It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange thing happened
to my fancy. I thought it a strange thing then, and I thought it a
stranger thing long afterwards. I turned my eyes--a little dimmed by
looking up at the frosty light--towards a great wooden beam in a low
nook of the building near me on my right hand, and I saw a figure
hanging there by the neck. A figure all in yellow white, with but
one shoe to the feet; and it hung so, that I could see that the faded
trimmings of the dress were like earthy paper, and that the face was
Miss Havisham's, with a movement going over the whole countenance as if
she were trying to call to me. In the terror of seeing the figure,
and in the terror of being certain that it had not been there a moment
before, I at first ran from it, and then ran towards it. And my terror
was greatest of all when I found no figure there.
Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, the sight of
people passing beyond the bars of the court-yard gate, and the reviving
influence of the rest of the bread and meat and beer, would have brought
me round. Even with those aids, I might not have come to myself as soon
as I did, but that I saw Estella approaching with the keys, to let
me out. She would have some fair reason for looking down upon me, I
thought, if she saw me frightened; and she would have no fair reason.
She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if she rejoiced that
my hands were so coarse and my boots were so thick, and she opened the
gate, and stood holding it. I was passing out without looking at her,
when she touched me with a taunting hand.
"Why don't you cry?"
"Because I don't want to."
"You do," said she. "You have been crying till you are half blind, and
you are near crying again now."
She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the gate upon me.
I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook's, and was immensely relieved to find
him not at home. So, leaving word with the shopman on what day I was
wanted at Miss Havisham's again, I set off on the four-mile walk to
our forge; pondering, as I went along, on all I had seen, and deeply
revolving that I was a common laboring-boy; that my hands were coarse;
that my boots were thick; that I had fallen into a despicable habit
of calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more ignorant than I had
considered myself last night, and generally that I was in a low-lived
bad way.