Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter XI Page 1
At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham's, and my
hesitating ring at the gate brought out Estella. She locked 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, superciliously saying, "You are to come this way to-day,"
and took me to quite another part of the house.
The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the whole square
basement of the Manor House. We traversed but one side of the
square, however, and at the end of it she stopped, and put her
found myself in a small paved courtyard, the opposite side of
which was formed by a detached dwelling-house, that looked as if it
had once belonged to the manager or head clerk of the extinct
brewery. 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,
We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room
company in the room, and Estella said to me as she joined it, "You
are to go and stand there boy, till you are wanted." "There",
being the window, I crossed to it, and stood "there," in a very
uncomfortable state of mind, looking out.
It opened to the ground, and looked into a most miserable corner of
the neglected garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbage-stalks, and one
had a new growth at the top of it, out of shape and of a different
color, as if that part of the pudding had stuck to the saucepan
and got burnt. This was my homely thought, as I contemplated the
box-tree. There had been some light snow, overnight, and it lay
cold shadow of this bit of garden, and the wind caught it up in
little eddies and threw it at the window, as if it pelted me for
coming there.
I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in the room, and
that its other occupants were looking at me. I could see nothing of
the room except the shining of the fire in the window-glass, but I
stiffened in all my joints with the consciousness that I was under
close inspection.
There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before I had
been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to
me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them
pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs:
because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made
him or her out to be a toady and humbug.
They all had a listless and dreary air of waiting somebody's
pleasure, and the most talkative of the ladies had to speak quite
rigidly to repress a yawn. This lady, whose name was Camilla, very
much reminded me of my sister, with the difference that she was
older, and (as I found when I caught sight of her) of a blunter
cast of features. Indeed, when I knew her better I began to think
it was a Mercy she had any features at all, so very blank and high
quite my sister's. "Nobody's enemy but his own!"
"It would be much more commendable to be somebody else's enemy,"
said the gentleman; "far more natural."
"Cousin Raymond," observed anotlady, "we are to love our
neighbor."
"Sarah Pocket," returned Cousin Raymond, "if a man is not his own
neighbor, who is?"
Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said (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
"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!"
stopped all of a sudden, and, facing round, said in her taunting
manner, with her face quite close to mine,--
myself.
"Am I pretty?"
"Yes; I think you are very pretty."
"Am I insulting?"
"Not so much so as you were last time," said I.
"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
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,
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?"
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.
behind me with her withered hand, "and wait there till I come."
I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she
indicated. From 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
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
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 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 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
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. light appeared, I returned to Miss Havisham, and
we started away again round and round the room.
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 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!"
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,