Great Expectations Vol.2 (English)

Great Expectations Vol.2

Les Grandes Espérances Vol.2

(English)

Author: Charles Dickens 1861

Translator: Charles Bernard-Derosne 1896

Translator/Editor: Nik Marcel 2016

English translated from French.

Copyright © 2018 Nik Marcel

All rights reserved.

A Bilingual (Dual-Language) Project

2Language Books

Great Expectations Vol.2

Chapter 1

On the appointed day, I went to Miss Havisham’s place. I rang the bell with considerable hesitation, and Estella appeared.

She locked the gate after making me enter; and, like the first time, she preceded me into the dark corridor where the candle was burning.

She took no notice of me until she had the light in her hand. Then she said to me, “You are to come this way today.”

She took me into a part of the house that was completely unknown to me.

The corridor was very long, and seemed to go all the way around Manor House.

At one end she stopped, put her candle down, and opened a door.

Here, the daylight reappeared, and I found myself in a small paved courtyard, the opposite side of which was occupied by a detached dwelling that must have belonged to the manager of the brewery.

There was a clock on the outer wall of this house.

Like the clock in Miss Havisham’s room, and like Miss Havisham’s watch, this clock had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

We entered by a door that was open.

There were several people in the room. Estella joined them while saying to me, “You go and stay there, boy, until you are wanted.”

‘There’ was the window. I remained ‘there’, in a very uncomfortable state of mind, looking out.

The window looked out over a miserable and much neglected corner of the garden.

A little snow had fallen during the night. Everywhere else, it had disappeared, but there, it had not yet completely melted.

I noticed that my arrival had stopped the conversation, and that the people who were gathered in this room had their eyes fixed on me.

There were three ladies and one gentleman in the room.

One lady, whose name was Camilla, reminded me of my sister.

“Poor dear soul!” said this lady. “Every man is his own worst enemy!”

“It would be much more reasonable to be the enemy of someone else,” said the gentleman; “far more natural!”

“Cousin Raymond,” observed another lady, “we must love our neighbour.”

“Sarah Pocket,” retorted Cousin Raymond, “if a man is not his own neighbour, then who is?”

Miss Pocket started to laugh. Camilla also laughed, and said, while holding back a yawn, “What a crazy idea!”

The other lady, who had not yet spoken, said with emphasis and gravity, “It is true! It is of course true!”

The sound of a distant bell, mixed with the echo of a call coming from the passage by which I had come, interrupted the conversation.

“Let’s go, boy!” said Estella.

When I turned around, they all looked at me with the utmost contempt, and, as I went out, I heard Sarah Pocket say, “I am sure of it! And after that?”

And Camilla added, with indignation, “Has anyone ever seen such a thing?! What a crazy idea!”

As we were making our way along the dark passage, Estella stopped all of a sudden. She said in a mocking tone, while putting her face close to mine, “Well?”

“Well, miss?” I said, stepping back.

She was looking at me, and I was also looking at her, of course.

“Am I pretty?”

“Yes; I find you very pretty.”

“Am I proud?”

“Not as much as the last time,” I said.

“Not as much?”

“No.”

She hit me in the face has hard as she could.

“Now,” she said, “you nasty little monster, what do you think of me?”

“I will not tell you.”

“Because you are going to tell up there… Is that it?”

“No,” I responded, “that is not it.”

“Why don’t you cry, you little wretch?”

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

It was the most false declaration that has ever been made.

We continued on our way; and, as we were going up, we met a gentleman groping his way down.

“Who is there?” demanded the gentleman.

“A boy,” said Estella.

He was a fat man with a brown complexion, a large head, and very large hands.

“You are from around here?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I responded.

“Why do you come here?”

“It is Miss Havisham who has sent for me, sir.”

“Good. Behave yourself. I know boys.”

With that, he continued down the stairs.

I wondered if he was not a doctor; but no, I thought; he cannot be a doctor. A doctor would have more pleasant manners.

I did not have much to reflect on the subject, for we soon found ourselves in Miss Havisham’s room, where she and all the objects that surrounded her were exactly as I had left them.

Estella left me standing near the door, and I remained there until Miss Havisham cast her eyes upon me.

“So then,” she said, without the least surprise, “the six days have passed?”

“Yes, ma’am. Today is…”

“There, there, there!” she said, with her impatient movement of fingers. “I do not need to know. Are you ready to play?”

“I don’t think so, ma’am,” I said.

“Not even at cards?” she demanded, with a penetrating look.

“Yes, ma’am; I can do that, if it is necessary.”

“Since this house seems old and dreary to you, boy,” said Miss Havisham, impatiently, “and since you do not want to play, do you want to work?”

I said that I would very much like to work.

“Then go into that room,” she said, pointing to a door that was behind me, “and wait for me there.”

I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room that she indicated to me.

The daylight did not penetrate into that room any more than the other one, and there prevailed a musty smell that was oppressive.

A fire had been recently lit in the old fireplace, but it was more disposed to go out than to burn, and the smoke seemed even colder than the air.

Several candle ends placed on a shelf faintly lit the room.

It was spacious, and I dare to assert that it had been beautiful; but all the objects that could be discerned were covered in dust and falling to pieces.

The most prominent object was a long table covered with a tablecloth, as if the party that was being prepared in the house had stopped at the same time as the clocks.

An ornament of some kind was occupying the centre of the table, but it was so heavily covered with cobwebs that one could not make out its form.

I also heard the mice that were running behind the wooden panels, as if they had been under the influence of some great event; but the beetles took no notice of it, and groped their way along the floor.

These crawling creatures had captured my attention, and I was looking at them from a distance, when Miss Havisham put one of her hands on my shoulder. She was also holding a cane, on which she was leaning.

“This here,” she said, pointing to the table with the end of her cane, “this is where I will be displayed after my death. People will come and look at me here.”

“What do you think of the object that is in the middle of that big table?” she asked me, again pointing with her stick. “There, where you see cobwebs.”

“I do not know what it is, ma’am.”

“It is a great cake. It is a wedding cake. It is mine!”

She looked around the room, without removing her hand from my shoulder.

“Come… come… come! Walk me… walk me!” she said.

I made out from this that the work I had to do was to walk Miss Havisham all around the room.

Consequently, we started to walk.

She was not physically strong, and after a short while, said, “More slowly!”

Still, we continued to walk at a reasonable pace.

She kept her hand resting heavily on my shoulder.

After a while, she said, “Call Estella!”

I went out on the landing and shouted that name, as I had done the first time.

When her light appeared, I returned to Miss Havisham’s side, and we started to walk again.

If Estella had been the only spectator, I would have felt sufficiently humiliated; but as she brought with her the three ladies and the gentleman whom I had seen below, I did not know what to do.

“Dear Miss Havisham,” said Miss Sarah Pocket. “You look well!”

“That is not true,” said Miss Havisham. “I am yellow, and nothing more than skin and bones.”

Camilla brightened upon seeing Miss Pocket receive this rebuff; and she murmured, as she contemplated Miss Havisham, “Poor dear soul! Certainly, we should not expect her to look well, the poor creature. What a crazy idea!”

“And you, how are you getting on these days?” Miss Havisham asked Camilla.

As we very close to Camilla, and I was going to take advantage of that to stop, but Miss Havisham did not want to. So, we continued on, and I felt that I was very irritating to Camilla.

“Thank you, Miss Havisham,” she replied, “I am as well as I can hope to be.”

“What do you mean? What is the matter with you?” asked Miss Havisham, with a surprising sharpness.

“Nothing worth mentioning,” replied Camilla. “I do not want to be overdramatic, but I thought of you all night.”

“Then don’t think of me,” retorted Miss Havisham.

“That is easier said than done!” remarked Camilla tenderly, while her upper lip trembled and her tears flowed abundantly.

“Raymond knows how much ginger I have been obliged to take at night, and how many nervous movements I have experienced in my legs.

However, all that is nothing when I think of those whom I love.

If I could be less affectionate and less sensitive, I would have a better digestion and nerves of steel.

I would indeed like that it be so, but as for no longer thinking of you during the night… what a crazy idea!”

Here, she burst into tears.

I understood that the Raymond in question was none other than the gentleman present, and that he was at the same time Mr Camilla.

He came to the rescue of his wife, and said to her by way of consolation, “Camilla, my dear, it is a well-known fact that your family feelings are undermining you, to the point of making one of your legs shorter than the other.”

“I did not know,” said the grave lady, whose voice I had only heard once, “that to think of a person gave you rights over that same person, my dear.”

Miss Sarah Pocket kept repeating, “No, actually, my dear. Hmm! Hmm!”

“Thinking is an easy enough thing to do,” said the grave lady.

“What is easier?” acknowledged Miss Sarah Pocket.

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