GREAT
EXPECTATIONS
PART 10
Chapter X
The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two
later when I woke, that the best step I could take towards making myself
uncommon was to get out of Biddy everything she knew. In pursuance of this
luminous conception I mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr. Wopsle's
great-aunt's at night, that I had a particular reason for wishing to get on in
life, and that I should feel very much obliged to her if she would impart all
her learning to me. Biddy, who was the most obliging of girls, immediately said
she would, and indeed began to carry out her promise within five minutes.
The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr.
Wopsle's great-aunt may be resolved into the following synopsis. The pupils ate
apples and put straws down one another's backs, until Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt
collected her energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them with a
birch-rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of derision, the pupils
formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book
had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling,—that is
to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume began to circulate, Mr.
Wopsle's great-aunt fell into a state of coma, arising either from sleep or a
rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then entered among themselves upon a competitive
examination on the subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could
tread the hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy made
a rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped as if they had been
unskilfully cut off the chump end of something), more illegibly printed at the
best than any curiosities of literature I have since met with, speckled all
over with ironmould, and having various specimens of the insect world smashed
between their leaves. This part of the Course was usually lightened by several
single combats between Biddy and refractory students. When the fights were
over, Biddy gave out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we
could,—or what we couldn't—in a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high,
shrill, monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or
reverence for, what we were reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a
certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, who staggered at a
boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was understood to terminate the
Course for the evening, and we emerged into the air with shrieks of
intellectual victory. It is fair to remark that there was no prohibition against
any pupil's entertaining himself with a slate or even with the ink (when there
was any), but that it was not easy to pursue that branch of study in the winter
season, on account of the little general shop in which the classes were
holden—and which was also Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's sitting-room and
bedchamber—being but faintly illuminated through the agency of one low-spirited
dip-candle and no snuffers.
It appeared to me that it would take time to become
uncommon, under these circumstances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and
that very evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by imparting some
information from her little catalogue of Prices, under the head of moist sugar,
and lending me, to copy at home, a large old English D which she had imitated
from the heading of some newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me
what it was, to be a design for a buckle.
Of course there was a public-house in the village,
and of course Joe liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict
orders from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen, that
evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my peril. To the Three
Jolly Bargemen, therefore, I directed my steps.
There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some
alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which
seemed to me to be never paid off. They had been there ever since I could
remember, and had grown more than I had. But there was a quantity of chalk
about our country, and perhaps the people neglected no opportunity of turning
it to account.
It being Saturday night, I found the landlord
looking rather grimly at these records; but as my business was with Joe and not
with him, I merely wished him good evening, and passed into the common room at
the end of the passage, where there was a bright large kitchen fire, and where
Joe was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. Wopsle and a stranger. Joe greeted
me as usual with "Halloa, Pip, old chap!" and the moment he said
that, the stranger turned his head and looked at me.
He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen
before. His head was all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, as
if he were taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He had a pipe in his
mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly blowing all his smoke away and
looking hard at me all the time, nodded. So, I nodded, and then he nodded
again, and made room on the settle beside him that I might sit down there.
But as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered
that place of resort, I said "No, thank you, sir," and fell into the
space Joe made for me on the opposite settle. The strange man, after glancing
at Joe, and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, nodded to me again
when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed his leg—in a very odd way, as it
struck me.
"You was saying," said the strange man,
turning to Joe, "that you was a blacksmith."
"Yes. I said it, you know," said Joe.
"What'll you drink, Mr.—? You didn't mention
your name, by the bye."
Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called
him by it. "What'll you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense? To top up
with?"
"Well," said Joe, "to tell you the
truth, I ain't much in the habit of drinking at anybody's expense but my
own."
"Habit? No," returned the stranger,
"but once and away, and on a Saturday night too. Come! Put a name to it,
Mr. Gargery."
"I wouldn't wish to be stiff company,"
said Joe. "Rum."
"Rum," repeated the stranger. "And
will the other gentleman originate a sentiment."
"Rum," said Mr. Wopsle.
"Three Rums!" cried the stranger, calling
to the landlord. "Glasses round!"
"This other gentleman," observed Joe, by
way of introducing Mr. Wopsle, "is a gentleman that you would like to hear
give it out. Our clerk at church."
"Aha!" said the stranger, quickly, and
cocking his eye at me. "The lonely church, right out on the marshes, with
graves round it!"
"That's it," said Joe.
The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over
his pipe, put his legs up on the settle that he had to himself. He wore a
flapping broad-brimmed traveller's hat, and under it a handkerchief tied over
his head in the manner of a cap: so that he showed no hair. As he looked at the
fire, I thought I saw a cunning expression, followed by a half-laugh, come into
his face.
"I am not acquainted with this country,
gentlemen, but it seems a solitary country towards the river."
"Most marshes is solitary," said Joe.
"No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gypsies,
now, or tramps, or vagrants of any sort, out there?"
"No," said Joe; "none but a runaway
convict now and then. And we don't find them, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?"
Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old
discomfiture, assented; but not warmly.
"Seems you have been out after such?"
asked the stranger.
"Once," returned Joe. "Not that we
wanted to take them, you understand; we went out as lookers on; me, and Mr.
Wopsle, and Pip. Didn't us, Pip?"
"Yes, Joe."
The stranger looked at me again,—still cocking his
eye, as if he were expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun,—and said,
"He's a likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call him?"
"Pip," said Joe.
"Christened Pip?"
"No, not christened Pip."
"Surname Pip?"
"No," said Joe, "it's a kind of
family name what he gave himself when a infant, and is called by."
"Son of yours?"
"Well," said Joe, meditatively, not, of
course, that it could be in anywise necessary to consider about it, but because
it was the way at the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider deeply about
everything that was discussed over pipes,—"well—no. No, he ain't."
"Nevvy?" said the strange man.
"Well," said Joe, with the same
appearance of profound cogitation, "he is not—no, not to deceive you, he
is not—my nevvy."
"What the Blue Blazes is he?" asked the
stranger. Which appeared to me to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength.
Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that; as one who knew all
about relationships, having professional occasion to bear in mind what female
relations a man might not marry; and expounded the ties between me and Joe.
Having his hand in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with a most terrifically snarling
passage from Richard the Third, and seemed to think he had done quite enough to
account for it when he added, "—as the poet says."
And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred
to me, he considered it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my hair
and poke it into my eyes. I cannot conceive why everybody of his standing who
visited at our house should always have put me through the same inflammatory
process under similar circumstances. Yet I do not call to mind that I was ever
in my earlier youth the subject of remark in our social family circle, but some
large-handed person took some such ophthalmic steps to patronize me.
All this while, the strange man looked at nobody
but me, and looked at me as if he were determined to have a shot at me at last,
and bring me down. But he said nothing after offering his Blue Blazes
observation, until the glasses of rum and water were brought; and then he made
his shot, and a most extraordinary shot it was.
It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding in
dumb-show, and was pointedly addressed to me. He stirred his rum and water
pointedly at me, and he tasted his rum and water pointedly at me. And he
stirred it and he tasted it; not with a spoon that was brought to him, but with
a file.
He did this so that nobody but I saw the file; and
when he had done it he wiped the file and put it in a breast-pocket. I knew it
to be Joe's file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the moment I saw the
instrument. I sat gazing at him, spell-bound. But he now reclined on his
settle, taking very little notice of me, and talking principally about turnips.
There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up and
making a quiet pause before going on in life afresh, in our village on Saturday
nights, which stimulated Joe to dare to stay out half an hour longer on
Saturdays than at other times. The half-hour and the rum and water running out
together, Joe got up to go, and took me by the hand.
"Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery," said
the strange man. "I think I've got a bright new shilling somewhere in my
pocket, and if I have, the boy shall have it."
He looked it out from a handful of small change,
folded it in some crumpled paper, and gave it to me. "Yours!" said
he. "Mind! Your own."
I thanked him, staring at him far beyond the bounds
of good manners, and holding tight to Joe. He gave Joe good-night, and he gave
Mr. Wopsle good-night (who went out with us), and he gave me only a look with
his aiming eye,—no, not a look, for he shut it up, but wonders may be done with
an eye by hiding it.
On the way home, if I had been in a humor for
talking, the talk must have been all on my side, for Mr. Wopsle parted from us
at the door of the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way home with his mouth
wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. But I was in a
manner stupefied by this turning up of my old misdeed and old acquaintance, and
could think of nothing else.
My sister was not in a very bad temper when we
presented ourselves in the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that unusual
circumstance to tell her about the bright shilling. "A bad un, I'll be
bound," said Mrs. Joe triumphantly, "or he wouldn't have given it to
the boy! Let's look at it."
I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a
good one. "But what's this?" said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the
shilling and catching up the paper. "Two One-Pound notes?"
Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound
notes that seemed to have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the
cattle-markets in the county. Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to
the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was gone, I sat
down on my usual stool and looked vacantly at my sister, feeling pretty sure
that the man would not be there.
Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was
gone, but that he, Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concerning
the notes. Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and put them
under some dried rose-leaves in an ornamental teapot on the top of a press in
the state parlor. There they remained, a nightmare to me, many and many a night
and day.
I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through
thinking of the strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the
guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms of conspiracy
with convicts,—a feature in my low career that I had previously forgotten. I
was haunted by the file too. A dread possessed me that when I least expected
it, the file would reappear. I coaxed myself to sleep by thinking of Miss
Havisham's, next Wednesday; and in my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of
a door, without seeing who held it, and I screamed myself awake.
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.
