This was very uncomfortable, and I was afraid. However, I knocked and entered. I found myself[19] in a large room. It was well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of daylight. It was a dressing-room, but in it was a draped table with a gilded looking-glass.
In an arm-chair, sat a very strange lady. 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. 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 on the table.
“Who is it?” said the lady.
“Pip, ma’am.”
“Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.”
A clock in the room stopped at twenty minutes to nine.
“Look at me,” said Miss Havisham. “You are not afraid of me?”
“No.”
“Do you know what I touch here?” she laid her hands, one upon the other, on her left side.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What do I touch?”
“Your heart.”
“Broken!”
She uttered the word with strong emphasis, and with a weird smile.
“I am tired,” said Miss Havisham. “I want diversion. Play. I sometimes have sick fancies. There, there!” with an impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand; “play, play, play!”
I was 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…”
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.”
As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I thought she was still talking to herself.
“Call Estella,” she repeated. “You can do that. Call Estella. At the door.”
I called Estella. Soon 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[20]!”
Miss Havisham answered,
“Well? You can break his heart.”
“What do you play, boy?” asked Estella, with the greatest disdain.
“Nothing but beggar my neighbor[21], miss.”
“Beggar him[22],” said Miss Havisham to Estella.
So we sat down to cards. The lady was corpse-like, as we played.
“What coarse hands he has, this boy!” said Estella with disdain. “And what thick boots!”
Her contempt for me was very strong. She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, and she called me 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.
“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 want to go home.”
“And never see her again, though she is so pretty?”
“I am not sure. But I want to go home now.”
“You will go soon,” said Miss Havisham, aloud. “Play.”
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. 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. Estella opened the side entrance.
“Wait here, you boy,” said Estella.
She 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. She did not look at me. I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry. Tears started to my eyes. The girl looked at me with a quick delight, then she left me.
I looked about me for a place to hide my face in and cried. As I cried, I kicked the wall.
Then I noticed Estella. She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the gate upon me. I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook’s. Then I walked to our forge. I remembered that I was a common laboring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick.
Chapter 8
When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about Miss Havisham’s. She asked many questions. Then old Pumblechook came over at tea-time.
“Well, boy,” Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was seated in the chair of honor[23] by the fire. “How did you get on up town?[24]”
I answered, “Pretty well, sir,” and my sister shook her fist at me.
“Pretty well?” Mr. Pumblechook repeated. “Pretty well is no answer. Tell us what you mean by pretty well, boy?”
“I mean pretty well,” I answered.
My sister was ready to hit me. I had no defence, for Joe was busy in the forge. Mr. Pumblechook interposed,
“No! Don’t lose your temper. Leave this lad to me, ma’am; leave this lad to me.”
Then Mr. Pumblechook turned me towards him and said,
“Boy! Tell me about Miss Havisham.”
“She is very tall and dark,” I told him.
“Good!” said Mr. Pumblechook conceitedly. “Now, boy! What was she doing, when you went in today?”
“She was sitting,” I answered, “in a black velvet coach.”
Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another and both repeated,
“In a black velvet coach?”
“Yes,” said I. “And Miss Estella – that’s her niece, I think – brought her some cake and wine.”
“Was anybody else there?” asked Mr. Pumblechook.
“Four dogs,” said I.
“Large or small?”
“Immense,”