I often thought about telling Joe that I'd stolen the food, but I never did. He called us "ever the best of friends." How could I disappoint him?
One evening about a year later, we were sitting by the kitchen fire waiting for my sister to come home. She burst through the door with Joe's uncle, Mr. Pumblechook.
"If this boy isn't grateful tonight, he'll never be," she said excitedly. "Miss Havisham wants Pip to go play at her house."
"Miss Havisham who lives uptown?" asked Joe.
"Is there any other?"
I'd heard that Miss Havisham was an immensely rich and grim lady, who lived a secluded life in a large, dismal house barricaded against robbers.
"Well, I wonder how she knows Pip," said Joe.
"Who said she knew him?" answered my sister. "It's Uncle Pumblechook who made the arrangements. This boy's fortune may be made by going to Miss Havisham's!"
Mr. Pumblechook beamed.
"But here I am wasting time talking when Uncle Pumblechook is waiting and this boy's filthy from head to toe." My sister grabbed a tub of water and started scrubbing me. Then she dressed me in my tightest suit and sent me off with Mr. Pumblechook for the night.
"God bless you, Pip!" cried Joe as we rode away.
The next morning Mr. Pumblechook took me to Miss Havisham's old brick house. Some of the windows had been sealed up, and those on the lower floor were covered with bars. While we waited at the gate, I saw there was a large, abandoned brewery at the side of the house. A girl came across the courtyard and unlocked the gate.
"This," said Mr. Pumblechook "is Pip."
"Come in, Pip," said the girl, who was very pretty and seemed quite haughty.
Mr. Pumblechook was also coming in when she stopped him with the gate. "Oh!" she said. "Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?"
"If Miss Havisham wishes to see me," said Mr. Pumblechook.
"Ah! But you see, she doesn't."
She said it in such a final way that Mr. Pumblechook could not protest. But he eyed me severely as if I had done something to him.
I looked at the abandoned brewery as we crossed the courtyard.
"Don't loiter, boy," snapped the girl. Though she called me "boy," she was about my age. She was as scornful of me as if she were 21 and a queen.
Since the great front entrance had two chains across it, we went into the house by a side door. The first thing I noticed was that the passages were all dark. The girl picked up a candle and led me upstairs to the door of a room.
"Go in."
"After you, miss."
"Don't be ridiculous, boy. I'm not going in." She walked away, taking the candle with her.
I was half afraid, but I knocked on the door and a voice told me to enter. I found myself in a lady's dressing room well-lit with candles. No glimpse of daylight was to be found. And in an armchair sat the strangest lady I have ever seen.
She was dressed in rich white fabrics—satin, lace, and silk. In her hair she wore a wedding veil and flowers like a bride, but her hair was white. I saw that she hadn't quite finished dressing; her handkerchief, gloves, some flowers, and a prayer book all lay in a heap on her dressing table. I also began to realize that everything that should have been white was now faded and yellow, and the bride had withered like the flowers.
"Come here," said Miss Havisham. "Let me look at you."
It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I noticed her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine. A clock in the room had also stopped at that time.
"Look at me," she said. "You're not afraid of a woman who hasn't seen the sun for years?"
"No," I lied.
"Do you know what I touch here?" She laid her hands on her left side.
"Your heart?"
"Broken!" She uttered the word with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. "I sometimes have strange fancies, and I have the strange fancy to see someone play, so play, play, play!"
Nothing could have been harder for me at that moment. We stared at each other until she said, "What's wrong? Are you stubborn?"
"No, ma'am. I'm very sorry for you and sorry I can't play now. If you complain I know I'll get in trouble with my sister. But it's so strange here, so melancholy . . ."
"So strange to him," she muttered. "So familiar to me. So melancholy to us both. Call Estella."
I left the room to call the girl. She answered at last, and her light came along the passage like a star. Miss Havisham beckoned Estella to come near. She picked up a jewel from the table and held it against the girl's pretty brown hair. "Yours one day, my dear, and you will use it well. Let me see you play cards with this boy."
"With this boy? Why, he's a common laboring boy!"
I thought I overheard Miss Havisham's answer, but it seemed so strange: "Well, you can break his heart."
So we sat down to play cards, and I began to understand that everything in the room, like the watch and the clock, had stopped a long time ago. Miss Havisham sat as still as a corpse while we played.
"What rough hands he has!" said Estella before our first game was over. "And what thick boots!" When I misdealt the cards in our next game, she called me a stupid, clumsy laboring boy.
"She says many bad things about you," said Miss Havisham, "but you say nothing about her. What do you think of her?"
I didn't want to say it out loud, so I whispered in Miss Havisham's ear, "I think she's very haughty and very pretty and very insulting. I'd like to go home."
"And never see her again though she is so pretty?"
"I'm not sure about that, but I'd like to go home now."
Miss Havisham made us finish the game and told me to come back in a week. Then she told Estella to feed me. While I waited for her in the courtyard, I took the opportunity to look at my rough hands and thick boots. They had never troubled me before, but now they did.
Estella returned with some food, which she handed to me as if I were a dog in disgrace.
I was so humiliated and angry that tears came to my eyes.
Estella looked at me with delight at almost making me cry. This gave me the power to control myself, but as soon as she left, I wept.
When I recovered, I explored the abandoned brewery until I saw Estella coming to let me out of the courtyard.
She opened the gate and stood holding it. "Why don't you cry?" she asked.
"Because I don't want to."
"Yes, you do. You're almost crying now."
She laughed cruelly, pushed me out the gate, and shut it behind me.