AT the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham's, and my
hesitating ring at the gate brought out Estella. She locked it after admitting
me, as she had done before, and again preceded me into the dark passage where
her candle stood. She took no notice of me until she had the candle in her hand,
when she looked over her shoulder, superciliously saying, `You are to come this
way today,' and took me to quite another part of the house.
The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the whole square basement
of the Manor House. We traversed but one side of the square, however, and at the
end of it she stopped, and put her candle down and opened a door. Here, the
daylight reappeared, and I found myself in a small paved court-yard, the
opposite side of which was formed by a detached dwelling-house, that looked as
if it had once belonged to the manager or head clerk of the extinct brewery.
There was a clock in the outer wall of this house. Like the clock in Miss
Havisham's room, and like Miss Havisham's watch, it had stopped at twenty
minutes to nine.
We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room with a low
ceiling, on the ground floor at the back. There was some company in the room,
and Estella said to me as she joined it, `You are to go and stand there, boy,
till you are wanted.' `There', being the window, I crossed to it, and stood
`there,' in a very uncomfortable state of mind, looking out.
It opened to the ground, and looked into a most miserable corner of the
neglected garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbage-stalks, and one box tree that had
been clipped round long ago, like a pudding, and had a new growth at the top of
it, out of shape and of a different colour, as if that part of the pudding had
stuck to the saucepan and got burnt. This was my homely thought, as I
contemplated the box-tree. There had been some light snow, overnight, and it lay
nowhere else to my knowledge; but, it had not quite melted from the cold shadow
of this bit of garden, and the wind caught it up in little eddies and threw it
at the window, as if it pelted me for coming there.
I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in the room, and that its
other occupants were looking at me. I could see nothing of the room except the
shining of the fire in the window glass, but I stiffened in all my joints with
the consciousness that I was under close inspection.
There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before I had been
standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were
all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the
others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know
it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug.
They all had a listless and dreary air of waiting somebody's pleasure, and
the most talkative of the ladies had to speak quite rigidly to repress a yawn.
This lady, whose name was Camilla, very much reminded me of my sister, with the
difference that she was older, and (as I found when I caught sight of her) of a
blunter cast of features. Indeed, when I knew her better I began to think it was
a Mercy she had any features at all, so very blank and high was the dead wall of
her face.
`Poor dear soul!' said this lady, with an abruptness of manner quite my
sister's. `Nobody's enemy but his own!'
`It would be much more commendable to be somebody else's enemy,' said the
gentleman; `far more natural.'
`Cousin Raymond,' observed another lady, `we are to love our neighbour.'
`Sarah Pocket,' returned Cousin Raymond, `if a man is not his own neighbour,
who is?'
Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said (checking a yawn), `The
idea!' But I thought they seemed to think it rather a good idea too. The other
lady, who had not spoken yet, said gravely and emphatically, `Very true!'
`Poor soul!' Camilla presently went on (I knew they had all been looking at
me in the mean time), `he is so very strange!Would anyone believe that when
Tom's wife died, he actually could not be induced to see the importance of the
children's having the deepest of trimmings to their mourning? "Good Lord!" says
he, "Camilla, what can it signify so long as the poor bereaved little things are
in black?" So like Matthew! The idea!'
`Good points in him, good points in him,' said Cousin Raymond; `Heaven forbid
I should deny good points in him; but he never had, and he never will have, any
sense of the proprieties.'
`You know I was obliged,' said Camilla, `I was obliged to be firm. I said,
"It WILL NOT DO, for the credit of the family." I told him that, without deep
trimmings, the family was disgraced. I cried about it from breakfast till
dinner. I injured my digestion. And at last he flung out in his violent way, and
said, with a D, "Then do as you like." Thank Goodness it will always be a
consolation to me to know that I instantly went out in a pouring rain and bought
the things.'
`He paid for them, did he not?' asked Estella.
`It's not the question, my dear child, who paid for them,' returned Camilla.
`I bought them. And I shall often think of that with peace, when I wake up in
the night.'
The ringing of a distant bell, combined with the echoing of some cry or call
along the passage by which I had come, interrupted the conversation and caused
Estella to say to me, `Now, boy!' On my turning round, they all looked at me
with the utmost contempt, and, as I went out, I heard Sarah Pocket say, `Well I
am sure!What next!' and Camilla add, with indignation, `Was there ever such a
fancy! The i-de-a!'
As we were going with our candle along the dark passage, Estella stopped all
of a sudden, and, facing round, said in her taunting manner with her face quite
close to mine:
`Well?'
`Well, miss?' I answered, almost falling over her and checking myself.
She stood looking at me, and, of course, I stood looking at her.
`Am I pretty?'
`Yes; I think you are very pretty.'
`Am I insulting?'
`Not so much so as you were last time,' said I.
`Not so much so?'
`No.'
She fired when she asked the last question, and she slapped my face with such
force as she had, when I answered it.
`Now?' said she. `You little coarse monster, what do you think of me now?'
`I shall not tell you.'
`Because you are going to tell, up-stairs. It that it?'
`No,' said I, `that's not it.'
`Why don't you cry again, you little wretch?'
`Because I'll never cry for you again,' said I. Which was, I suppose, as
false a declaration as ever was made; for I was inwardly crying for her then,
and I know what I know of the pain she cost me afterwards.
We went on our way up-stairs after this episode; and, as we were going up, we
met a gentleman groping his way down.
`Whom have we here?' asked the gentleman, stopping and looking at me.
`A boy,' said Estella.
He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with an exceedingly
large head and a corresponding large hand. He took my chin in his large hand and
turned up my face to have a look at me by the light of the candle. He was
prematurely bald on the top of his head, and had bushy black eyebrows that
wouldn't lie down but stood up bristling. His eyes were set very deep in his
head, and were disagreeably sharp and suspicious. He had a large watchchain, and
strong black dots where his beard and whiskers would have been if he had let
them. He was nothing to me, and I could have had no foresight then, that he ever
would be anything to me, but it happened that I had this opportunity of
observing him well.
`Boy of the neighbourhood? Hey?' said he.
`Yes, sir,' said I.
`How do you come here?'
`Miss Havisham sent for me, sir,' I explained.
`Well! Behave yourself. I have a pretty large experience of boys, and you're
a bad set of fellows. Now mind!' said he, biting the side of his great
forefinger as he frowned at me, `you behave yourself!'
With those words, he released me - which I was glad of, for his hand smelt of
scented soap - and went his way down-stairs. I wondered whether he could be a
doctor; but no, I thought; he couldn't be a doctor, or he would have a quieter
and more persuasive manner. There was not much time to consider the subject, for
we were soon in Miss Havisham's room, where she and everything else were just as
I had left them. Estella left me standing near the door, and I stood there until
Miss Havisham cast her eyes upon me from the dressing-table.
`So!' she said, without being startled or surprised; `the days have worn
away, have they?'
`Yes, ma'am. To-day is--'
`There, there, there!' with the impatient movement of her fingers. `I don't
want to know. Are you ready to play?'
I was obliged to answer in some confusion, `I don't think I am, ma'am.'
`Not at cards again?' she demanded, with a searching look.
`Yes, ma'am; I could do that, if I was wanted.'
`Since this house strikes you old and grave, boy,' said Miss Havisham,
impatiently, `and you are unwilling to play, are you willing to work?'
I could answer this inquiry with a better heart than I had been able to find
for the other question, and I said I was quite willing.
`Then go into that opposite room,' said she, pointing at the door behind me
with her withered hand, `and wait there till I come.'
I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated. From
that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an airless
smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in the damp
old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the
reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air - like
our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimneypiece
faintly lighted the chamber: or, it would be more expressive to say, faintly
troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome,
but every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping
to pieces. The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread
on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all
stopped together. An epergne or centrepiece of some kind was in the middle of
this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite
undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I
remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders
with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some
circumstances of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the
spider community.
I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same occurrence
were important to their interests. But, the blackbeetles took no notice of the
agitation, and groped about the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they
were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not on terms with one another.
These crawling things had fascinated my attention and I was watching them
from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other
hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the
Witch of the place.
`This,' said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, `is where I will
be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here.'
With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and there
and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I
shrank under her touch.
`What do you think that is?' she asked me, again pointing with her stick;
`that, where those cobwebs are?'
`I can't guess what it is, ma'am.'
`It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!'
She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and then said, leaning on
me while her hand twitched my shoulder, `Come, come, come! Walk me, walk me!'
I made out from this, that the work I had to do, was to walk Miss Havisham
round and round the room. Accordingly, I stated at once, and she leaned upon my
shoulder, and we went away at a pace that might have been an imitation (founded
on my first impulse under that roof) of Mr Pumblechook's chaise-cart.
She was not physically strong, and after a little time said, `Slower!' Still,
we went at an impatient fitful speed, and as we went, she twitched the hand upon
my shoulder, and worked her mouth, and led me to believe that we were going fast
because her thoughts went fast. After a while she said, `Call Estella!' so I
went out on the landing and roared that name as I had done on the previous
occasion. When her light appeared, I returned to Miss Havisham, and we started
away again round and round the room.
If only Estella had come to be a spectator of our proceedings, I should have
felt sufficiently discontented; but, as she brought with her the three ladies
and the gentleman whom I had seen below, I didn't know what to do. In my
politeness, I would have stopped; but, Miss Havisham twitched my shoulder, and
we posted on - with a shame-faced consciousness on my part that they would think
it was all my doing.
`Dear Miss Havisham,' said Miss Sarah Pocket. `How well you look!'
`I do not,' returned Miss Havisham. `I am yellow skin and bone.'
Camilla brightened when Miss Pocket met with this rebuff; and she murmured,
as she plaintively contemplated Miss Havisham, `Poor dear soul!' Certainly not
to be expected to look well, poor thing. The idea!'
`And how are you?' said Miss Havisham to Camilla. As we were close to Camilla
then, I would have stopped as a matter of course, only Miss Havisham wouldn't
stop. We swept on, and I felt that I was highly obnoxious to Camilla.
`Thank you, Miss Havisham,' she returned, `I am as well as can be expected.'
`Why, what's the matter with you?' asked Miss Havisham, with exceeding
sharpness.
`Nothing worth mentioning,' replied Camilla. `I don't wish to make a display
of my feelings, but I have habitually thought of you more in the night than I am
quite equal to.'
`Then don't think of me,' retorted Miss Havisham.
`Very easily said!' remarked Camilla, amiably repressing a sob, while a hitch
came into her upper lip, and her tears overflowed. `Raymond is a witness what
ginger and sal volatile I am obliged to take in the night. Raymond is a witness
what nervous jerkings I have in my legs. Chokings and nervous jerkings, however,
are nothing new to me when I think with anxiety of those I love. If I could be
less affectionate and sensitive, I should have a better digestion and an iron
set of nerves. I am sure I wish to could be so. But as to not thinking of you in
the night - The idea!' Here, a burst of tears.
The Raymond referred to, I understood to be the gentleman present, and him I
understood to be Mr Camilla. He came to the rescue at this point, and said in a
consolatory and complimentary voice, `Camilla, my dear, it is well known that
your family feelings are gradually undermining you to the extent of making one
of your legs shorter than the other.'
`I am not aware,' observed the grave lady whose voice I had heard but once,
`that to think of any person is to make a great claim upon that person, my
dear.'
Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a little dry brown corrugated old
woman, with a small face that might have been made of walnut shells, and a large
mouth like a cat's without the whiskers, supported this position by saying, `No,
indeed, my dear. Hem!'
`Thinking is easy enough,' said the grave lady.
`What is easier, you know?' assented Miss Sarah Pocket.
`Oh, yes, yes!' cried Camilla, whose fermenting feelings appeared to rise
from her legs to her bosom. `It's all very true! It's a weakness to be so
affectionate, but I can't help it. No doubt my health would be much better if it
was otherwise, still I wouldn't change my disposition if I could. It's the cause
of much suffering, but it's a consolation to know I posses it, when I wake up in
the night.' Here another burst of feeling.
Miss Havisham and I had never stopped all this time, but kept going round and
round the room: now, brushing against the skirts of the visitors: now, giving
them the whole length of the dismal chamber.
`There's Matthew!' said Camilla. `Never mixing with any natural ties, never
coming here to see how Miss Havisham is! I have taken to the sofa with my
staylace cut, and have lain there hours, insensible, with my head over the side,
and my hair all down, and my feet I don't know where--'
(`Much higher than your head, my love,' said Mr Camilla.)
`I have gone off into that state, hours and hours, on account of Matthew's
strange and inexplicable conduct, and nobody has thanked me.'
`Really I must say I should think not!' interposed the grave lady.
`You see, my dear,' added Miss Sarah Pocket (a blandly vicious personage),
`the question to put to yourself is, who did you expect to thank you, my love?'
`Without expecting any thanks, or anything of the sort,' resumed Camilla, `I
have remained in that state, hours and hours, and Raymond is a witness of the
extent to which I have choked, and what the total inefficacy of ginger has been,
and I have been heard at the pianoforte-tuner's across the street, where the
poor mistaken children have even supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a
distance-and now to be told--' Here Camilla put her hand to her throat, and
began to be quite chemical as to the formation of new combinations there.
When this same Matthew was mentioned, Miss Havisham stopped me and herself,
and stood looking at the speaker. This change had a great influence in bringing
Camilla's chemistry to a sudden end.
`Matthew will come and see me at last,' said Miss Havisham, sternly, when I
am laid on that table. That will be his place - there,' striking the table with
her stick, `at my head! And yours will be there! And your husband's there! And
Sarah Pocket's there! And Georgiana's there! Now you all know where to take your
stations when you come to feast upon me. And now go!'
At the mention of each name, she had struck the table with her stick in a new
place. She now said, `Walk me, walk me!' and we went on again.
`I suppose there's nothing to be done,' exclaimed Camilla, `but comply and
depart. It's something to have seen the object of one's love and duty, for even
so short a time. I shall think of it with a melancholy satisfaction when I wake
up in the night. I wish Matthew could have that comfort, but he sets it at
defiance. I am determined not to make a display of my feelings, but it's very
hard to be told one wants to feast on one's relations - as if one was a Giant -
and to be told to go. The bare idea!'
Mr Camilla interposing, as Mrs Camilla laid her hand upon her heaving bosom,
that lady assumed an unnatural fortitude of manner which I supposed to be
expressive of an intention to drop and choke when out of view, and kissing her
hand to Miss Havisham, was escorted forth. Sarah Pocket and Georgiana contended
who should remain last; but, Sarah was too knowing to be outdone, and ambled
round Georgiana with that artful slipperiness, that the latter was obliged to
take precedence. Sarah Pocket then made her separate effect of departing with
`Bless you, Miss Havisham dear!' and with a smile of forgiving pity on her
walnut-shell countenance for the weaknesses of the rest.
While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still walked with
her hand on my shoulder, but more and more slowly. At last she stopped before
the fire, and said, after muttering and looking at it some seconds:
`This is my birthday, Pip.'
I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she lifted her stick.
`I don't suffer it to be spoken of. I don't suffer those who were here just
now, or any one, to speak of it. They come here on the day, but they dare not
refer to it.'
Of course I made no further effort to refer to it.
`On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of decay,'
stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the table but not
touching it, `was brought here. It and I have worn away together. The mice have
gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me.'
She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood looking at the
table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the once white
cloth all yellow and withered; everything around, in a state to crumble under a
touch.
`When the ruin is complete,' said she, with a ghastly look, `and when they
lay me dead, in my bride's dress on the bride's table - which shall be done, and
which will be the finished curse upon him - so much the better if it is done on
this day!'
She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own figure
lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she too remained quiet. It
seemed to me that we continued thus for a long time. In the heavy air of the
room, and the heavy darkness that brooded in its remoter corners, I even had an
alarming fancy that Estella and I might presently begin to decay.
At length, not coming out of her distraught state by degrees, but in an
instant, Miss Havisham said, `Let me see you two play cards; why have you not
begun?' With that, we returned to her room, and sat down as before; I was
beggared, as before; and again, as before, Miss Havisham watched us all the
time, directed my attention to Estella's beauty, and made me notice it the more
by trying her jewels on Estella's breast and hair.
Estella, for her part, likewise treated me as before; except that she did not
condescend to speak. When we had played some halfdozen games, a day was
appointed for my return, and I was taken down into the yard to be fed in the
former dog-like manner. There, too, I was again left to wander about as I liked.
It is not much to the purpose whether a gate in that garden wall which I had
scrambled up to peep over on the last occasion was, on that last occasion, open
or shut. Enough that I saw no gate them, and that I saw one now. As it stood
open, and as I knew that Estella had let the visitors out - for, she had
returned with the keys in her hand - I strolled into the garden and strolled all
over it. It was quite a wilderness, and there were old melon-frames and
cucumber-frames in it, which seemed in their decline to have produced a
spontaneous growth of weak attempts at pieces of old hats and boots, with now
and then a weedy offshoot into the likeness of a battered saucepan.
When I had exhausted the garden, and a greenhouse with nothing in it but a
fallen-down grape-vine and some bottles, I found myself in the dismal corner
upon which I had looked out of window.Never questioning for a moment that the
house was now empty, I looked in at another window, and found myself, to my
great surprise, exchanging a broad stare with a pale young gentleman with red
eyelids and light hair.
This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and re-appeared beside me. He
had been at his books when I had found myself staring at him, and I now saw that
he was inky.
`Halloa!' said he, `young fellow!'
Halloa being a general observation which I had usually observed to be best
answered by itself, I said, `Halloa!' politely omitting young fellow.
`Who let you in?' said he.
`Miss Estella.'
`Who gave you leave to prowl about?'
`Miss Estella.'
`Come and fight,' said the pale young gentleman.
What could I do but follow him? I have often asked myself the question since:
but, what else could I do? His manner was so final and I was so astonished, that
I followed where he led, as if I had been under a spell.
`Stop a minute, though,' he said, wheeling round before we had gone many
paces. `I ought to give you a reason for fighting, too. There it is!' In a most
irritating manner he instantly slapped his hands against one another, daintily
flung one of his legs up behind him, pulled my hair, slapped his hands again,
dipped his head, and butted it into my stomach.
The bull-like proceeding last mentioned, besides that it was unquestionably
to be regarded in the light of a liberty, was particularly disagreeable just
after bread and meat. I therefore hit out at him and was going to hit out again,
when he said, `Aha!Would you?' and began dancing backwards and forwards in a
manner quite unparalleled within my limited experience.
`Laws of the game!' said he. Here, he skipped from his left leg on to his
right. `Regular rules!' Here, he skipped from his right leg on to his left.
`Come to the ground, and go through the preliminaries!' Here, he dodged
backwards and forwards, and did all sorts of things while I looked helplessly at
him.
I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him so dexterous; but, I felt morally
and physically convinced that his light head of hair could have had no business
in the pit of my stomach, and that I had a right to consider it irrelevant when
so obtruded on my attention. Therefore, I followed him without a word, to a
retired nook of the garden, formed by the junction of two walls and screened by
some rubbish. On his asking me if I was satisfied with the ground, and on my
replying Yes, he begged my leave to absent himself for a moment, and quickly
returned with a bottle of water and a sponge dipped in vinegar. `Available for
both,' he said, placing these against the wall. And then fell to pulling off,
not only his jacket and waistcoat, but his shirt too, in a manner at once
light-hearted, businesslike, and bloodthirsty.
Although he did not look very healthy - having pimples on his face, and a
breaking out at his mouth - these dreadful preparations quite appalled me. I
judged him to be about my own age, but he was much taller, and he had a way of
spinning himself about that was full of appearance. For the rest, he was a young
gentleman in a grey suit (when not denuded for battle), with his elbows, knees,
wrists, and heels, considerably in advance of the rest of him as to development.
My heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me with every demonstration of
mechanical nicety, and eyeing my anatomy as if he were minutely choosing his
bone. I never have been so surprised in my life, as I was when I let out the
first blow, and saw him lying on his back, looking up at me with a bloody nose
and his face exceedingly fore-shortened.
But, he was on his feet directly, and after sponging himself with a great
show of dexterity began squaring again. The second greatest surprise I have ever
had in my life was seeing him on his back again, looking up at me out of a black
eye.
His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to have no strength, and
he never once hit me hard, and he was always knocked down; but, he would be up
again in a moment, sponging himself or drinking out of the water-bottle, with
the greatest satisfaction in seconding himself according to form, and then came
at me with an air and a show that made me believe he really was going to do for
me at last. He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record that the more I hit
him, the harder I hit him; but, he came up again and again and again, until at
last he got a bad fall with the back of his head against the wall. Even after
that crisis in our affairs, he got up and turned round and round confusedly a
few times, not knowing where I was; but finally went on his knees to his sponge
and threw it up: at the same time panting out, `That means you have won.'
He seemed to brave and innocent, that although I had not proposed the contest
I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. Indeed, I go so far as to hope
that I regarded myself while dressing, as a species of savage young wolf, or
other wild beast. However, I got dressed, darkly wiping my sanguinary face at
intervals, and I said, `Can I help you?' and he said `No thankee,' and I said
`Good afternoon,' and he said `Same to you.'
When I got into the court-yard, I found Estella waiting with the keys. But,
she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had kept her waiting; and there
was a bright flush upon her face, as though something had happened to delight
her. Instead of going straight to the gate, too, she stepped back into the
passage, and beckoned me.
`Come here! You may kiss me, if you like.'
I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone through
a great deal to kiss her cheek. But, I felt that the kiss was given to the
coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and that it was worth
nothing.
What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and what with the
fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared home the light on the spit
of sand off the point on the marshes was gleaming against a black night-sky, and
Joe's furnace was flinging a path of fire across the road.
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