The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits
Page 40
It was a cold blustery evening. The cold collation spread on a white cloth amid tinkling crystal frowned upon by curtainless windows which also seemed to shiver, served to remind me uncomfortably of Miss Havisham’s wedding feast in its heyday before the spiders and mice moved in. The glazed cold meats, chicken, ham, turkey and lobsters had a funereal appearance and the banquet before us resembled more a lying-in-state than an occasion of cheerful social refreshment. As for the heavily decorated desserts, the ices and jellies, there was a toothache in every bite.
“Permit me to help you to a little roast fowl. Some lobster – no?”
Armed with our plates, we retired to a sofa overhung by indoor plants that the nervous diner might have been pardoned for considering with great caution, paying due attention to their fat glossy leaves and suspiciously predatory looks.
Having seated me speedily, Mr Drummle began to eat with such uncommon interest and vigour that again I was overwhelmed by the bleak despair of my own insignificance. How to compete, how to come between a man and his food? That small matter was also absent from my guardian’s curriculum, a salutary warning that breakers of hearts lost their powers when confronted with the brute needs of the male stomach.
Believing all was lost, my pride was saved by the arrival of a young gentleman, extremely thin of face, body and hair who had been casting admiring glances in my direction all evening. Now he hovered, plate in hand.
“Do please join us.” While I proceeded to devote my attentions to the newcomer, rasping sounds of cutlery were the sole sounds of life from Mr Drummle’s third of the sofa, scraping his plate with a vigour and determination that threatened the destruction of its pattern of roses. Satisfied that no morsel had escaped him, a look of thunder had descended upon his brow. Could he possibly be jealous or was it merely indigestion?
After the food came the dancing. Like many big solid men, Bentley Drummle was light upon his feet, giving the quadrille his undivided attention. Indeed I might have been a statue he held for all the attention he paid me.
The guests departed. I was acutely aware of failure, expecting reproach, but instead Mrs Brandley gushed over me. “Mr Drummle has asked to be permitted to call upon you.”
At our next meeting, my sharpened senses became aware of an atmosphere subtly changed as Drummle ushered me into the garden. A pale moon had arisen above the trees and an owl’s hoot touched the scene with melancholy. As he towered above me, untouched by moonlight his eyes became black hollows in a face spectral and sinister. I must confess that I shivered and not entirely from cold when he ran a finger down my cheek, tracing it slowly from eyebrow to jaw then cupping his hand around my chin.
“Estella. It means little star and fits you to perfection, my dear.”
My eyes snapped closed as his lips, very thick lips, warm and sensuous in such a stern unyielding face, gently brushed my own.
“You are a very exquisite creature. And I mean to have you. Remember that.”
This remark, which set so many carillons of joy ringing in my poor head, abruptly ended as Mrs Brandley and the rest of the party erupted into the garden.
Drummle refused to be sociable and took his departure upon the thinnest of excuses while I prepared for bed in a positive haze of delight, telling myself that one day soon I should be Lady Drummle, living in a castle, and it had all been so terribly, terribly easy.
A week passed without further communication and sadly I decided that he had either been merely flirting or had imbibed too much wine when I received a letter from my guardian.
The words stood out: “He has asked that he be allowed to address you with marriage in mind. As you are aware he stands to inherit when his grandfather, Sir Hammond Drummle, dies. I urge you, dearest child to accept his proposal promptly, for I have selfishly kept you by me too long.”
Then the warning note: “I do not expect, if you paid due heed to my instruction, that you are in the slightest danger of giving your heart to Drummle, or to any other man. I further entreat that you continue to be guided by one who has suffered greatly and bearing in mind your early training and expensive education, remember that successful marriages are based not upon emotions of sentiment but upon Property and the establishment of the Family. Come and visit me as soon as you can. Your affectionate Mother-by-adoption, Alicia Havisham.”
At our next meeting which I expected to be extremely romantic, Bentley informed me that arrangements for my dowry were already in the hands of Mr Jaggers. A brief visit, and preparing to leave he turned and said that I was to inform Pip that his visits to Mrs Brandley’s cease immediately.
Pip was a frequent visitor, my true friend, the one man who loved me always, while the lips of Bentley Drummle who wanted me for his wife remained sealed upon that subject. As yet he had not uttered one syllable that might be interpreted as a declaration of undying love and I knew that Miss Havisham’s instructions were wise. I was not in the least danger of loving Bentley Drummle.
I did a simple test. If I never saw him again my pride would be hurt, but if I never saw Pip again, the heart I was supposed not to possess would ache – and ache, for ever. Ah Estella, there lay the answer, but fool that I was I did not listen or learn until too late the dread path I had chosen.
Jolly should have taken me to Satis House for the last time. She would have cheerfully laid down her life for me, although I had already decided to discard her. Bentley insisted on a French maid, so Jolly was to be abandoned at Richmond along with my outworn clothes and other possessions too shabby for my new life in Drummle Towers.
However, Miss Havisham had elected Pip to escort me, which admirably suited her sly purpose of throwing him into my society on every possible occasion. Now selfishly concerned that the bride’s side of the church would be empty, I had no male relative to give me away and Bentley would not allow Pip’s presence, although I knew that had I asked, Pip would have come to please me, despite the agony of seeing me lost forever as another’s bride.
As we entered Satis House my mother-by-adoption awaited. She hugged and kissed me eagerly, not forgetting to turn to Pip and ask as always: “And how does she use you?”
I saw too late the reason for her unholy glee. She was about to torture Pip with the knowledge that Estella had broken his heart: the coup de grâce my marriage to Bentley Drummle. Pip’s role in her diabolical drama was at an end and he too, like Jolly, could be discarded.
Poor Pip. I knew that he had never entertained a moment’s doubt that his benefactor was Miss Havisham. The vital link was Mr Jaggers, his guardian, and until she had approved Drummle’s proposal, both Pip and I had imagined that when he came of age she would reveal her identity and that my hand in marriage would be offered, Pip’s just reward for enduring my small cruelties and torments so nobly over the years.
Now I was painfully aware that in those ghostly upstairs rooms where nothing changed, today she could not get close enough to me. As I tried in vain to detach myself from the unpleasantness of this smothering affection, she demanded: “Are you tired of me?”
“Only a little tired of myself.” I did not exaggerate. At that moment, for the first time, I was observing my true character reflected in all its disagreeable intensity and, ashamed of the emptiness of the role I had played throughout the years, I would be glad to leave Satis House for ever.
Angered, Miss Havisham struck her stick on the floor. “Cold, cold heart!”
This was too much. “You reproach me for being cold. I who am what you have made me.”
Pip stood watching us without a word. God only knew what his thoughts could have been.
“Look at her, so hard and thankless on this hearth where she was raised. Here I took her to this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its wound. Here I have lavished years of tenderness upon her.”
“When have you found me false to your teaching?” I reminded her. “Who praised me when I learned my lessons?”
Suddenly I was aware of Pip’s silent presence.
“It is quite true.”
Another pause while he sought for words. “You cannot love him, Estella. You would never marry him? Such a mean brute, to fling yourself away on – a mean and stupid brute.”
“That he is not. He is a fine, cultured gentleman. His family is noble, well bred.” And conscious of my guardian’s hand strongly on my arm, I said miserably: “Why not tell you the truth? I am going to be married to him.”
Pip dropped his face into his hands but not before I had glimpsed his expression, like a man condemned to the scaffold. Even my mother-by-adoption stirred uneasily.
“Estella, I beg you not to allow Miss Havisham to lead you into this fatal step. Put me aside for ever 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 many far better men who admire you and to those who truly love you. Take, for God’s sake, one of them and I can bear it for your sake.”
My compassion was quickly usurped by anger at his unjust remarks.
“Why do you hate him so?” I asked, knowing only too well. “What has he ever done to you, other than offer for my hand?”
For a moment he regarded me tight-lipped, silent. “Very well. He is an unmerciful bully to those smaller and less fortunate than himself. And dishonest, for I have seen him blatantly cheating at cards.”
I lowered my head suppressing a smile.
“And why does that amuse you?” he demanded sharply.
“Gentle folk have to keep the lower orders in their place,” I said sternly, for I had been encouraged to bully tradespeople as well as the unfortunate Jolly. “Besides, everyone cheats at cards,” I added, for, in order to maintain my superiority over Pip, I had been doing so since our first game in Satis House.
Pip shook his head. There followed a catalogue of small meannesses and dishonest actions as observed by his fellow pupils which I interrupted by regarding him impatiently. “The preparations for our marriage are being made. The life I have led has few charms for me and I am willing enough to change it, although I doubt I shall be a blessing to Mr Drummle.”
“Oh, Estella, Estella. May God bless you and forgive you.”
Unable to face the anguish in his voice, I bowed my head. When I looked up, the door had closed. He had gone from my life.
My guardian did not bother to gloat either. She sat with her hand covering her heart as if it meant to proclaim its existence and deny the falsity of her play acting.
“What have I done? What have I done?” she whispered. “He held up a looking glass and showed me what I once suffered. Until this moment, I did not recognize how I had wronged him – and you, dearest child. Can you ever forgive me?”
I assured her of my forgiveness. My marriage would go ahead. But the writing was already on the wall for I did not love Bentley Drummle, except in the mercenary way of what he could provide for me.
All too soon, I was to learn the folly and the dangers of the role I had chosen. To live unhappily ever after with a man who wanted only my dowry and a child I was unable to provide would bring a new and sinister meaning to “until death do us part”.
It was soon evident on our honeymoon in Paris when he disappeared for hours on end and returned smelling of a woman’s cheap perfume. By the time we took up residence in Drummle Towers some forty miles from Richmond, I had learned that it was the fate of Miss Havisham’s breaker-of-hearts to be broken as ruthlessly as the china ornaments which he hurled to the floor in his fiendish rages, increasingly frequent on certain days each month when it was obvious that his gross attempts at paternity were once more to be frustrated.
When at last I became pregnant, any idea I had that this would make him love me was soon proved wrong. As the months passed so did my longing for my childhood become an obsession. I asked that Jolly be sent for; I longed to make amends for the shabby way I had treated her, but this request was refused. The French maid, impersonal but efficient, had been chosen by Bentley’s mother, whose ambition that he should marry his cousin Ruth, her devoted companion, had also been thwarted. I was soon a prisoner in Drummle Towers, at the mercy of two women who hated me and about whom Bentley would not listen to one word of criticism.
Harm me? It was my imagination, he declared. Why should they do that? This was nonsense, all part of my condition.
Out of my misery and loneliness grew a desperate yearning for my mother-by-adoption. Perhaps I had a premonition that I was never to see her again in this life for, as winter drew its curtains and snow isolated us from the world beyond the parkland, Herbert Pocket, Pip’s close friend brought us the news of Miss Havisham’s death.
As she dozed in her chair, a spark from the fire touched the skirt of her bridal gown, so old and dry it blazed like a tinder box. Had Pip not still been on the premises after one of his visits, then the whole of Satis House would have been a blazing inferno. As it was, he had been severely burned attempting to rescue her. Added to this tragedy, Pip had learned that his benefactor upon whom he had such great expectations was naught but a scoundrel in trouble with the law.
Mr Jaggers would be in touch, for I had inherited Satis House. A bitter inheritance indeed, for I was unable to go to my guardian’s funeral and Bentley represented me, his account a mere chronicle of those present. He did not remember seeing Pip
Soon the weeks I had been counting turned into days and on one such although I knew that women suffered in childbirth, expecting extreme but bearable discomfort, I was unprepared for the onslaught of such pain followed by searing agony that tore my body apart and I prayed only to die – and quickly.
At the end of many hours, my son was born and, exhausted, I slept.
When I awoke Bentley was at my bedside. Watching him jubilant with delight with his son in his arms, I tried not to remember how during that long and hideous labour his main concern had been with Doctor Bidwell, shouting, “The child, for God’s sake, tell me about the child. Surely the child will live. You must save the child. At all costs.”
It seemed that in his eyes, I had become a mere vessel to produce an heir to Drummle. Memory prompted no husbandly comfort or concern for the wife who almost died giving him a son. All his attentions were centred upon “young Hammond” and as the sound of drunken noisy celebration drifted upstairs from where he caroused with his gambling cronies, I realized that, my purpose served, I might no longer have existed and I had my first terrible suspicions that my fate lay in the hands of the two women who, curiosity satisfied, found no reason to sit at my bedside.
Bentley appeared only as a hovering shadow anxiously gazing into the cot or as host to a group of grinning companions, staggering in to hiccup their chorus of admiration for his son and heir before dragging him back to the gaming table where he was losing all that remained of the dowry I had brought him.
Only his old grandfather Sir Hammond, whom he longed to see laid in his grave, was my constant visitor. Propped up in a chair carried between two servants, he visited me faithfully. Holding my hand, he told me how proud I had made him, that I was a grand little filly and scarcely even glanced at his new great-grandson in his befrilled cot.
But all was not well. Suddenly I felt desperately ill, sick and fevered. The thought that I was being poisoned slipped into my dreams. The doctor summoned came to my bedside. I was unable to feed Hammond who cried hour upon hour while I drifted, delirious and far from the world, towards the gates beyond which there was no more pain. When at last I regained strength enough to open my eyes it was to find both the doctor and Bentley staring into Hammond’s cot.
“The child is dead.”
Those were the words that brought me back to life, to the agony of living after the cool serenity of dying.
“I do not believe you. It is not true – it cannot be true,” Bentley was shouting. “You insane old devil, it is all your f
ault. I shall have the law on you for neglect.”
“Control yourself, sir,” said the doctor. “Such behaviour will not bring the child back again. I beg you find solace in the fact that your wife still lives. You must concentrate all your energies on seeing her restored to health – consider yourself extremely fortunate that you have not lost them both—”
Bentley pointed down at me. “It is her fault that my son died. She would not feed him.”
“I advise you to watch your words, Mr Drummle,” said the doctor angrily. “That she could not feed him was through no fault of her own. I well understand your grief, but your wife is still gravely ill—”
Bentley threw off his restraining arm, his brooding gaze on me. “Presuming that she does recover, how soon will she be ready to bear another child?”
Even the doctor was a little taken aback by this heartless rejoinder. Smiling apologetically at me, he said: “Mrs Drummle is young and in God’s good time, I dare say she will present you with many strong healthy sons and daughters.”
My tears were a river of endless grief for little Hammond while Bentley proceeded to be inebriated at luncheon and incapable at dinner, rarely finishing a meal without some calamity of broken dish or spilt wine or shouting drunken abuse, calmly received by his mother and cousin whose reproachful looks said that it was all my fault. His inheritance on the eagerly awaited death of his grandfather, my only friend at Drummle, failed to cheer him and as the months passed I reached a stage of being grateful when the servants put him to bed. Love was a stranger between us and even trying to understand, I found it hard to forgive his punishment, his brutality on those melancholy occasions each month when I was forced to confirm that his gross and humiliating attempts to father another son had again been unsuccessful.
Such was the pattern of our lives when, having long given up hope, to my astonishment I discovered that I was again pregnant. Only optimism bordering on idiocy might have expected news of my interesting condition to improve my husband’s irascible and terrifying behaviour, his constant insobriety and physical abuse. Bruises which I could seldom conceal from the scrutiny and satisfaction of his mother and cousin.