Great Expectations
as to the formation of new combinations there.
When this same Matthew was mentioned, Miss Havisham stopped me and
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 weaknesses of the rest.
While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still walked
with her 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, and that I saw
one now. As it stood open, and as I knew that 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 likeness of a battered saucepan.
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, exchanging a broad stare with a
pale young gentleman with red 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 young
fellow.
“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.
What 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 butted it into my
stomach.
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 hit
out at him and was going to hit out again, when he said, “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 a right to
consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on my attention. 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 against the wall. And then fell to
pulling off, not only his jacket and waistcoat, but his shirt too, in a
manner at once light-hearted, business-like, and bloodthirsty.
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 grey 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.
But, he was on his feet directly, and after sponging himself with a
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
strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he was always knocked
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 me at
last. He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record that 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, if 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
that 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.
Chapter XII.
My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young gentleman.
The more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale young gentleman
on his back in various stages of puffy and incrimsoned countenance, the
more certain it appeared that something would be done to me. I felt
that the pale young gentleman’s blood was on my head, and that the Law