Great Expectations / Большие надежды

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.

“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 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?”

“No.”

“Do you know what I touch here?” she said, laying her hands, one upon the other, on her left side.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What do I touch?”

“Your heart.”

“Broken!”

She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and with a weird smile.

“I am tired,” said Miss Havisham. “I want diversion. Play. I sometimes have sick fancies, 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!”

I stood looking at Miss Havisham.

“Are you sullen and obstinate?”

“No, ma’am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can’t play just now. 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.[32]”

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 and to roar out Estella’s name, was almost as bad as playing to order.[33] 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 “Your own, one day, my dear, and you will use it well. Let me see you play cards with this boy.”

“With this boy? Why, he is a common laboring boy![34]”

Miss Havisham answered, “Well? You can break his heart.”

“What do you play, boy?” asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain.

“Nothing but beggar my neighbor,[35] miss.”

“Beggar him,[36]” said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been ragged. So the lady sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards.

“What coarse hands he has, this boy!” said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. “And what thick boots!”

Her contempt for me was very strong. She won the game, and I dealt. She denounced me for a stupid, clumsy laboring-boy.

“You say nothing of her,” remarked Miss Havisham to me. “She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What do you think of her?”

“I don’t like to say,” I stammered.

“Tell me in my ear,” said Miss Havisham, bending down.

“I think she is very proud,” I replied, in a whisper.

“Anything else?”

“I think she is very pretty.”

“Anything else?”

“I think she is very insulting.”

“Anything else?”

“I think I should like to go home.”

“And never see her again, though she is so pretty?”

“I am not sure that I shouldn’t like to see her again, but I should like to go home now.”

“You shall go soon,” said Miss Havisham, aloud. “Play the game out.[37]”

I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. She threw the cards down on the table.

“When shall I have you here again?” said Miss Havisham. “Let me think.”

I was beginning to remind her that today was Wednesday.

“I know nothing of days of the week; I know nothing of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat. Go, Pip.”

I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up, and she stood it in the place where we had found it. She opened the side entrance.

“You are to wait here, you boy,” said Estella; and disappeared and closed the door.

She came back, with some bread and meat and a little mug of beer. She put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the bread and meat without looking at me, as insolently as if I were a dog in disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, offended, angry, sorry. Tears started to my eyes. The moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me with a quick delight. This gave me power to keep them back and to look at her. She gave a contemptuous toss and left me.

But when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide my face in and cried. As I cried, I kicked the wall, and took a hard twist at my hair.

Then I noticed Estella. She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me.

“Why don’t you cry?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“You do,” said she. “You have been crying, and you are near crying again now.”

She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the gate upon me. I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook’s, and was immensely glad to find him not at home. So on what day I was wanted at Miss Havisham’s again, I walked to our forge, remembering that I was a common laboring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick.

Chapter 9

When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about Miss Havisham’s, and asked a number of questions. I felt convinced that if I described Miss Havisham’s as my eyes had seen it, I should not be understood. Consequently, I said as little as I could.

The worst of it was that that old Pumblechook came gaping over in his chaise-cart at tea-time, to have the details divulged to him.

“Well, boy,” Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was seated in the chair of honor[38] by the fire. “How did you get on up town?[39]”

I answered, “Pretty well, sir,” and my sister shook her fist at me.

“Pretty well?” Mr. Pumblechook repeated. “Pretty well is no answer. Tell us what you mean by pretty well, boy?”

I reflected for some time, and then answered as if I had discovered a new idea, “I mean pretty well.”

My sister with an exclamation of impatience was going to fly at me, – I had no shadow of defence, for Joe was busy in the forge – when Mr. Pumblechook interposed with “No! Don’t lose your temper. Leave this lad to me, ma’am; leave this lad to me.” Mr. Pumblechook then turned me towards him, as if he were going to cut my hair, and said,

“First (to get our thoughts in order): Forty-three pence?[40]”

To which I replied, after a long interval of reflection, “I don’t know.” And I was so aggravated that I almost doubt if I did know.

Mr. Pumblechook said, “Is forty-three pence seven and sixpence three fardens, for instance?[41]”

“Yes!” said I. The answer spoilt his joke, and brought him to a dead stop.

“Boy! What like is Miss Havisham?[42]” Mr. Pumblechook began again when he had recovered; folding his arms tight on his chest and applying the screw.

“Very tall and dark,” I told him.

“Is she, uncle?” asked my sister.

Mr. Pumblechook winked assent; from which I at once inferred that he had never seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing of the kind.

“Good!” said Mr. Pumblechook. (“This is the way to have him,[43] I think, Mum!”)

“I am sure, uncle,” returned Mrs. Joe, “I wish you had him always; you know so well how to deal with him.”

“Now, boy! What was she a doing of, when you went in today?” asked Mr. Pumblechook.

“She was sitting,” I answered, “in a black velvet coach.”

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another – as they well might – and both repeated, “In a black velvet coach?”

“Yes,” said I. “And Miss Estella – that’s her niece, I think – handed her in cake and wine at the coach-window, on a gold plate. And we all had cake and wine on gold plates. And I got up behind the coach to eat mine, because she told me to.”

“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]”