'Great Expectations: Chapter VIII' hackernoonbooks charlesdickens
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.
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.
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?”
While we waited at the gate, I peeped in , 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. She saw me looking at it, and she said, “You could drink without hurt all the strong beer that’s brewed there now, boy.”“Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn out sour, boy; don’t you think so?”“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.
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. 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.
“Look at me,” said Miss Havisham. “You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?”“Do you know what I touch here?” she said, laying her hands, one upon the other, on her left side.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.
“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.” So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust.
“You say nothing of her,” remarked Miss Havisham to me, as she looked on. “She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What do you think of her?”“I think she is very proud,” I replied, in a whisper.“Anything else?”“I am not sure that I shouldn’t like to see her again, but I should like to go home now.”Saving for the one weird smile at first, I should have felt almost sure that Miss Havisham’s face could not smile.
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, spurned, offended, angry, sorry,—I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart—God knows what its name was,—that tears started to my eyes.
Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand gave her no right to bring me up by jerks.
But there were no pigeons in the dove-cot, no horses in the stable, no pigs in the sty, no malt in the storehouse, no smells of grains and beer in the copper or the vat. So, in the brewery itself,—by which I mean the large paved lofty place in which they used to make the beer, and where the brewing utensils still were. When I first went into it, and, rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near the door looking about me, I saw her pass among the extinguished fires, and ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead, as if she were going out into the sky.
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