Great Expectations
Chapter VIII.
Mr. Pumblechook’s premises in the High Street of the market town, were
of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of a
cornchandler and seedsman should be. It appeared to me that he must be
a very happy man indeed, to have so many little drawers in his shop;
and I wondered when I peeped into one or two on the lower tiers, and
saw the tied-up brown paper packets inside, whether the flower-seeds
and bulbs ever wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails, and
bloom.
It was in the early morning after my arrival that I entertained this
speculation. On the previous night, I had been sent straight to bed in
an attic with a sloping roof, which was so low in the corner where the
bedstead was, that I calculated the tiles as being within a foot of my
eyebrows. In the same early morning, I discovered a singular affinity
between seeds and corduroys. Mr. Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did
his shopman; and somehow, there was a general air and flavour about the
corduroys, so much in the nature of seeds, and a general air and
flavour about the seeds, so much in the nature of corduroys, that I
hardly knew which was which. The same opportunity served me for
noticing that Mr. Pumblechook appeared to conduct his business by
looking across the street at the saddler, who appeared to transact
_his_ business by keeping his eye on the coachmaker, who appeared to
get on in life by putting his hands in his pockets and contemplating
the baker, who in his turn folded his arms and stared at the grocer,
who stood at his door and yawned at the chemist. The watchmaker, always
poring over a little desk with a magnifying-glass at his eye, and
always inspected by a group of smock-frocks poring over him through the
glass of his shop-window, seemed to be about the only person in the
High Street whose trade engaged his attention.
Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o’clock in the parlour
behind the shop, while the shopman took his mug of tea and hunch of
bread and butter on a sack of peas in the front premises. I considered
Mr. Pumblechook wretched company. Besides being possessed by my
sister’s idea that a mortifying and penitential character ought to be
imparted to my diet,—besides giving me as much crumb as possible in
combination with as little butter, and putting such a quantity of warm
water into my milk that it would have been more candid to have left the
milk out altogether,—his conversation consisted of nothing but
arithmetic. On my politely bidding him Good-morning, he said,
pompously, “Seven times nine, boy?” And how should _I_ be able to
answer, dodged in that way, in a strange place, on an empty stomach! I
was hungry, but before I had swallowed a morsel, he began a running sum
that lasted all through the breakfast. “Seven?” “And four?” “And
eight?” “And six?” “And two?” “And ten?” And so on. And after each
figure was disposed of, it was as much as I could do to get a bite or a
sup, before the next came; while he sat at his ease guessing nothing,
and eating bacon and hot roll, in (if I may be allowed the expression)
a gorging and gormandizing manner.
For such reasons, I was very glad when ten o’clock came and we started
for Miss Havisham’s; though I was not at all at my ease regarding the
manner in which I should acquit myself under that lady’s roof. Within a
quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havisham’s house, which was of old
brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of the
windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were
rustily barred. There was a courtyard in front, and that was barred; so
we had to wait, after ringing the bell, until some one should come to
open it. While we waited at the gate, I peeped in (even then Mr.
Pumblechook said, “And fourteen?” but I pretended not to hear him), and
saw that at the side of the house there was a large brewery. No brewing
was going on in it, and none seemed to have gone on for a long long
time.
A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded “What name?” To which
my conductor replied, “Pumblechook.” The voice returned, “Quite right,”
and the window was shut again, and a young lady came across the
court-yard, with keys in her hand.
“This,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “is Pip.”
“This is Pip, is it?” returned the young lady, who was very pretty and
seemed very proud; “come in, Pip.”
Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him with the gate.
“Oh!” she said. “Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?”
“If Miss Havisham wished to see me,” returned Mr. Pumblechook,
discomfited.
“Ah!” said the girl; “but you see she don’t.”
She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr.
Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not
protest. But he eyed me severely,—as if _I_ had done anything to
him!—and departed with the words reproachfully delivered: “Boy! Let
your behaviour here be a credit unto them which brought you up by
hand!” I was not free from apprehension that he would come back to
propound through the gate, “And sixteen?” But he didn’t.
My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the courtyard.
It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every crevice. The
brewery buildings had a little lane of communication with it, and the
wooden gates of that lane stood open, and all the brewery beyond stood
open, away to the high enclosing wall; and all was empty and disused.
The cold wind seemed to blow colder there than outside the gate; and it
made a shrill noise in howling in and out at the open sides of the
brewery, like the noise of wind in the rigging of a ship at sea.
She saw me looking at it, and she said, “You could drink without hurt
all the strong beer that’s brewed there now, boy.”
“I should think I could, miss,” said I, in a shy way.
“Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn out sour, boy;
don’t you think so?”
“It looks like it, miss.”
“Not that anybody means to try,” she added, “for that’s all done with,
and the place will stand as idle as it is till it falls. As to strong
beer, there’s enough of it in the cellars already, to drown the Manor
House.”
“Is that the name of this house, miss?”
“One of its names, boy.”
“It has more than one, then, miss?”
“One more. Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, or Latin, or
Hebrew, or all three—or all one to me—for enough.”
“Enough House,” said I; “that’s a curious name, miss.”
“Yes,” she replied; “but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it
was given, that whoever had this house could want nothing else. They
must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think. But
don’t loiter, boy.”
Though she called me “boy” so often, and with a carelessness that was
far from complimentary, she was of about my own age. She seemed much
older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and
self-possessed; and she was as scornful of me as if she had been
one-and-twenty, and a queen.
We went into the house by a side door, the great front entrance had two
chains across it outside,—and the first thing I noticed was, that the
passages were all dark, and that she had left a candle burning there.
She took it up, and we went through more passages and up a staircase,
and still it was all dark, and only the candle lighted us.
At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, “Go in.”
I answered, more in shyness than politeness, “After you, miss.”
To this she returned: “Don’t be ridiculous, boy; I am not going in.”
And scornfully walked away, and—what was worse—took the candle with
her.
This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. However, the only
thing to be done being to knock at the door, I knocked, and was told
from within to enter. I entered, therefore, and found myself in a
pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of
daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressing-room, as I supposed
from the furniture, though much of it was of forms and uses then quite
unknown to me. But prominent in it was a draped table with a gilded
looking-glass, and that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady’s
dressing-table.
Whether I should have made out this object so soon if there had been no
fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. 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. Dresses, less splendid
than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about.
She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on,—the
other was on the table near her hand,—her veil was but half arranged,
her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay
with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some
flowers, and a Prayer-Book all confusedly heaped about the
looking-glass.
It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these things, though
I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. But I
saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been
white long ago, and had lost its lustre and was faded and yellow. I saw
that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and
like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her
sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure
of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose had
shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly
waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage
lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches
to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of
a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to
have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if
I could.
“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 was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of
the surrounding objects in detail, and 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?”
I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie
comprehended in the answer “No.”
“Do you know what I touch here?” she said, laying her hands, one upon
the other, on her left side.
“Yes, ma’am.” (It made me think of the young man.)
“What do I touch?”
“Your heart.”
“Broken!”
She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and
with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards she kept
her hands there for a little while, and slowly took them away as if
they were heavy.
“I am tired,” said Miss Havisham. “I want diversion, and I have done
with men and women. Play.”
I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that she
could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything in the
wide world more difficult to be done under the circumstances.
“I sometimes have sick fancies,” she went on, “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!”