Charles Dickens 7 page

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

Great Expectations

expounded the ties between me and Joe. Having his hand

in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with a most terrifically snarl-

ing 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 inflammato-

ry 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 af-

ter 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 dump

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-

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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 humour for talking,

the talk must have been all on my side, for Mr. Wopsle part-

ed 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 man-

ner 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 present-

ed ourselves in the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that

Great Expectations

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 re-

store 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 tea-pot on the top of a press in the state

parlour. 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 think-

ing 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 haunt-

ed 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

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seeing who held it, and I screamed myself awake.

Great Expectations

Chapter 11

At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham’s, and

my hesitating ring at the gate brought out Estella. She

locked it after admitting me, as she had done before, and

again preceded me into the dark passage where her candle

stood. She took no notice of me until she had the candle in

her hand, when she looked over her shoulder, superciliously

saying, ‘You are to come this way today,’ and took me to

quite another part of the house.

The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the

whole square basement of the Manor House. We traversed

but one side of the square, however, and at the end of it

she stopped, and put her candle down and opened a door.

Here, the daylight reappeared, and I found myself in a small

paved court-yard, the opposite side of which was formed by

a detached dwelling-house, that looked as if it had once be-

longed 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 Es-

tella said to me as she joined it, ‘You are to go and stand

there, boy, till you are wanted.’ ‘There’, being the window,

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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 mis-

erable corner of the neglected garden, upon a rank ruin

of cabbage-stalks, and one box tree that had been clipped

round long ago, like a pudding, and had a new growth at

the top of it, out of shape and of a different colour, as if

that part of the pudding had stuck to the saucepan and got

burnt. This was my homely thought, as I contemplated the

box-tree. There had been some light snow, overnight, and

it lay nowhere else to my knowledge; but, it had not quite

melted from the cold shadow of this bit of garden, and the

wind caught it up in little eddies and threw it at the window,

as if it pelted me for coming there.

I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in

the room, and that its other occupants were looking at me. I

could see nothing of the room except the shining of the fire

in the window glass, but I stiffened in all my joints with the

consciousness that I was under close inspection.

There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman.

Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they

somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and

humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that

the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admis-

sion 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 some-

body’s pleasure, and the most talkative of the ladies had to

speak quite rigidly to repress a yawn. This lady, whose name

Great Expectations

was Camilla, very much reminded me of my sister, with the

difference that she was older, and (as I found when I caught

sight of her) of a blunter cast of features. Indeed, when I

knew her better I began to think it was a Mercy she had any

features at all, so very blank and high was the dead wall of

her face.

‘Poor dear soul!’ said this lady, with an abruptness of

manner quite my sister’s. ‘Nobody’s enemy but his own!’

‘It would be much more commendable to be somebody

else’s enemy,’ said the gentleman; ‘far more natural.’

‘Cousin Raymond,’ observed another lady, ‘we are to love

our neighbour.’

‘Sarah Pocket,’ returned Cousin Raymond, ‘if a man is

not his own neighbour, who is?’

Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said

(checking a yawn), ‘The idea!’ But I thought they seemed to

think it rather a good idea too. The other lady, who had not

spoken yet, said gravely and emphatically, ‘Very true!’

‘Poor soul!’ Camilla presently went on (I knew they had

all been looking at me in the mean time), ‘he is so very

strange! Would anyone believe that when Tom’s wife died,

he actually could not be induced to see the importance

of the children’s having the deepest of trimmings to their

mourning? ‘Good Lord!’ says he, ‘Camilla, what can it sig-

nify 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

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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 fam-

ily.’ I told him that, without deep trimmings, the family was

disgraced. I cried about it from breakfast till dinner. I in-

jured my digestion. And at last he flung out in his violent

way, and said, with a D, ‘Then do as you like.’ Thank Good-

ness 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?’

Great Expectations

‘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 an-

swered 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 complex-

ion, 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

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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 opportu-

nity of observing him well.

‘Boy of the neighbourhood? Hey?’ said he.

‘Yes, sir,’ said I.

‘How do you come here?’

‘Miss Havisham sent for me, sir,’ I explained.

‘Well! Behave yourself. I have a pretty large experience

of boys, and you’re a bad set of fellows. Now mind!’ said he,

biting the side of his great forefinger as he frowned at me,

‘you behave yourself!’

With those words, he released me - which I was glad of,

for his hand smelt of scented soap - and went his way down-

stairs. I wondered whether he could be a doctor; but no, I

thought; he couldn’t be a doctor, or he would have a quieter

and more persuasive manner. There was not much time to

consider the subject, for we were soon in Miss Havisham’s

room, where she and everything else were just as I had left

them. Estella left me standing near the door, and I stood

there until Miss Havisham cast her eyes upon me from the

dressing-table.

‘So!’ she said, without being startled or surprised; ‘the

days have worn away, have they?’

‘Yes, ma’am. To-day is—‘

Great Expectations

‘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 win-

try branches of candles on the high chimneypiece faintly

lighted the chamber: or, it would be more expressive to say,

faintly troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and I dare say

had once been handsome, but every discernible thing in it

was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces.

The most prominent object was a long table with a table-

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cloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when

the house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne

or centrepiece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth;

it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was

quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow

expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like

a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy

bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if

some circumstances of the greatest public importance had

just transpired in the spider community.

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the

same occurrence were important to their interests. But, the

blackbeetles took no notice of the agitation, and groped

about the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they were

short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not on terms with

one another.

These crawling things had fascinated my attention and I

was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham

laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a

crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked

like the Witch of the place.

‘This,’ said she, pointing to the long table with her stick,

‘is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and

look at me here.’

With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the

table then and there and die at once, the complete realiza-

tion of the ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her

touch.

‘What do you think that is?’ she asked me, again pointing

Great Expectations

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 shoul-

der, ‘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. Accord-

ingly, I started at once, and she leaned upon my shoulder,

and we went away at a pace that might have been an imita-

tion (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 ap-

peared, 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 proceed-

ings, 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 polite-

ness, I would have stopped; but, Miss Havisham twitched

my shoulder, and we posted on - with a shame-faced con-

sciousness on my part that they would think it was all my

doing.

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‘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 re-

buff; and she murmured, as she plaintively contemplated

Miss Havisham, ‘Poor dear soul! Certainly not to be expect-

ed 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 vola-

tile I am obliged to take in the night. Raymond is a witness

what nervous jerkings I have in my legs. Chokings and ner-

vous 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

Great Expectations

thinking of you in the night - The idea!’ Here, a burst of

tears.

The Raymond referred to, I understood to be the gentle-

man present, and him I understood to be Mr. Camilla. He

came to the rescue at this point, and said in a consolato-

ry and complimentary voice, ‘Camilla, my dear, it is well

known that your family feelings are gradually undermin-

ing 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 say-

ing, ‘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 oth-

erwise, 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

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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. Ca-

milla.)

‘I have gone off into that state, hours and hours, on ac-

count of Matthew’s strange and inexplicable conduct, and

nobody has thanked me.’

‘Really I must say I should think not!’ interposed the

grave lady.

‘You see, my dear,’ added Miss Sarah Pocket (a blandly

vicious personage), ‘the question to put to yourself is, who

did you expect to thank you, my love?’

‘Without expecting any thanks, or anything of the sort,’

resumed Camilla, ‘I have remained in that state, hours and

hours, and Raymond is a witness of the extent to which I

have choked, and what the total inefficacy of ginger has

been, and I have been heard at the pianoforte-tuner’s across

the street, where the poor mistaken children have even sup-

posed 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 combina-

tions there.

When this same Matthew was mentioned, Miss Hav-

isham stopped me and herself, and stood looking at the

Great Expectations

speaker. This change had a great influence in bringing Ca-

milla’s chemistry to a sudden end.

‘Matthew will come and see me at last,’ said Miss Hav-

isham, 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 ob-

ject 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 kiss-

ing 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

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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 Hav-

isham 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

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