---

Скачать книгу

---

said Joe, “well – no. No, he isn’t.”

      “Nephew?” said the strange man.

      “Well,” said Joe, with the same appearance of profound cogitation, “he is not – no, not to deceive you, he is not – my nephew.”

      “What is he?” asked the stranger.

      Mr. Wopsle expounded the ties between me and Joe.

      The strange man looked at nobody but me. He said nothing, until the glasses of rum and water were brought; and then he made his shot, and a most extraordinary shot it was.

      It was not a verbal remark, but it was addressed to me. He stirred his rum and water pointedly at me, and he tasted his rum and water pointedly at me. And he stirred it and he tasted it; not with a spoon that was brought to him, but with a file.

      He did this so that nobody but I saw the file; and when he had done it he wiped the file and put it in a breast-pocket. I knew it to be Joe’s file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the moment I saw the instrument. I sat gazing at him, spell-bound.

      “Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery,” said the strange man. “I think I’ve got a bright new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and if I have, the boy will have it.”

      He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded it in some crumpled paper, and gave it to me. “Yours!” said he. “Mind! Your own.”

      I thanked him, staring at him. He gave Joe good-night, and he gave Mr. Wopsle good-night (who went out with us), and he gave me only a look with his aiming eye.

      On the way home, if I had been in a humor for talking, the talk must have been all on my side, for Mr. Wopsle parted from us at the door of the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. But I could think of nothing else.

      My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented ourselves in the kitchen, and Joe told her about the bright shilling. “A bad one,[52] I’m sure,” said Mrs. Joe triumphantly, “Let’s look at it.”

      I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. “But what’s this?” said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the shilling and catching up the paper. “Two One—Pound notes?”

      Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was gone, I sat down on my usual stool and looked at my sister, feeling pretty sure that the man would not be there.

      Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that he, Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concerning the notes. Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and put them under some dried rose-leaves in a teapot on the top of a press in the state parlor. There they remained, a nightmare to me, many and many a night and day.

      Chapter 11

      At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham’s. Estella locked the gate it after admitting me, as she had done before, and again preceded me into the dark passage where her candle stood. She took no notice of me until she had the candle in her hand, when she looked over her shoulder, saying, “You are to come this way today,[53]” and took me to quite another part of the house.

      The passage was a long one. We traversed but one side of the square, however, and at the end of it she stopped, and put her candle down and opened a door. Here I found myself in a small paved courtyard. There was a clock in the outer wall of this house. Like the clock in Miss Havisham’s room, and like Miss Havisham’s watch, it had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

      We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room with a low ceiling, on the ground-floor at the back.

      As we were going with our candle along the dark passage, Estella stopped all of a sudden, and, facing round, said with her face quite close to mine —

      “Well?”

      “Well, miss?” I answered, almost falling over her and checking myself.

      She stood looking at me, and, of course, I stood looking at her.

      “Am I pretty?”

      “Yes; I think you are very pretty.”

      “Am I insulting?”

      “Not so much so as you were last time,” said I.

      “Not so much so?”

      “No.”

      She fired when she asked the last question, and she slapped my face with such force as she had, when I answered it.

      “Now?” said she. “You little coarse monster,[54] what do you think of me now?”

      “I shall not tell you.”

      “Why don’t you cry again, you little wretch?[55]”

      “Because I’ll never cry for you again,” said I.

      We went on our way up stairs after this episode; and, as we were going up, we met a gentleman groping his way down.

      “Whom have we here?” asked the gentleman, stopping and looking at me.

      “A boy,” said Estella.

      He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with an exceedingly large head, and a corresponding large hand. He took my chin in his large hand and turned up my face to have a look at me by the light of the candle. He was bald on the top of his head, and had bushy black eyebrows.

      “Boy of the neighborhood? Hey?” said he.

      “Yes, sir,” said I.

      “How do you come here?”

      “Miss Havisham sent for me, sir,” I explained.

      “Well! Behave yourself,” said he, biting the side of his great forefinger as he frowned at me, “you behave yourself![56]”

      With those words, he released me and went his way down stairs. There was not much time to consider the subject, for we were soon in Miss Havisham’s room, where she and everything else were just as I had left them. Estella left me standing near the door, and I stood there until Miss Havisham cast her eyes upon me from the dressing-table.

      “So!” she said, “the days have worn away, have they?”

      “Yes, ma’am. Today is – ”

      “There, there, there![57]” with the impatient movement of her fingers. “I don’t want to know. Are you ready to play?”

      “I don’t think I am, ma’am.”

      “Not at cards again?” she demanded, with a searching look.

      “Yes, ma’am; I could do that.”

      “Since you are unwilling to play, boy,” said Miss Havisham, impatiently, “are you willing to work?”

      I said I was quite willing.

      “Then go into that opposite room,” said she, pointing at the door behind me with her withered hand, “and wait there till I come.”

      I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated. From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on the table, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together.

      Black beetles had fascinated my attention, and I was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the witch.

      “This,” said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, “is where I will be laid when I am dead. They

---

Скачать книгу