“Was anybody else there?” asked Mr. Pumblechook.
“Four dogs,” said I.
“Large or small?”
“Immense,” said I. “And they fought for veal-cutlets out of a silver basket.”
Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another again, in utter amazement. I was perfectly frantic and would have told them anything.
“Where was this coach, in the name of gracious?[44]” asked my sister.
“In Miss Havisham’s room.” They stared again. “But there weren’t any horses to it.”
“Can this be possible, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe. “What can the boy mean?”
“I’ll tell you, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “My opinion is, it’s a sedan-chair.[45] She’s flighty, you know – very flighty – quite flighty enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair.”
“Did you ever see her in it, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe.
“How could I,” he returned, “when I never see her in my life?”
“Goodness, uncle! And yet you have spoken to her?”
“Why, don’t you know,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “that when I have been there, I have been took up to the outside of her door, and the door has stood ajar, and she has spoke to me that way. Don’t say you don’t know that, Mum. But the boy went there to play. What did you play at, boy?”
“We played with flags,” I said.
“Flags!” echoed my sister.
“Yes,” said I. “Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red one, and Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with little gold stars, out at the coach-window. And then we all waved our swords and hurrahed.”
“Swords!” repeated my sister. “Where did you get swords from?”
“Out of a cupboard,” said I. “And I saw pistols in it – and jam – and pills. And there was no daylight in the room, but it was all lighted up with candles.”
“That’s true, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave nod. “That’s the state of the case, for that much I’ve seen myself.” And then they both stared at me, and I stared at them.
Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all round the kitchen in helpless amazement; but only as regarded him – not in the least as regarded the other two. Towards Joe, and Joe only, I considered myself a young monster. They had no doubt that Miss Havisham would “do something” for me. My sister stood out for “property.” Mr. Pumblechook was in favour of a handsome premium[46] for schooling.
After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my sister was washing up, I went into the forge to Joe, and remained by him until he had done for the night. Then I said, “Before the fire goes out, Joe, I should like to tell you something.”
“Should you, Pip?” said Joe. “Then tell me. What is it, Pip?”
“Joe,” said I, taking hold of his shirt sleeve, and twisting it between my finger and thumb, “you remember all that about Miss Havisham’s?”
“Remember?” said Joe. “I believe you! Wonderful!”
“It’s a terrible thing, Joe; it isn’t true.”
“What are you telling of, Pip?” cried Joe, falling back in the greatest amazement. “You don’t mean to say it’s – ”
“Yes I do; it’s lies, Joe.”
“But not all of it?” I stood shaking my head. “But at least there were dogs, Pip? Come, Pip,” said Joe, “at least there were dogs?”
“No, Joe.”
“A dog?” said Joe. “A puppy? Come?”
“No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind. It’s terrible, Joe; isn’t it?”
“Terrible?” cried Joe. “Awful! What possessed you?”
“I don’t know what possessed me, Joe,” I replied, letting his shirt sleeve go, and sitting down in the ashes at his feet, hanging my head; “but I wish my boots weren’t so thick nor my hands so coarse.”
And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I hadn’t been able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, who were so rude to me, and that there had been a beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s who was dreadfully proud, and that she had said I was common, and that I knew I was common, and that I wished I was not common, and that the lies had come of it somehow, though I didn’t know how.
“There’s one thing you may be sure of, Pip,” said Joe, after some rumination, “namely, that lies is lies. Don’t you tell more of them, Pip. That isn’t the way to get out of being common, old chap. But you are uncommon in some things. You’re uncommon small. There was a flag, perhaps?”
“No, Joe.”
“I’m sorry there wasn’t a flag, Pip. Look here, Pip, at what is said to you by a true friend. Don’t tell more lies, Pip, and live well and die happy.”
“You are not angry with me, Joe?”
“No, old chap. But when you go up stairs to bed, Pip, please think about my words. That’s all, old chap, and never do it more.”
When I got up to my little room and said my prayers, I did not forget Joe’s recommendation. I thought how Joe and my sister were sitting in the kitchen, and how I had come up to bed from the kitchen, and how Miss Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above the level of such common doings.[47]
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
Chapter 10
Of course there was a public-house[48] in the village, and of course Joe liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict orders from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen,[49] that evening, on my way from school, and bring him home. To the Three Jolly Bargemen, therefore, I directed my steps.
There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off.
It was Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather sadly at these records; but as my business was with Joe and not with him, I merely wished him good evening, and passed into the common room at the end of the passage, where there was a bright large kitchen fire, and where Joe was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. Wopsle and a stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with “Halloa, Pip, old chap!” and the moment he said that, the stranger turned his head and looked at me.
He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen before. His head was all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, as if he were taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He had a pipe in his mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly blowing all his smoke away and looking hard at me all the time, nodded. So, I nodded, and then he nodded again.
“You were saying,” said the strange man, turning to Joe, “that you were a blacksmith.”
“Yes. I said it, you know,” said Joe.
“What’ll you drink, Mr. – ? You didn’t mention your name, by the way.”
Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it. “What’ll you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense?[50]”
“Well,” said Joe, “to tell you the truth, I am not much in the habit of drinking at anybody’s expense but my own.”
“Habit? No,” returned the stranger, “but once and away, and on a Saturday night too. Come!”
“I don’t want to spoil the company,” said Joe. “Rum.”
“Rum,” repeated the stranger.
“Rum,” said Mr. Wopsle.
“Three Rums!” cried the stranger, calling to the landlord.
“This other gentleman,” observed Joe, by way of introducing Mr. Wopsle, “is our clerk at church.”
“Aha!” said the stranger, quickly. “The lonely church, right out on the marshes, with graves round it!”
“That’s it,” said Joe.
The stranger put his legs up on the settle. He wore a flapping broad-brimmed traveller’s hat, and under it a handkerchief tied over his head in the manner of a cap: so that he showed no hair. As he looked at the fire, I thought I saw a cunning expression, followed by a half-laugh, come into his face.
“I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems a solitary country towards the river.”
“Most marshes is solitary,” said Joe.
“No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gypsies, now, or tramps of any sort, out there?”
“No,” said Joe; “none but a runaway convict now and then.[51] Eh, Mr. Wopsle?”
Mr. Wopsle assented; but not warmly.
The stranger looked at me again – still cocking his eye, as if he were taking aim at me with his invisible gun – and said, “He’s a nice boy. What is his name?”
“Pip,” said Joe.
“Son of yours?”
“Well,” said Joe, “well – no. No, he isn’t.”
“Nephew?” 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 nephew.”
“What is he?” asked the stranger.
Mr. Wopsle expounded the ties between me and Joe.
The strange man looked at nobody but me. He said nothing, 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 it was 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-bound.
“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 will 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. 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.
On the way home, if I had been in a humor for talking, the talk must have been all on my side, for Mr. Wopsle parted 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 could think of nothing else.
My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented ourselves in the kitchen, and Joe told her about the bright shilling. “A bad one,[52] I’m sure,” said Mrs. Joe triumphantly, “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?”
Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was gone, I sat down on my usual stool and looked 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 a teapot on the top of a press in the state parlor. There they remained, a nightmare to me, many and many a night and day.
Chapter 11
At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham’s. Estella locked the gate 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, saying, “You are to come this way today,[53]” and took me to quite another part of the house.
The passage was a long one. 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 I found myself in a small paved courtyard. 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.
As we were going with our candle along the dark passage, Estella stopped all of a sudden, and, facing round, said 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,[54] what do you think of me now?”
“I shall not tell you.”
“Why don’t you cry again, you little wretch?[55]”
“Because I’ll never cry for you again,” said I.
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 bald on the top of his head, and had bushy black eyebrows.
“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,” said he, biting the side of his great forefinger as he frowned at me, “you behave yourself![56]”
With those words, he released me and went his way down stairs. 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, “the days have worn away, have they?”
“Yes, ma’am. Today is – ”
“There, there, there![57]” with the impatient movement of her fingers. “I don’t want to know. Are you ready to play?”
“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.”
“Since you are unwilling to play, boy,” said Miss Havisham, impatiently, “are you willing to work?”
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. The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on the table, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together.
Black beetles 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 stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the witch.
“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.”
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![58]”
She was not strong, and after a little time said, “Slower!” 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.
Estella brought with her the three ladies and the gentleman, I didn’t know what to do.
“Dear Miss Havisham,” said a guest. “How well you look!”
“I do not,” returned Miss Havisham. “I am yellow skin and bone. And how are you, Camilla?” said Miss Havisham.
“Thank you, Miss Havisham,” she returned, “I am as well as can be expected.”
Miss Havisham and I had never stopped all this time, but kept going round and round the room.
“Matthew[59] couldnot come,” said Camilla.
“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[60] there! And Georgiana’s[61] there! Now you all know where to take your stations when you come to feast upon me when you come to feast upon me.[62] And now go!”