I spent the night in a small room at Mr. Pumblechook’s house in the town. The next morning, we had breakfast together. It was a miserable meal. He gave me hardly any food and kept testing me on mathematics. "Seven times nine, boy?" he shouted. I was too hungry and nervous to answer in a strange place. But before I could eat a single bite, he asked another question. "And four? And eight? And six?" It went on like this through the whole breakfast, while he ate plenty of bacon and hot bread.
I was very glad when ten o’clock came and we started walking to Miss Havisham’s house. Within fifteen minutes, we arrived. The house was made of old, dark brick and had heavy iron bars on the windows. There was an empty courtyard in front, which was also locked behind heavy gates.
We rang the bell, and soon a young lady came across the courtyard with keys in her hand.
"This is Pip," said Mr. Pumblechook.
"Come in, Pip," said the young lady. She was very pretty, but she seemed very proud.
Mr. Pumblechook tried to step inside, but she quickly closed the gate on him. "Oh! Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?" she asked.
"If Miss Havisham wished to see me," he answered, looking annoyed.
"Well, she doesn’t," the girl said firmly. She locked the gate and left him standing in the street.
"Follow me, boy," she said. We walked across the courtyard. It was clean, but grass was growing between the stones. There was an old brewery next to the house, but no one had made beer there for a very long time. The winter wind blew coldly through the empty buildings. She told me the house was called Satis House, which meant "Enough House."
"When it was given that name, it meant the owner had everything and could want nothing else," she explained. "But don't wait around, boy." Although she was about my age, she acted like a proud queen and treated me like a servant.
We went into the house. The hallways were completely dark, so she carried a candle. At the end of a dark passage, we reached a door. "Go in," she commanded, and then she walked away, taking the light with her.
I knocked nervously, and a voice told me to enter. The room was large and well lit with many wax candles. There was no daylight at all. Sitting in an armchair next to a mirror was the strangest lady I had ever seen.
She was dressed in rich materials—satin, lace, and silk—all of white. She wore a long white veil, and she had beautiful bridal flowers in her hair. But her hair was completely white. Jewels sparkled on her neck and hands. She had not finished dressing; she wore only one white shoe, and half-packed trunks were lying on the floor.
As I looked closer, I noticed that everything in the room that should have been white had turned a faded yellow. The bride in the beautiful dress had withered away like the old flowers. She had shrunk to skin and bone, and her eyes looked dark and sunken. It was a frightening sight.
"Who is it?" asked the lady.
"Pip, ma'am. Mr. Pumblechook's boy. I have come to play."
I stepped closer to her. I noticed that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine. A clock on the wall had also stopped at exactly twenty minutes to nine.
"Look at me," said Miss Havisham. "Are you afraid of a woman who has not seen the sun since you were born?"
"No," I lied.
"Do you know what I touch here?" she asked, putting both hands over her left side.
"Your heart, ma'am," I answered.
"Broken!" she cried with a weird, sad smile. Then she sighed. "I am tired. I want some entertainment. Play."
I was too afraid and confused to play. I told her I was sorry, but the house was too new, strange, and sad for me.
"So new to him, so old to me," she whispered to herself. "So strange to him, so familiar to me." Then she turned her head and shouted, "Estella!"
The proud young girl came back into the room. Miss Havisham told her to play cards with me.
"With this boy?" Estella said with a look of disgust. "Why, he is a common working boy!"
I thought I heard Miss Havisham whisper, "Well? You can break his heart."
We sat down to play a simple card game. It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped a long time ago. The faded bridal dress looked like clothes for a dead person.
"He calls the cards by the wrong names!" Estella laughed scornfully during the game. "And look at his thick boots! What coarse, rough hands he has!"
I had never felt ashamed of my hands or boots before, but suddenly I felt terrible. Estella’s hatred for me was so strong that I began to hate myself, too. She won the game easily and threw the cards on the table. She looked at me as if I was a piece of dirt.
"What do you think of her?" Miss Havisham whispered in my ear.
"I think she is very proud," I whispered back. "And very pretty. But she is very insulting, and I would like to go home now."
"Come back again in six days," Miss Havisham said loudly. "Estella, take him downstairs and give him something to eat. Let him walk around."
Estella led me back down the dark stairs. The bright daylight outside surprised me. I felt like I had been in that strange, candlelit room for hours. She told me to wait in the courtyard. When she came back, she put some bread, meat, and a mug of beer on the ground. She did not hand the food to me; she gave it to me exactly as if I were a dog.
I felt so humiliated, hurt, and angry that tears filled my eyes. Estella saw my tears, and a cruel smile appeared on her face. She was happy that she had hurt me. Then she turned and walked away.
When she was gone, I hid behind a wooden gate and cried bitterly. I kicked the wall and pulled my hair. My sister had always treated me badly, but this was a completely different kind of pain.
After a while, I dried my eyes and ate the food. Then I walked around the empty, ruined brewery. Suddenly, I looked up at a high wooden beam in the dark building and saw a terrible vision. I imagined Miss Havisham hanging by her neck from the wood, wearing her faded yellow wedding dress. I ran away in terror, but when I looked back, there was nothing there. It was just a trick of my mind.
Finally, Estella came back with the keys to let me out.
"Why don't you cry?" she asked me, teasingly.
"Because I don't want to," I said.
"Yes, you do," she laughed. "You have been crying until your eyes are red, and you are going to cry again."
She pushed me out of the gate and locked it behind me. As I walked the four long miles back to our village, I could not stop thinking about my coarse hands and my thick boots. For the first time in my life, I felt deeply ashamed that I was just a common, poor boy.