“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