Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (speed reading book TXT) 📕

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 eating bacon and hot

roll, in (if I may be allowed the expression) a gorging and

gormandizing 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

courtyard 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 courtyard, 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. Pumblechook,

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 behavior here be a credit unto them which brought you up

by hand!” I was not free from apprehension that he would come back

to propound through the gate, “And sixteen?” But he didn’t.

My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the

courtyard. It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every

crevice. The brewery buildings had a little 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. 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 carelessness 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 scornful 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 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 entered, 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

table 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 jewels 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, and a

Prayer-Book all confusedly heaped about the looking-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 within 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 impossible 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.

“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 enormous 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 reader, 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 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 unknown house,

bawling Estella to a scornful young lady neither visible nor

responsive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty 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