Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter XI Page 2
while a hitch came into her upper lip, and tears overflowed.
"Raymond is a witness what ginger and sal volatile I am obliged to
have in my legs. Chokings and nervous jerkings, however, are
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
burst of tears.
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, 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
health would be much better 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.
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 has thanked
me."
"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
combinations there.
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
While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still
walked 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,
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
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,
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
"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.
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
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
"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
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
Although he did not look very healthy,--having pimples on his face,
and a breaking out at his mouth,--these dreadful preparations quite
appalled me. I judged him to be about my own age, but he was much
taller, and he had a way of spinning himself about that was full of
appearance. For the rest, he was a young gentleman in a gray suit
(when not denuded for battle), with his elbows, knees, wrists, and
heels considerably in advance of the rest of him as to
development.
My heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me with every
demonstration of mechanical nicety, and eyeing my anatomy as if he
were minutely choosing his bone. I never have been so surprised in
my life, as I was when I let out the first blow, and saw him lying
on his back, looking up at me with a bloody nose and his face
exceedingly fore-shortened.
great show of dexterity began squaring again. The second greatest
surprise I have ever had in my life was seeing him on his back
again, looking up at me out of a black eye.
His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to have no
down; but he would be up again in a moment, sponging himself or
drinking out of the water-bottle, with the greatest satisfaction in
seconding himself according to form, and then came at me with an
air and a show that made me believe he really was going to do for
the more I hit him, the harder I hit him; but he came up again and
again and again, until at last he got a bad fall with the back of
his head against the wall. Even after that crisis in our affairs,
he got up and turned round and round confusedly a few times, not
knowing where I was; but finally went on his knees to his sponge
and threw it up: at the same time panting out, "That means you have
won."
He seemed so brave and innocent, that although I had not proposed
the contest, I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. Indeed,
I go so far as to hope that I regarded myself while dressing as a
species of savage young wolf or other wild beast. However, I got
dressed, darkly wiping my sanguinary face at intervals, and I said,
"Can I help you?" and he said "No thankee," and I said "Good
afternoon," and he said "Same to you."
When I got into the courtyard, I found Estella waiting with the
keys. But she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had
kept her waiting; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as
though something had happened to delight her. Instead of going
straight to the gate, too, she stepped back into the passage, and
beckoned me.
"Come here! You may kiss me, you like."
I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have
gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt that the
kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might
have been, and it was worth nothing.
What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and what
with the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared home
the light on the spit of sand off the point on the marshes was
gleaming against a black night-sky, and Joe's furnace was flinging
a path of fire across the road.