GREAT EXPECTATIONS
PART 5
Chapter XI
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 to-day," 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 courtyard, 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 color, 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 neighbor."
"Sarah Pocket,"
returned Cousin Raymond, "if a man is not his own neighbor, 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. Is 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 watch-chain, 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
neighborhood? 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 chimney-piece 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 centre-piece 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 speckle-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 black beetles 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 started 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 it 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 piano-forte 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 half-dozen 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 then, 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 the 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 reappeared 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,
business-like, 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 gray
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 so 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
courtyard, 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.
