, and I knew it well.)
"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."
She answered so carelessly, that I said, "You speak of yourself as if you were someone else."
"Where did you learn how I speak of others? Come, come," said Estella, smiling delightfully, "you must not expect me to go to school to you; I must talk in my own way. How do you thrive with Mr. Pocket?"
"I live quite pleasantly there; at least – " It appeared to me that I was losing a chance.
"At least?" repeated Estella.
"As pleasantly as I could anywhere, away from you."
"You silly boy," said Estella, quite composedly, "how can you talk such nonsense? Your friend Mr. Matthew, I believe, is superior to the rest of his family?"
"Very superior indeed. He is nobody's enemy – "
"Don't add but his own," interposed Estella, "for I hate that class of man. But he really is disinterested, and above small jealousy and spite, I have heard?"
"I am sure I have every reason to say so."
"You have not every reason to say so of the rest of his people," said Estella, nodding at me with an expression of face that was at once grave and rallying, "for they beset Miss Havisham with reports and insinuations to your disadvantage. They watch you, misrepresent you, write letters about you (anonymous sometimes), and you are the torment and the occupation of their lives. You can scarcely realize to yourself the hatred those people feel for you."
"They do me no harm, I hope?"
Instead of answering, Estella burst out laughing. This was very singular to me, and I looked at her in considerable perplexity. When she left off – and she had not laughed languidly, but with real enjoyment – I said, in my diffident way with her:
"I hope I may suppose that you would not be amused if they did me any harm."
"No, no you may be sure of that," said Estella. "You may be certain that I laugh because they fail. Oh, those people with Miss Havisham, and the tortures they undergo!" She laughed again, and even now when she had told me why, her laughter was very singular to me, for I could not doubt its being genuine, and yet it seemed too much for the occasion. I thought there must really be something more here than I knew; she saw the thought in my mind, and answered it.
"It is not easy for even you." said Estella, "to know what satisfaction it gives me to see those people thwarted, or what an enjoyable sense of the ridiculous I have when they are made ridiculous. For you were not brought up in that strange house from a mere baby. – I was. You had not your little wits sharpened by their intriguing against you, suppressed and defenceless, under the mask of sympathy and pity and what not that is soft and soothing. – I had. You did not gradually open your round childish eyes wider and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a woman who calculates her stores of peace of mind for when she wakes up in the night. – I did."
It was no laughing matter with Estella now, nor was she summoning these remembrances from any shallow place. I would not have been the cause of that look of hers, for all my expectations in a heap.
"Two things I can tell you," said Estella. "First, notwithstanding the proverb that constant dropping will wear away a stone, you may set your mind at rest that these people never will – never would, in hundred years – impair your ground with Miss Havisham, in any particular, great or small. Second, I am beholden to you as the cause of their being so busy and so mean in vain, and there is my hand upon it."
As she gave it me playfully – for her darker mood had been but momentary – 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 for the fawners and plotters."
"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."
Her reverting to this tone as if our association were forced upon us and we were mere puppets, gave me pain; but everything in our intercourse did give me pain. Whatever her tone with me happened to be, I could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it; and yet I went on against trust and against hope. Why repeat it a thousand times? So it always was.
…
It was impossible for me to avoid seeing that she cared to attract me; that she made herself winning; and would have won me even if the task had needed pains. Yet this made me none the happier, for, even if she had not taken that tone of our being disposed of by others, I should have felt that she held my heart in her hand because she wilfully chose to do it, and not because it would have wrung any tenderness in her, to crush it and throw it away.
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.
"Oh 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, though not averse to increasing her income."
"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 regularly 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.
XXX
Harold was not surprised that Marian's inflections of the dialog were different than he'd originally construed during his previous reading, but he had not expected that her interpretation would be so convincing. Her Estella was still haughty, of course, but in those lofty, well-bred tones, there was also real pain and anger at being preyed upon by Miss Havisham's greedy, grasping relatives at such a tender age, as well as genuine annoyance at Pip's repeated flirtations. Whereas his Estella had boasted about her station and jewels, and rebuffed Pip with a cold voice but contradictory gleam of come-hither mischief in her eyes, Marian's Estella spoke with disinterest and even detachment. She was not at all charmed by the arid glamor of her life.
As if she'd heard his thoughts, Marian observed, "Estella is already weary of the demands placed on her, but will do her duty. As she does it, she wants Pip to be her friend, not her lover. But Pip is too blinded by the intensity of his own feelings to understand her."
Harold wasn't quite sure he agreed that Estella was yearning for friendship from Pip, but he did allow, "She doesn't seem to view him as another suitor to practice jilting – at least, not the way you're reading her. I will grant you that Pip needs to get ahold of himself."
Marian turned to chapter 38.
XXX
It happened on the occasion of this visit that some sharp words arose between Estella and Miss Havisham. It was the first time I had ever seen them opposed.
We were seated by the fire, as just now described, and Miss Havisham still had Estella's arm drawn through her own, and still clutched Estella's hand in hers, when Estella gradually began to detach herself. She had shown a proud impatience more than once before, and had rather endured that fierce affection than accepted or returned it.
"What!" said Miss Havisham, flashing her eyes upon her, "are you tired of me?"
"Only a little tired of myself," replied Estella, disengaging her arm, and moving to the great chimney-piece, where she stood looking down at the fire.
"Speak the truth, you ingrate!" cried Miss Havisham, passionately striking her stick upon the floor; "you are tired of me."
Estella looked at her with perfect composure, and again looked down at the fire. Her graceful figure and her beautiful face expressed a self-possessed indifference to the wild heat of the other, that was almost cruel.
"You stock and stone!" exclaimed Miss Havisham. "You cold, cold heart!"
"What?" said Estella, preserving her attitude of indifference as she leaned against the great chimney-piece and only moving her eyes; "do you reproach me for being cold? You?"
"Are you not?" was the fierce retort.
"You should know," said Estella. "I am what you have made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me."
"O, look at her, look at her!" cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; "Look at her, so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared! Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years of tenderness upon her!"
"At least I was no party to the compact," said Estella, "for if I could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I could do. But what would you have? You have been very good to me, and I owe everything to you. What would you have?"
"Love," replied the other.
"You have it."
"I have not," said Miss Havisham.
"Mother by adoption," retorted Estella, never departing from the easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other did, never yielding either to anger or tenderness, "Mother by adoption, I have said that I owe everything to you. All I possess is freely yours. All that you have given me, is at your command to have again. Beyond that, I have nothing. And if you ask me to give you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities."
"Did I never give her love!" cried Miss Havisham, turning wildly to me. "Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable from jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus to me! Let her call me mad, let her call me mad!"
"Why should I call you mad," returned Estella, "I, of all people? Does anyone live, who knows what set purposes you have, half as well as I do? Does anyone live, who knows what a steady memory you have, half as well as I do? I who have sat on this same hearth on the little stool that is even now beside you there, learning your lessons and looking up into your face, when your face was strange and frightened me!"
"Soon forgotten!" moaned Miss Havisham. "Times soon forgotten!"
"No, not forgotten," retorted Estella. "Not forgotten, but treasured up in my memory. When have you found me false to your teaching? When have you found me unmindful of your lessons? When have you found me giving admission here," she touched her bosom with her hand, "to anything that you excluded? Be just to me."
"So proud, so proud!" moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her grey hair with both her hands.
"Who taught me to be proud?" returned Estella. "Who praised me when I learnt my lesson?"
"So hard, so hard!" moaned Miss Havisham, with her former action.
"Who taught me to be hard?" returned Estella. "Who praised me when I learnt my lesson?"
"But to be proud and hard to me!" Miss Havisham quite shrieked, as she stretched out her arms. "Estella, Estella, Estella, to be proud and hard to me!"
Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder, but was not otherwise disturbed; when the moment was past, she looked down at the fire again.
"I cannot think," said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence "why you should be so unreasonable when I come to see you after a separation. I have never forgotten your wrongs and their causes. I have never been unfaithful to you or your schooling. I have never shown any weakness that I can charge myself with."
"Would it be weakness to return my love?" exclaimed Miss Havisham. "But yes, yes, she would call it so!"
"I begin to think," said Estella, in a musing way, after another moment of calm wonder, "that I almost understand how this comes about. If you had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement of these rooms, and had never let her know that there was such a thing as the daylight by which she had never once seen your face – if you had done that, and then, for a purpose had wanted her to understand the daylight and know all about it, you would have been disappointed and angry?"
Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands, sat making a low moaning, and swaying herself on her chair, but gave no answer.
"Or," said Estella, " – which is a nearer case – if you had taught her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her; – if you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have been disappointed and angry?"
Miss Havisham sat listening (or it seemed so, for I could not see her face), but still made no answer.
"So," said Estella, "I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me."
Miss Havisham had settled down, I hardly knew how, upon the floor, among the faded bridal relics with which it was strewn. I took advantage of the moment – I had sought one from the first – to leave the room, after beseeching Estella's attention to her, with a movement of my hand. When I left, Estella was yet standing by the great chimney-piece, just as she had stood throughout. Miss Havisham's grey hair was all adrift upon the ground, among the other bridal wrecks, and was a miserable sight to see.
It was with a depressed heart that I walked in the starlight for an hour and more, about the court-yard, and about the brewery, and about the ruined garden. When I at last took courage to return to the room, I found Estella sitting at Miss Havisham's knee, taking up some stitches in one of those old articles of dress that were dropping to pieces, and of which I have often been reminded since by the faded tatters of old banners that I have seen hanging up in cathedrals. Afterwards, Estella and I played at cards, as of yore – only we were skilful now, and played French games – and so the evening wore away, and I went to bed.
XXX
Harold was truly unsettled after they had finished that passage. He'd always imagined Estella upbraiding Miss Havisham with as much controlled but gleeful malice as he'd envisioned her simultaneously urging on and holding off overeager suitors, but Marian had given her no such motives. The librarian's rendition was of a woman who was poised, but also confused and even distressed by her guardian's passionate disapproval of her manner. Indeed, Estella was cold-hearted, but as she'd pointed out, this was exactly the personality she had, if not been born with, been molded into through Miss Havisham's careful teachings. Estella did not love, but she also did not take cruel joy in what she said or did, because she had no heart.
It was Harold who spoke first, with somberness rather than sarcasm. "The teacher discovered she taught her pupil a little too well."
"Estella was never given the love that was demanded of her," Marian said sadly. "Yet still, she sits at Miss Havisham's knee, trying to repair her tattered dress."
"Her way of apologizing," Harold supposed.
Marian nodded. "Her way of loving the imperfect, but only, mother she'd ever known."
They skipped ahead a little further in the chapter, and continued to read.
XXX
At a certain Assembly Ball at Richmond (there used to be Assembly Balls at most places then), where Estella had outshone all other beauties, this blundering Drummle so hung about her, and with so much toleration on her part, that I resolved to speak to her concerning him. I took the next opportunity: which was when she was waiting for Mrs. Brandley to take her home, and was sitting apart among some flowers, ready to go. I was with her, for I almost always accompanied them to and from such places.
"Are you tired, Estella?"
"Rather, Pip."
"You should be."
"Say rather, I should not be; for I have my letter to Satis House to write, before I go to sleep."
"Recounting to-night's triumph?" said I. "Surely a very poor one, Estella."
"What do you mean? I didn't know there had been any."
"Estella," said I, "do look at that fellow in the corner yonder, who is looking over here at us."
"Why should I look at him?" returned Estella, with her eyes on me instead. "What is there in that fellow in the corner yonder – to use your words – that I need look at?"
"Indeed, that is the very question I want to ask you," said I. "For he has been hovering about you all night."
"Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures," replied Estella, with a glance towards him, "hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?"
"No," I returned; "but cannot the Estella help it?"
"Well!" said she, laughing, after a moment, "perhaps. Yes. Anything you like."
"But, Estella, do hear me speak. It makes me wretched that you should encourage a man so generally despised as Drummle. You know he is despised."
"Well?" said she.
"You know he is as ungainly within, as without. A deficient, ill-tempered, lowering, stupid fellow."
"Well?" said she.
"You know he has nothing to recommend him but money, and a ridiculous roll of addle-headed predecessors; now, don't you?"
"Well?" said she again; and each time she said it, she opened her lovely eyes the wider.
To overcome the difficulty of getting past that monosyllable, I took it from her, and said, repeating it with emphasis, "Well! Then, that is why it makes me wretched."
Now, if I could have believed that she favored Drummle with any idea of making me – me – wretched, I should have been in better heart about it; but in that habitual way of hers, she put me so entirely out of the question, that I could believe nothing of the kind.
"Pip," said Estella, casting her glance over the room, "don't be foolish about its effect on you. It may have its effect on others, and may be meant to have. It's not worth discussing."
"Yes it is," said I, "because I cannot bear that people should say, 'she throws away her graces and attractions on a mere boor, the lowest in the crowd.'"
"I can bear it," said Estella.
"Oh! Don't be so proud, Estella, and so inflexible."
"Calls me proud and inflexible in this breath!" said Estella, opening her hands. "And in his last breath reproached me for stooping to a boor!"
"There is no doubt you do," said I, something hurriedly, "for I have seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as you never give to – me."
"Do you want me then," said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and serious, if not angry, look, "to deceive and entrap you?"
"Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?"
"Yes, and many others – all of them but you. Here is Mrs. Brandley. I'll say no more."
XXX
Another earnest warning from Marian's proud but world-weary Estella, another instance of Pip disregarding it in his desperation to win the heart she did not have. Harold shook his head in disgust. "This is not going to end well at all." Which he knew already, but for the first time, he felt almost as sorry for Estella as he did for Pip.
"No," Marian sighed. "Not well at all."
She turned to chapter 44.
XXX
"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 practice 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.
XXX
Although Estella may have been composed – if perplexed and frustrated by the fierce emotions she could not understand – Marian was no longer so perfectly coifed and arranged by the time Harold came to the end of Pip's frantic, wholehearted speech. They had been reading together for over an hour, and both the heat and exertion had taken their toll. The librarian's cheeks were rosy and perspiration gleamed on her forehead. Little curls had escaped from her chignon, her pink silk skirts were hopelessly creased from prolonged sitting – even the sprightly clusters of artificial roses on her shoulders had drooped a bit. But as she looked expectantly at him, all he could think of was that he had never seen her more beautiful.
"Have I convinced you, or would you like to read when they meet again after Estella is widowed?" Marian asked, beaming at him.
She had won him over in more ways than one – and she knew it – but if he admitted anything, he'd no longer have such a good excuse to sit so close to her, and he wasn't ready to give up this tantalizing proximity just yet.
"I think I need a refresher on the ending," he said with a grin, his arm tightening around her waist.
With an indulgent smile, Marian leaned into his embrace and opened to chapter 59.
XXX
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.
XXX
"Have you ever considered a career in the theater, my dear little librarian?" Harold asked after she had closed the book and laid it aside. "You've thoroughly convinced me there's far more in Estella's heart than I had ever considered."
The corners of Marian's lips quirked up in a smirk that was slightly bitter. "As if the River City-ziens weren't already suspicious enough that I was a scarlet woman? My performing on stage would have confirmed it." She regarded Harold with a long look that was both piercing and vulnerable. "Did you not think me heartless, when we first met?"
Harold was about to vehemently deny this, but then he remembered gleefully reveling in the ladies' gossip that the frosty librarian was the sadder but wiser type of girl he preferred, as well as the dream he'd had of her coldly and calculatedly seducing him in his hotel room after the fireworks display in Madison Picnic Park.
"I was a challenge to you," Marian said, matter-of-factly and without rancor. But still, it stung. He'd misjudged her just as badly as everyone else in town had. And now, thanks to some merciful fortune, fate or deity, he'd been given a second chance, right on the same porch where she'd once angrily denounced him – and quite rightfully – for being nothing more than a showman and a meddler.
"I thoroughly misunderstood you," he acknowledged, taking her hands in his. Lifting her hand to her heart, he laid it flat and covered it with his own. Even with her slim hand beneath his, he could feel the excited pounding, and his own heart sped up to match the frenzied pace. "You have the warmest and most giving heart of anyone, man or woman, that I've ever known, and I was a fool not to see this until it was almost too late."
She smiled sadly. "Well, I learned to be very good at keeping everyone at a distance."
"Like Estella," he confirmed. He would never read Great Expectations – or women – in the same way again.
They were speaking nearly in whispers by now, as there wasn't any noise whatsoever coming from the house – Mrs. Paroo was, no doubt, standing near the kitchen windows in rapt attention.
On the night the librarian had accidentally-on-purpose given him the de Parny poem Le Baiser, Harold had told her he needed words. Now, they'd exchanged so many words that Marian Paroo sat bare before him, her reserve melted away. Somehow, simply sitting there and reading about other people – fictional ones, at that! – had enmeshed the two of them in a tête-à-tête that managed to be more intimate than any heated embrace he'd ever known. Although Harold had proven himself worthy of his Estella by becoming a bonafide music professor, he couldn't fully enjoy this moment, as he couldn't help thinking, guiltily, of how little he'd revealed of his own heart in return. There are a lot of things you don't know about me, he'd said so cavalierly that night at the footbridge, when confessions were easy because he thought he'd have to leave her forever afterward. At the time, she'd told him she wasn't asking. Now, he had the feeling if he said that again, she'd start asking. And the love in her eyes would turn to disgust when he answered. His grip on her hands tightened. He couldn't lose this. He couldn't lose her.
Harold ought to have kissed her. Instead, he found himself saying, "I never quite understood what made you fall in love with a scoundrel like me. I still don't."
Marian laid her free hand over his heart. "You underrate what your own heart has to give, Harold."
And then he did kiss her, deeply and passionately, without any misgivings or reservations that they were in danger of going too far, too fast. Because for once, it wasn't his baser instincts urging him on, but the part of his heart that sang whenever the librarian made him genuinely feel like the respectable, decent and upright man he had always pretended at and was now trying so desperately hard to be.
Unfortunately, even the laxest of chaperones had their limits. After an interval that felt far too short to Harold, but was probably well beyond what even the most eager mother-in-law-to-be would countenance, Mrs. Paroo interrupted their not-talking by coming out to hang laundry. Fortunately, her movements were loud enough that by the time she came into view, the music professor and librarian had moved apart to a perfectly respectable distance.
"Did you enjoy your book, my dears?" she asked them with a mother's knowing grin.
Harold shifted forward to take the focus off Marian's furious blushing beside him, and gave Mrs. Paroo his most jaunty, winning smile in return.
"Every word."
XXX
Excerpts are from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, as transcribed by the Literature Project.