第122章

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, illtempered, 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 favoured 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.'

And now that I have given the one chapter to the theme that so filled my heart, and so often made it ache and ache again, I pass on, unhindered, to the event that had impended over me longer yet; the event that had begun to be prepared for, before I knew that the world held Estella, and in the days when her baby intelligence was receiving its first distortions from Miss Havisham's wasting hands.

In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the miles of hollow to the great iron ring. All being made ready with much labour, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that tended to the end, had been accomplished; and in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me.