Previous - Next

in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The
most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on
it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the
clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centrepiece of some kind
was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with
cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked
along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to
grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders with
blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if
some circumstances of the greatest public importance had just
transpired in the spider community.

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same
occurrence were important to their interests. But, the blackbeetles
took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a
ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of
hearing, and not on terms with one another.

These crawling things 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 crutch-headed stick on
which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place.

"This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is
where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me
here."

With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then
and there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly
waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.

"What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing with her
stick; "that, where those cobwebs are?"

"I can't guess what it is, ma'am."

"It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!"

She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and then said,
leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoulder, "Come, come,
come! Walk me, walk me!"

I made out from this, that the work I had to do, was to walk Miss
Havisham round and round the room. Accordingly, I started at once,
and she leaned upon my shoulder, and we went away at a pace that
might have been an imitation (founded on my first impulse under
that roof) of Mr. Pumblechook's chaise-cart.

She was not physically strong, and after a little time said,
"Slower!" Still, we went at an impatient fitful speed, and as we
went, she twitched the hand upon my shoulder, and worked her mouth,
and led me to believe that we were going fast because her thoughts
went fast. After a while she said, "Call Estella!" so I went out on
the landing and roared that name as I had done on the previous
occasion. When her light appeared, I returned to Miss Havisham, and
we started away again round and round the room.

If only Estella had come to be a spectator of our proceedings, I
should have felt sufficiently discontented; but, as she brought
with her the three ladies and the gentleman whom I had seen below,
I didn't know what to do. In my politeness, I would have stopped;

Previous - Next