Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗

(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.