MR PUMBLECHOOK'S premises in the High-street of the market
town, were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of a
corn-chandler and seedsman should be. It appeared to me that he must be a very
happy man indeed, to have so many little drawers in his shop; and I wondered
when I peeped into one or two on the lower tiers, and saw the tied-up brown
paper packets inside, whether the flower-seeds and bulbs ever wanted of a fine
day to break out of those jails, and bloom.
It was in the early morning after my arrival that I entertained this
speculation. On the previous night, I had been sent straight to bed in an attic
with a sloping roof, which was so low in the corner where the bedstead was, that
I calculated the tiles as being within a foot of my eyebrows. In the same early
morning, I discovered a singular affinity between seeds and corduroys. Mr
Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did his shopman; and somehow, there was a
general air and flavour about the corduroys, so much in the nature of seeds, and
a general air and flavour about the seeds, so much in the nature of corduroys,
that I hardly knew which was which. The same opportunity served me for noticing
that Mr Pumblechook appeared to conduct his business by looking across the
street at the saddler, who appeared to transact his business by keeping his eye
on the coach-maker, who appeared to get on in life by putting his hands in his
pockets and contemplating the baker, who in his turn folded his arms and stared
at the grocer, who stood at his door and yawned at the chemist. The watch-maker,
always poring over a little desk with a magnifying glass at his eye, and always
inspected by a group of smock-frocks poring over him through the glass of his
shop-window, seemed to be about the only person in the High-street whose trade
engaged his attention.
Mr Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o'clock in the parlour behind the
shop, while the shopman took his mug of tea and hunch of bread-and-butter on a
sack of peas in the front premises. I considered Mr Pumblechook wretched
company. Besides being possessed by my sister's idea that a mortifying and
penitential character ought to be imparted to my diet - besides giving me as
much crumb as possible in combination with as little butter, and putting such a
quantity of warm water into my milk that it would have been more candid to have
left the milk out altogether - his conversation consisted of nothing but
arithmetic. On my politely bidding him Good morning, he said, pompously, `Seven
times nine, boy?' And how should I be able to answer, dodged in that way, in a
strange place, on an empty stomach! I was hungry, but before I had swallowed a
morsel, he began a running sum that lasted all through the breakfast. `Seven?'
`And four?' `And eight?' `And six?' `And two?' `And ten?' And so on. And after
each figure was disposed of, it was as much as I could do to get a bite or a
sup, before the next came; while he sat at his ease guessing nothing, and eating
bacon and hot roll, in (if I may be allowed the expression) a gorging and
gormandising manner.
For such reasons I was very glad when ten o'clock came and we started for
Miss Havisham's; though I was not at all at my ease regarding the manner in
which I should acquit myself under that lady's roof. Within a quarter of an hour
we came to Miss Havisham's house, which was of old brick, and dismal, and had a
great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up; of those
that remained, all the lower were rustily barred. There was a court-yard in
front, and that was barred; so, we had to wait, after ringing the bell, until
some one should come to open it. While we waited at the gate, I peeped in (even
then Mr Pumblechook said, `And fourteen?' but I pretended not to hear him), and
saw that at the side of house there was a large brewery. No brewing was going on
in it, and none seemed to have gone on for a long long time.
A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded `What name?' To which my
conductor replied, `Pumblechook.' The voice returned, `Quite right,' and the
window was shut again, and a young lady came across the court-yard, with keys in
her hand.
`This,' said Mr Pumblechook, `is Pip.'
`This is Pip, is it?' returned the young lady, who was very pretty and seemed
very proud; `come in, Pip.'
Mr Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him with the gate.
`Oh!' she said. `Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?'
`If Miss Havisham wished to see me,' returned Mr Pumblechook, discomfited.
`Ah!' said the girl; `but you see she don't.'
She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr
Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not protest. But he
eyed me severely - as if I had done anything to him! - and departed with the
words reproachfully delivered: `Boy! Let your behaviour here be a credit unto
them which brought you up by hand!' I was not free from apprehension that he
would come back to propound through the gate, `And sixteen?' But he didn't.
My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the court-yard. It
was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every crevice. The brewery
buildings had a little lane of communication with it, and the wooden gates of
that lane stood open, and all the brewery beyond, stood open, away to the high
enclosing wall; and all was empty and disused. The cold wind seemed to blow
colder there, than outside the gate; and it made a shrill noise in howling in
and out at the open sides of the brewery, like the noise of wind in the rigging
of a ship at sea.
She saw me looking at it, and she said, `You could drink without hurt all the
strong beer that's brewed there now, boy.'
`I should think I could, miss' said I, in a shy way.
`Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn out sour, boy; don't
you think so?'
`It looks like it, miss.'
`Not that anybody means to try,' she added, `for that's all done with, and
the place will stand as idle as it is, till it falls. As to strong beer, there's
enough of it in the cellars already, to drown the Manor House.'
`Is that the name of this house, miss?'
`One of its names, boy.'
`It has more than one, then, miss?'
`One more. Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
all three - or all one to me - for enough.'
`Enough House,' said I; `that's a curious name, miss.'
`Yes,' she replied; `but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it was
given, that whoever had this house, could want nothing else. They must have been
easily satisfied in those days, I should think. But don't loiter, boy.'
Though she called me `boy' so often, and with a carelessness that was far
from complimentary, she was of about my own age. She seemed much older than I,
of course, being a girl, and beautiful and self-possessed; and she was an
scornful of me as if she had been one-and-twenty, and a queen.
We went into the house by a side door - the great front entrance had two
chains across it outside - and the first thing I noticed was, that the passages
were all dark, and that she had left a candle burning there. She took it up, and
we went through more passages and up a staircase, and still it was all dark, and
only the candle lighted us.
At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, `Go in.'
I answered, more in shyness than politeness, `After you, miss.'
To this, she returned: `Don't be ridiculous, boy; I am not going in.' And
scornfully walked away, and - what was worse - took the candle with her.
This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. However, the only thing
to be done being to knock at the door, I knocked, and was told from within to
enter. I entered, therefore, and found myself in a pretty large room, well
lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it. It was a
dressing-room, as I supposed from the furniture, though much of it was of forms
and uses then quite unknown to me. But prominent in it was a draped table with a
gilded looking-glass, and that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady's
dressing-table.
Whether I should have made out this object so soon, if there had been no fine
lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the
table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever
seen, or shall ever see.
She was dressed in rich materials - satins, and lace, and silks - all of
white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long while veil dependent from her
hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some
bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay
sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and
half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing,
for she had but one shoe on - the other was on the table near her hand - her
veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace
for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves,
and some flowers, and a prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the
looking-glass.
It was not in the first few moments the I saw all these things, though I saw
more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. But, I saw that
everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and
had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the
bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no
brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had
been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon
which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to
see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible
personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh
churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out
of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have
dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could.
`Who is it?' said the lady at the table.
`Pip, ma'am.'
`Pip?'
`Mr Pumblechook's boy, ma'am. Come - to play.'
`Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.'
It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of the
surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty
minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to
nine.
`Look at me,' said Miss Havisham. `You are not afraid of a woman who has
never seen the sun since you were born?'
I regard to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie
comprehended in the answer `No.'
`Do you know what I touch here?' she said, laying her hands, one upon the
other, on her left side.
`Yes, ma'am.' (It made me think of the young man.)
`What do I touch?'
`Your heart.'
`Broken!'
She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and with a
weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards, she kept her hands there
for a little while, and slowly took them away as if they were heavy.
`I am tired,' said Miss Havisham. `I want diversion, and I have done with men
and women. Play.'
I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that she could
hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything in the wide world more
difficult to be done under the circumstances.
`I sometimes have sick fancies,' she went on, `and I have a sick fancy that I
want to see some play. There there!' with an impatient movement of the fingers
of her right hand; `play, play, play!'
For a moment, with the fear of my sister's working me before my eyes, I had a
desperate idea of starting round the room in the assumed character of Mr
Pumblechook's chaise-cart. But, I felt myself so unequal to the performance that
I gave it up, and stood looking at Miss Havisham in what I suppose she took for
a dogged manner, inasmuch as she said, when we had taken a good look at each
other:
`Are you sullen and obstinate?'
`No, ma'am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can't play just now. If
you complain of me I shall get into trouble with my sister, so I would do it if
I could; but it's so new here, and so strange, and so fine - and melancholy--' I
stopped, fearing I might say too much, or had already said it, and we took
another look at each other.
Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, and looked at the dress
she wore, and at the dressing-table, and finally at herself in the
looking-glass.
`So new to him,' she muttered, `so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar
to me; so melancholy to both of us! Call Estella.'
As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I thought she was
still talking to herself, and kept quiet.
`Call Estella,' she repeated, flashing a look at me. `You can do that. Call
Estella. At the door.'
To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown house, bawling
Estella to a scornful young lady neither visible nor responsive, and feeling it
a dreadful liberty so to roar out her name, was almost as bad as playing to
order. But, she answered at last, and her light came along the dark passage like
a star.
Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took up a jewel from the table,
and tried its effect upon her fair young bosom and against her pretty brown
hair. `Your own, one day, my dear, and you will use it well. Let me see you play
cards with this boy.'
`With this boy? Why, he is a common labouring-boy!'
I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer - only it seemed so unlikely -
`Well? You can break his heart.'
`What do you play, boy?' asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain.
`Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss.'
`Beggar him,' said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.
It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped,
like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put
down the jewel exactly on the spot form which she had taken it up. As Estella
dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe
upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot
from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once
white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything,
this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered
bridal dress on the collapsed from could have looked so like grave-clothes, or
the long veil so like a shroud.
So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and trimmings
on her bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing then, of the
discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, which
fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought
since, that she must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day
would have struck her to dust.
`He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!' said Estella with disdain, before our
first game was out. `And what coarse hands he has!And what thick boots!'
I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to
consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that
it became infectious, and I caught it.
She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I knew
she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for a stupid,
clumsy labouring-boy.
`You say nothing of her,' remarked Miss Havisham to me, as she looked on.
`She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What do you think
of her?'
`I don't like to say,' I stammered.
`Tell me in my ear,' said Miss Havisham, bending down.
`I think she is very proud,' I replied, in a whisper.
`Anything else?'
`I think she is very pretty.'
`Anything else?'
`I think she is very insulting.' (She was looking at me then with a look of
supreme aversion.)
`Anything else?'
`I think I should like to go home.'
`And never see her again, though she is so pretty?'
`I am not sure that I shouldn't like to see her again, but I should like to
go home now.'
`You shall go soon,' said Miss Havisham, aloud. `Play the game out.'
Saving for the one weird smile at first, I should have felt almost sure that
Miss Havisham's face could not smile. It had dropped into a watchful and
brooding expression - most likely when all the things about her had become
transfixed - and it looked as if nothing could ever lift it up again. Her chest
had dropped, so that she stooped; and her voice had dropped, so that she spoke
low, and with a dead lull upon her; altogether, she had the appearance of having
dropped, body and soul, within and without, under the weight of a crushing blow.
I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. She threw the
cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if she despised them for
having been won of me.
`When shall I have you here again?' said miss Havisham. `Let me think.'
I was beginning to remind her that to-day was Wednesday, when she checked me
with her former impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand.
`There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I know nothing of weeks of
the year. Come again after six days. You hear?'
`Yes, ma'am.'
`Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and let him roam and
look about him while he eats. Go, Pip.'
I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up, and she stood it
in the place where we had found it. Until she opened the side entrance, I had
fancied, without thinking about it, that it must necessarily be night-time. The
rush of the daylight quite confounded me, and made me feel as if I had been in
the candlelight of the strange room many hours.
`You are to wait here, you boy,' said Estella; and disappeared and closed the
door.
I took the opportunity of being alone in the court-yard, to look at my coarse
hands and my common boots. My opinion of those accessories was not favourable.
They had never troubled me before, but they troubled me now, as vulgar
appendages. I determined to ask Joe why he had ever taught me to call those
picture-cards, Jacks, which ought to be called knaves. I wished Joe had been
rather more genteelly brought up, and then I should have been so too.
She came back, with some bread and meat and a little mug of beer. She put the
mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the bread and meat without
looking at me, as insolently as if I were a dog in disgrace. I was so
humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry - I cannot hit upon the right
name for the smart - God knows what its name was - that tears started to my
eyes. The moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me with a quick delight
in having been the cause of them. This gave me power to keep them back and to
look at her: so, she gave a contemptuous toss - but with a sense, I thought, of
having made too sure that I was so wounded - and left me.
But, when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide my face in, and
got behind one of the gates in the brewery-lane, and leaned my sleeve against
the wall there, and leaned my forehead on it and cried. As I cried, I kicked the
wall, and took a hard twist at my hair; so bitter were my feelings, and so sharp
was the smart without a name, that needed counteraction.
My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which
children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so
finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small
injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its
world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to
scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my
babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I
could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust
to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand,
gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments,
disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed
this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and
unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and
very sensitive.
I got rid of my injured feelings for the time, by kicking them into the
brewery wall, and twisting them out of my hair, and then I smoothed my face with
my sleeve, and came from behind the gate. The bread and meat were acceptable,
and the beer was warming and tingling, and I was soon in spirits to look about
me.
To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-house in the
brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked on its pole by some high wind, and
would have made the pigeons think themselves at sea, if there had been any
pigeons there to be rocked by it. But, there were no pigeons in the dove-cot, no
horses in the stable, no pigs in the sty, no malt in the store-house, no smells
of grains and beer in the copper or the vat. All the uses and scents of the
brewery might have evaporated with its last reek of smoke. In a by-yard, there
was a wilderness of empty casks, which had a certain sour remembrance of better
days lingering about them; but it was too sour to be accepted as a sample of the
beer that was gone - and in this respect I remember those recluses as being like
most others.
Behind the furthest end of the brewery, was a rank garden with an old wall:
not so high but that I could struggle up and hold on long enough to look over
it, and see that the rank garden was the garden of the house, and that it was
overgrown with tangled weeds, but that there was a track upon the green and
yellow paths, as if some one sometimes walked there, and that Estella was
walking away from me even then. But she seemed to be everywhere. For, when I
yielded to the temptation presented by the casks, and began to walk on them. I
saw her walking on them at the end of the yard of casks. She had her back
towards me, and held her pretty brown hair spread out in her two hands, and
never looked round, and passed out of my view directly. So, in the brewery
itself - by which I mean the large paved lofty place in which they used to make
the beer, and where the brewing utensils still were. When I first went into it,
and, rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near the door looking about me, I saw
her pass among the extinguished fires, and ascend some light iron stairs, and go
out by a gallery high overhead, as if she were going out into the sky.
It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange thing happened to my
fancy. I thought it a strange thing then, and I thought it a stranger thing long
afterwards. I turned my eyes - a little dimmed by looking up at the frosty light
- towards a great wooden beam in a low nook of the building near me on my right
hand, and I saw a figure hanging there by the neck. A figure all in yellow
white, with but one shoe to the feet; and it hung so, that I could see that the
faded trimmings of the dress were like earthy paper, and that the face was Miss
Havisham's, with a movement going over the whole countenance as if she were
trying to call to me. In the terror of seeing the figure, and in the terror of
being certain that it had not been there a moment before, I at first ran from
it, and then ran towards it. And my terror was greatest of all, when I found no
figure there.
Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, the sight of people
passing beyond the bars of the court-yard gate, and the reviving influence of
the rest of the bread and meat and beer, would have brought me round. Even with
those aids, I might not have come to myself as soon as I did, but that I saw
Estella approaching with the keys, to let me out. She would have some fair
reason for looking down upon me, I thought, if she saw me frightened; and she
should have no fair reason.
She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if she rejoiced that my
hands were so coarse and my boots were so thick, and she opened the gate, and
stood holding it. I was passing out without looking at her, when she touched me
with a taunting hand.
`Why don't you cry?'
`Because I don't want to.'
`You do,' said she. `You have been crying till you are half blind, and you
are near crying again now.'
She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the gate upon me. I
went straight to Mr Pumblechook's, and was immensely relieved to find him not at
home. So, leaving word with the shopman on what day I was wanted at Miss
Havisham's again, I set off on the four-mile walk to our forge; pondering, as I
went along, on all I had seen, and deeply revolving that I was a common
labouring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick; that I had
fallen into a despicable habit of calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more
ignorant than I had considered myself last night, and generally that I was in a
low-lived bad way
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