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

>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