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Charles Dickens 5 page

come to know Pip!’

‘Noodle!’ cried my sister. ‘Who said she knew him?’

‘ - Which some individual,’ Joe again politely hinted,

‘mentioned that she wanted him to go and play there.’

‘And couldn’t she ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of

a boy to go and play there? Isn’t it just barely possible that

Uncle Pumblechook may be a tenant of hers, and that he

may sometimes - we won’t say quarterly or half-yearly, for

that would be requiring too much of you - but sometimes

- go there to pay his rent? And couldn’t she then ask Uncle

Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and play there? And

couldn’t Uncle Pumblechook, being always considerate and

thoughtful for us - though you may not think it, Joseph,’ in

a tone of the deepest reproach, as if he were the most callous

of nephews, ‘then mention this boy, standing Prancing here’

- which I solemnly declare I was not doing - ‘that I have for

ever been a willing slave to?’

‘Good again!’ cried Uncle Pumblechook. ‘Well put! Pret-

tily pointed! Good indeed! Now Joseph, you know the

case.’

‘No, Joseph,’ said my sister, still in a reproachful manner,

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while Joe apologetically drew the back of his hand across

and across his nose, ‘you do not yet - though you may not

think it - know the case. You may consider that you do, but

you do not, Joseph. For you do not know that Uncle Pum-

blechook, being sensible that for anything we can tell, this

boy’s fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham’s,

has offered to take him into town to-night in his own chaise-

cart, and to keep him to-night, and to take him with his own

hands to Miss Havisham’s to-morrow morning. And Lor-a-

mussy me!’ cried my sister, casting off her bonnet in sudden

desperation, ‘here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs, with

Uncle Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching cold at

the door, and the boy grimed with crock and dirt from the

hair of his head to the sole of his foot!’

With that, she pounced upon me, like an eagle on a lamb,

and my face was squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks,

and my head was put under taps of water-butts, and I was

soaped, and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped, and har-

rowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside myself.

(I may here remark that I suppose myself to be better ac-

quainted than any living authority, with the ridgy effect of

a wedding-ring, passing unsympathetically over the human

countenance.)

When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean

linen of the stiffest character, like a young penitent into

sackcloth, and was trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest

suit. I was then delivered over to Mr. Pumblechook, who

formally received me as if he were the Sheriff, and who let

off upon me the speech that I knew he had been dying to

 

Great Expectations

make all along: ‘Boy, be for ever grateful to all friends, but

especially unto them which brought you up by hand!’

‘Good-bye, Joe!’

‘God bless you, Pip, old chap!’



I had never parted from him before, and what with my

feelings and what with soap-suds, I could at first see no

stars from the chaise-cart. But they twinkled out one by

one, without throwing any light on the questions why on

earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham’s, and what on

earth I was expected to play at.

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Chapter 8

Mr. Pumblechook’s premises in the High-street of the

market town, were of a peppercorny and farinaceous

character, as the premises of a corn-chandler and seeds-

man should be. It appeared to me that he must be a very

happy man indeed, to have so many little drawers in his

shop; and I wondered when I peeped into one or two on the

lower tiers, and saw the tied-up brown paper packets inside,

whether the flower-seeds and bulbs ever wanted of a fine

day to break out of those jails, and bloom.

It was in the early morning after my arrival that I enter-

tained this speculation. On the previous night, I had been

sent straight to bed in an attic with a sloping roof, which

was so low in the corner where the bedstead was, that I

calculated the tiles as being within a foot of my eyebrows.

In the same early morning, I discovered a singular affin-

ity between seeds and corduroys. Mr. Pumblechook wore

corduroys, and so did his shopman; and somehow, there

was a general air and flavour about the corduroys, so much

in the nature of seeds, and a general air and flavour about

the seeds, so much in the nature of corduroys, that I hardly

knew which was which. The same opportunity served me

for noticing that Mr. Pumblechook appeared to conduct his

business by looking across the street at the saddler, who ap-

peared to transact his business by keeping his eye on the

 

Great Expectations

coach-maker, who appeared to get on in life by putting his

hands in his pockets and contemplating the baker, who in

his turn folded his arms and stared at the grocer, who stood

at his door and yawned at the chemist. The watch-maker, al-

ways poring over a little desk with a magnifying glass at his

eye, and always inspected by a group of smock-frocks por-

ing over him through the glass of his shop-window, seemed

to be about the only person in the High-street whose trade

engaged his attention.

Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o’clock in

the parlour behind the shop, while the shopman took his

mug of tea and hunch of bread-and-butter on a sack of

peas in the front premises. I considered Mr. Pumblechook

wretched company. Besides being possessed by my sister’s

idea that a mortifying and penitential character ought to

be imparted to my diet - besides giving me as much crumb

as possible in combination with as little butter, and putting

such a quantity of warm water into my milk that it would

have been more candid to have left the milk out altogeth-

er - his conversation consisted of nothing but arithmetic.

On my politely bidding him Good morning, he said, pomp-

ously, ‘Seven times nine, boy?’ And how should I be able to

answer, dodged in that way, in a strange place, on an empty

stomach! I was hungry, but before I had swallowed a morsel,

he began a running sum that lasted all through the break-

fast. ‘Seven?’ ‘And four?’ ‘And eight?’ ‘And six?’ ‘And two?’

‘And ten?’ And so on. And after each figure was disposed of,

it was as much as I could do to get a bite or a sup, before the

next came; while he sat at his ease guessing nothing, and

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eating bacon and hot roll, in (if I may be allowed the expres-

sion) a gorging and gormandising manner.

For such reasons I was very glad when ten o’clock came

and we started for Miss Havisham’s; though I was not at all

at my ease regarding the manner in which I should acquit

myself under that lady’s roof. Within a quarter of an hour

we came to Miss Havisham’s house, which was of old brick,

and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of

the windows had been walled up; of those that remained,

all the lower were rustily barred. There was a court-yard in

front, and that was barred; so, we had to wait, after ringing

the bell, until some one should come to open it. While we

waited at the gate, I peeped in (even then Mr. Pumblechook

said, ‘And fourteen?’ but I pretended not to hear him), and

saw that at the side of the house there was a large brewery.

No brewing was going on in it, and none seemed to have

gone on for a long long time.

A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded ‘What

name?’ To which my conductor replied, ‘Pumblechook.’

The voice returned, ‘Quite right,’ and the window was shut

again, and a young lady came across the court-yard, with

keys in her hand.

‘This,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, ‘is Pip.’

‘This is Pip, is it?’ returned the young lady, who was very

pretty and seemed very proud; ‘come in, Pip.’

Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped

him with the gate.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?’

‘If Miss Havisham wished to see me,’ returned Mr. Pum-

 

Great Expectations

blechook, discomfited.

‘Ah!’ said the girl; ‘but you see she don’t.’

She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way,

that Mr. Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled

dignity, could not protest. But he eyed me severely - as if I

had done anything to him! - and departed with the words

reproachfully delivered: ‘Boy! Let your behaviour here be a

credit unto them which brought you up by hand!’ I was not

free from apprehension that he would come back to pro-

pound through the gate, ‘And sixteen?’ But he didn’t.

My young conductress locked the gate, and we went

across the court-yard. It was paved and clean, but grass was

growing in every crevice. The brewery buildings had a lit-

tle lane of communication with it, and the wooden gates

of that lane stood open, and all the brewery beyond, stood

open, away to the high enclosing wall; and all was empty

and disused. The cold wind seemed to blow colder there,

than outside the gate; and it made a shrill noise in howling

in and out at the open sides of the brewery, like the noise of

wind in the rigging of a ship at sea.

She saw me looking at it, and she said, ‘You could drink

without hurt all the strong beer that’s brewed there now,

boy.’

‘I should think I could, miss,’ said I, in a shy way.

‘Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn

out sour, boy; don’t you think so?’

‘It looks like it, miss.’

‘Not that anybody means to try,’ she added, ‘for that’s all

done with, and the place will stand as idle as it is, till it falls.

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As to strong beer, there’s enough of it in the cellars already,

to drown the Manor House.’

‘Is that the name of this house, miss?’

‘One of its names, boy.’

‘It has more than one, then, miss?’

‘One more. Its other name was Satis; which is Greek,

or Latin, or Hebrew, or all three - or all one to me - for

enough.’

‘Enough House,’ said I; ‘that’s a curious name, miss.’

‘Yes,’ she replied; ‘but it meant more than it said. It meant,

when it was given, that whoever had this house, could want

nothing else. They must have been easily satisfied in those

days, I should think. But don’t loiter, boy.’

Though she called me ‘boy’ so often, and with a careless-

ness that was far from complimentary, she was of about my

own age. She seemed much older than I, of course, being a

girl, and beautiful and self-possessed; and she was as scorn-

ful of me as if she had been one-and-twenty, and a queen.

We went into the house by a side door - the great front

entrance had two chains across it outside - and the first

thing I noticed was, that the passages were all dark, and

that she had left a candle burning there. She took it up, and

we went through more passages and up a staircase, and still

it was all dark, and only the candle lighted us.

At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, ‘Go

in.’I answered, more in shyness than politeness, ‘After you,

miss.’

To this, she returned: ‘Don’t be ridiculous, boy; I am

 

Great Expectations

not going in.’ And scornfully walked away, and - what was

worse - took the candle with her.

This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid.

However, the only thing to be done being to knock at the

door, I knocked, and was told from within to enter. I en-

tered, therefore, and found myself in a pretty large room,

well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of daylight was

to be seen in it. It was a dressing-room, as I supposed from

the furniture, though much of it was of forms and uses then

quite unknown to me. But prominent in it was a draped ta-

ble with a gilded looking-glass, and that I made out at first

sight to be a fine lady’s dressing-table.

Whether I should have made out this object so soon, if

there had been no fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an

arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head

leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen,

or shall ever see.

She was dressed in rich materials - satins, and lace, and

silks - all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a

long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal

flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jew-

els sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other

jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than

the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered

about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but

one shoe on - the other was on the table near her hand - her

veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not

put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets,

and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers,

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and a prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the look-

ing-glass.

It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these

things, though I saw more of them in the first moments

than might be supposed. But, I saw that everything with-

in my view which ought to be white, had been white long

ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw

that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the

dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but

the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had

been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and

that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to

skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly

waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impos-

sible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one

of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a

rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church

pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark

eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out,

if I could.

‘Who is it?’ said the lady at the table.

‘Pip, ma’am.’

‘Pip?’

‘Mr. Pumblechook’s boy, ma’am. Come - to play.’

‘Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.’

It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I

took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that

her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a

clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

Great Expectations

‘Look at me,’ said Miss Havisham. ‘You are not afraid of a

woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?’

I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enor-

mous lie comprehended in the answer ‘No.’

‘Do you know what I touch here?’ she said, laying her

hands, one upon the other, on her left side.

‘Yes, ma’am.’ (It made me think of the young man.)

‘What do I touch?’

‘Your heart.’

‘Broken!’

She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong

emphasis, and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast

in it. Afterwards, she kept her hands there for a little while,

and slowly took them away as if they were heavy.

‘I am tired,’ said Miss Havisham. ‘I want diversion, and I

have done with men and women. Play.’

I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious read-

er, that she could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy

to do anything in the wide world more difficult to be done

under the circumstances.

‘I sometimes have sick fancies,’ she went on, ‘and I have a

sick fancy that I want to see some play. There there!’ with an

impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand; ‘play,

play, play!’

For a moment, with the fear of my sister’s working me

before my eyes, I had a desperate idea of starting round

the room in the assumed character of Mr. Pumblechook’s

chaise-cart. But, I felt myself so unequal to the performance

that I gave it up, and stood looking at Miss Havisham in

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what I suppose she took for a dogged manner, inasmuch as

she said, when we had taken a good look at each other:

‘Are you sullen and obstinate?’

‘No, ma’am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I

can’t play just now. If you complain of me I shall get into

trouble with my sister, so I would do it if I could; but it’s so

new here, and so strange, and so fine - and melancholy—.’ I

stopped, fearing I might say too much, or had already said

it, and we took another look at each other.

Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me,

and looked at the dress she wore, and at the dressing-table,

and finally at herself in the looking-glass.

‘So new to him,’ she muttered, ‘so old to me; so strange

to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us! Call

Estella.’

As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I

thought she was still talking to herself, and kept quiet.

‘Call Estella,’ she repeated, flashing a look at me. ‘You can

do that. Call Estella. At the door.’

To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an un-

known house, bawling Estella to a scornful young lady

neither visible nor responsive, and feeling it a dreadful lib-

erty so to roar out her name, was almost as bad as playing

to order. But, she answered at last, and her light came along

the dark passage like a star.

Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took

up a jewel from the table, and tried its effect upon her fair

young bosom and against her pretty brown hair. ‘Your own,

one day, my dear, and you will use it well. Let me see you

 

Great Expectations

play cards with this boy.’

‘With this boy? Why, he is a common labouring-boy!’

I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer - only it

seemed so unlikely - ‘Well? You can break his heart.’

‘What do you play, boy?’ asked Estella of myself, with the

greatest disdain.

‘Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss.’

‘Beggar him,’ said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat

down to cards.

It was then I began to understand that everything in the

room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time

ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel ex-

actly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella

dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and

saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never

been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe

was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white,

now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest

of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed ob-

jects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed

from could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long

veil so like a shroud.

So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frill-

ings and trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like earthy

paper. I knew nothing then, of the discoveries that are oc-

casionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, which

fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen; but,

I have often thought since, that she must have looked as if

the admission of the natural light of day would have struck

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her to dust.

‘He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!’ said Estella with

disdain, before our first game was out. ‘And what coarse

hands he has! And what thick boots!’

I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands be-

fore; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair.

Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infec-

tious, and I caught it.

She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only

natural, when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do

wrong; and she denounced me for a stupid, clumsy labour-

ing-boy.

‘You say nothing of her,’ remarked Miss Havisham to me,

as she looked on. ‘She says many hard things of you, but you

say nothing of her. What do you think of her?’

‘I don’t like to say,’ I stammered.

‘Tell me in my ear,’ said Miss Havisham, bending down.

‘I think she is very proud,’ I replied, in a whisper.

‘Anything else?’

‘I think she is very pretty.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I think she is very insulting.’ (She was looking at me then

with a look of supreme aversion.)

‘Anything else?’

‘I think I should like to go home.’

‘And never see her again, though she is so pretty?’

‘I am not sure that I shouldn’t like to see her again, but I

should like to go home now.’

‘You shall go soon,’ said Miss Havisham, aloud. ‘Play the

 

Great Expectations

game out.’

Saving for the one weird smile at first, I should have felt

almost sure that Miss Havisham’s face could not smile. It

had dropped into a watchful and brooding expression - most

likely when all the things about her had become transfixed

- and it looked as if nothing could ever lift it up again. Her

chest had dropped, so that she stooped; and her voice had

dropped, so that she spoke low, and with a dead lull upon

her; altogether, she had the appearance of having dropped,

body and soul, within and without, under the weight of a

crushing blow.

I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beg-

gared me. She threw the cards down on the table when she

had won them all, as if she despised them for having been

won of me.

‘When shall I have you here again?’ said miss Havisham.

‘Let me think.’

I was beginning to remind her that to-day was Wednes-

day, when she checked me with her former impatient

movement of the fingers of her right hand.

‘There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I know

nothing of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You

hear?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat,

and let him roam and look about him while he eats. Go,

Pip.’I followed the candle down, as I had followed the can-

dle up, and she stood it in the place where we had found

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it. Until she opened the side entrance, I had fancied, with-

out thinking about it, that it must necessarily be night-time.

The rush of the daylight quite confounded me, and made

me feel as if I had been in the candlelight of the strange

room many hours.

‘You are to wait here, you boy,’ said Estella; and disap-

peared and closed the door.

I took the opportunity of being alone in the court-yard,

to look at my coarse hands and my common boots. My

opinion of those accessories was not favourable. They had

never troubled me before, but they troubled me now, as vul-

gar appendages. I determined to ask Joe why he had ever

taught me to call those picture-cards, Jacks, which ought

to be called knaves. I wished Joe had been rather more gen-

teelly brought up, and then I should have been so too.

She came back, with some bread and meat and a little

mug of beer. She put the mug down on the stones of the

yard, and gave me the bread and meat without looking at

me, as insolently as if I were a dog in disgrace. I was so hu-

miliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry - I cannot

hit upon the right name for the smart - God knows what its

name was - that tears started to my eyes. The moment they

sprang there, the girl looked at me with a quick delight in

having been the cause of them. This gave me power to keep

them back and to look at her: so, she gave a contemptuous

toss - but with a sense, I thought, of having made too sure

that I was so wounded - and left me.

But, when she was gone, I looked about me for a place

to hide my face in, and got behind one of the gates in the

 

Great Expectations

brewery-lane, and leaned my sleeve against the wall there,

and leaned my forehead on it and cried. As I cried, I kicked

the wall, and took a hard twist at my hair; so bitter were my

feelings, and so sharp was the smart without a name, that

needed counteraction.

My sister’s bringing up had made me sensitive. In the

little world in which children have their existence whoso-

ever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived

and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injus-

tice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small,

and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many

hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.

Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a per-

petual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time

when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and

violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a pro-

found conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave

her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my pun-

ishments, disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential

performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my com-

muning so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way,

I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and

very sensitive.

I got rid of my injured feelings for the time, by kick-

ing them into the brewery wall, and twisting them out of

my hair, and then I smoothed my face with my sleeve, and

came from behind the gate. The bread and meat were ac-

ceptable, and the beer was warming and tingling, and I was

soon in spirits to look about me.

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To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-

house in the brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked

on its pole by some high wind, and would have made the pi-

geons think themselves at sea, if there had been any pigeons

there to be rocked by it. But, there were no pigeons in the

dove-cot, no horses in the stable, no pigs in the sty, no malt

in the store-house, no smells of grains and beer in the cop-

per or the vat. All the uses and scents of the brewery might

have evaporated with its last reek of smoke. In a by-yard,

there was a wilderness of empty casks, which had a certain

sour remembrance of better days lingering about them; but

it was too sour to be accepted as a sample of the beer that

was gone - and in this respect I remember those recluses as

being like most others.

Behind the furthest end of the brewery, was a rank gar-

den with an old wall: not so high but that I could struggle

up and hold on long enough to look over it, and see that the

rank garden was the garden of the house, and that it was

overgrown with tangled weeds, but that there was a track

upon the green and yellow paths, as if some one sometimes

walked there, and that Estella was walking away from me

even then. But she seemed to be everywhere. For, when I

yielded to the temptation presented by the casks, and began


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