 CHAPTER 48 The second of the two meetings referred to in the last chapter occurred about a week after the first. I had again left my boat at the wharf below Bridge. The time was an hour earlier in the afternoon, and undecided where to dine, I had strolled up and to Cheepside, and was strolling along it, surely the most unsettled person in all the busy concourse, when a large hand was laid upon my shoulder by someone overtaking me. It was Mr. Jagger's hand, and he passed it through my arm. As we are going in the same direction, Pip, we may walk together. Where are you bound for? For the temple, I think, said I. Don't you know? said Mr. Jagger's. Well, I returned, glad for once to get the better of him in cross-examination. I do not know, for I have not made up my mind. You are going to dine? said Mr. Jagger's. You don't mind admitting that, I suppose? No, I returned. I don't mind admitting that. And are not engaged? I don't mind admitting also that I am not engaged. Then, said Mr. Jagger's, come and dine with me. I was going to excuse myself when he added, when it's coming. So I changed my excuse into an acceptance. A few words I had uttered, serving for the beginning of either, and we went along Cheapside and slanted off to Little Britain, where the lights were springing up brilliantly in the shop windows, and the street lamp-lighters, scarcely finding ground enough to plant their ladders on in the midst of the afternoon's bustle, were skipping up and down and running in and out, opening more red eyes and the gathering fog than my rush-light tower at the Hummins had opened white eyes and the ghostly wall. At the office in Little Britain there was the usual letter-writing, hand-washing, candle-snuffing, and safe-locking that closed the business of the day. As I stood idle by Mr. Jagger's fire, its rising and falling flame made the two casts on the shelf look as if they were playing a diabolical game of Bo Peep with me. While the pair of coarse-fat office candles that dimly lighted Mr. Jagger's as he rode in a corner were decorated with dirty winding sheets as if in remembrance of a host of hanged clients. We went to Gerard Street all three together in a hackney coach, and as soon as we got there dinner was served. Although I should not have thought of making in that place the most distant reference by so much as a look to Wemmicks-Walworth sentiments, yet I should have had no objection to catching his eye now and then in a friendly way. But it was not to be done. He turned his eyes on Mr. Jagger's whenever he raised them from the table, and was as dry and distant to me as if there were twin Wemmicks, and this was the wrong one. "'Did you send that note of Miss Havishams to Mr. Pip Wemmick?' Mr. Jagger's asked soon after we began dinner. "'No, sir,' returned Wemmick. "'It was going by post when you brought Mr. Pip into the office. Here it is.' He handed it to his principal instead of to me. "'It's a note of two lines, Pip,' said Mr. Jagger's, handing it on, "'Sent up to me by Miss Havishams on account of her not being sure of your address. She tells me that she wants to see you on a little matter of business you mentioned to her. "'You'll go down?' "'Yes,' said I, casting my eyes over the note, which was exactly in those terms. "'When do you think of going down?' "'I have an impending engagement,' said I, glancing at Wemmick, who was putting fish into the post office, that renders me rather uncertain of my time. "'At once, I think.' "'If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at once,' said Wemmick to Mr. Jagger's, "'he needn't write an answer, you know?' Receiving this as an intimation that it was best not to delay, I settled that I would go to-morrow, and said so. Wemmick drank a glass of wine, and looked with a grimly satisfied air at Mr. Jagger's, but not at me. "'So, Pip, our friend the spider,' said Mr. Jagger's, "'has played his cards. He has won the pool. It was as much as I could do to assent. Ha! He is a promising fellow, in his way, but he may not have it all his own way. The stronger will win in the end, but the stronger has to be found out first, if he should turn to and beat her. "'Surely,' I interrupted, with a burning face and heart, you do not seriously think that he is scoundrel enough for that, Mr. Jagger's?' "'I didn't say so, Pip. I am putting a case. If he should turn to and beat her, he may possibly get the strength on his side. If it should be a question of intellect, he certainly will not. It would be chance work to give an opinion how a fellow of that sort will turn out in such circumstances, because it is a toss-up between two results.' "'May I ask what they are?' "'A fellow like our friend the spider,' answered Mr. Jagger's, "'either beats or cringes. He may cringe and growl, or cringe and not growl, but he either beats or cringes. Ask Wemmick his opinion.' "'Either beats or cringes?' said Wemmick, not at all, addressing himself to me.' "'So here's to Mrs. Bentley-Drummel,' said Mr. Jagger's, taking a decanter of choicer wine from his dumb-waiter, and filling for each of us and for himself. And may the question of supremacy be settled to the lady's satisfaction. To the satisfaction of the lady and the gentleman it never will be. Now molly, molly, molly, molly, how slow you are to-day.' She was at his elbow when he addressed her, putting a dish upon the table. As she withdrew her hands from it, she fell back a step or two, nervously muttering some excuse, and a certain action of her fingers as she spoke, arrested my attention. "'What's the matter?' said Mr. Jagger's. "'Nothing. Only the subject we were speaking of,' said I, was rather painful to me.' The action of her fingers was like the action of knitting. She stood looking at her master, not understanding whether she was free to go, or whether he had more to say to her and would call her back if she did go. Her look was very intent. Surely I had seen exactly such eyes and such hands on a memorable occasion very lately.' He dismissed her, and she glided out of the room. But she remained before me as plainly as if she were still there. I looked at those hands. I looked at those eyes. I looked at that flowing hair, and I compared them with other hands, other eyes, other hair that I knew of, and with what those might be after twenty years of a brutal husband and a stormy life. I looked again at those hands and eyes of the housekeeper, and thought of the inexplicable feeling that had come over me when I last walked, not alone, in the ruined garden and through the deserted brewery. I thought how the same feeling had come back when I saw a face looking at me and a hand waving to me from a stagecoach window, and how it had come back again and had flashed about me like lightning when I had passed in a carriage, not alone, through a sudden glare of light in a dark street. I thought how one link of association had helped that identification in the theatre, and how such a link, wanting before, had been riveted for me now when I had passed by a chance swift from Estella's name to the fingers with their knitting action and the attentive eyes, and I felt absolutely certain that this woman was Estella's mother. Mr. Jaggers had seen me with Estella and was not likely to have missed the sentiments I had been at no pains to conceal. He nodded when I said the subject was painful to me, clapped me on the back, put round the wine again, and went on with his dinner. Only twice more did the housekeeper reappear, and then her stay in the room was very short, and Mr. Jaggers was sharp with her. But her hands were Estella's hands, and her eyes were Estella's eyes, and if she had reappeared a hundred times I could have been neither more sure nor less sure that by conviction was the truth. It was a dull evening, for Wemmick drew his wine, when it came round, quite as a matter of business, just as he might have drawn his salary when that came round, and with his eyes on his chief sat in a state of perpetual readiness for cross-examination. As to the quantity of wine his post-office was as indifferent and ready as any other post-office for its quantity of letters. From my point of view he was the wrong twin all the time, and only externally like the Wemmick of Walworth. We took our leave early and left together. Even when we were groping among Mr. Jaggers' stock of boots for our hats, I felt that the right twin was on his way back, and we had not gone half a dozen yards down Gerard Street in the Walworth direction, before I found that I was walking arm in arm with the right twin, and that the wrong twin had evaporated into the evening air. Well, said Wemmick, that's over. He's a wonderful man, without his living likeness, but I feel that I have to screw myself up when I dine with him, and I dine more comfortably unscrewed. I felt that this was a good statement of the case, and told himself. "'Wouldn't say it to anybody but yourself,' he answered. "'I know that what is said between you and me goes no further.' I asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, Mrs. Bentley Drummel. He said, no. To avoid being too abrupt, I then spoke of the aged and of Miss Skiffins. He looked rather sly when I mentioned Miss Skiffins, and stopped in the street to blow his nose, with a roll of the head, and a flourish not quite free from latent boastfulness. "'Wemmick,' said I, do you remember telling me, before I first went to Mr. Jagger's private house, to notice that housekeeper?' "'Did I?' he replied. "'Ah, I daresay I did. Doos take me.' He added suddenly. "'I know I did. I find I am not quite unscrewed yet.' "'A wild beast tamed you, called her.' "'And what do you call her?' "'The same. How did Mr. Jagger's tame her, Wemmick?' "'That's his secret. She has been with him many a long year.' "'I wish you would tell me her story. I feel a particular interest in being acquainted with it. We know that what is said between you and me goes no further.' "'Well,' Wemmick replied, "'I don't know her story. That is, I don't know all of it. But what I do know, I'll tell you. We are in our private and personal capacities, of course.' "'Of course.' "'A score or so of years ago, that woman was tried at the old Bailey for murder, and was acquitted. She was a very handsome young woman, and I believe had some gypsy blood in her. Anyhow, it was hot enough when it was up, as you may suppose. But she was acquitted. Mr. Jagger's was for her. Pursued Wemmick was a look full of meaning, and worked the case in a way quite astonishing. It was a desperate case, and it was comparatively early days with him then, and he worked it to general admiration. In fact, it may almost be said to have made him. He worked at himself at the police office, day after day, for many days, contending against even a committal, and at the trial where he couldn't work at himself, sat under counsel. And everyone knew, put in all the salt and pepper. The murdered person was a woman. A woman a good ten years older, very much larger, and very much stronger. It was a case of jealousy. They both led tramping lives, and this woman in Gerard Street here had been married very young over the broomstick, as we say, to a tramping man, and was a perfect fury in point of jealousy. The murdered woman, more a match for the man, certainly in point of years, was found dead in a bar near Hounslow Heath. There had been a violent struggle, perhaps a fight. She was bruised and scratched and torn, and had been hailed by the throat at last and choked. Now there was no reasonable evidence to implicate any person but this woman, and on the improbabilities of her having been able to do it, Mr. Jaggers principally rested his case. You may be sure, said Wemmick, touching me on the sleeve, that he never dwelt upon the strength of her hands then, though he sometimes does now. I had told Wemmick of his showing us her wrists that day of the dinner-party. Well, sir, Wemmick went on. It happened. Happened, don't you see, that this woman was so very artfully dressed from the time of her apprehension that she looked much sliter than she really was, in particular. Her sleeves are always remembered to have been so skilfully contrived that her arms had quite a delicate look. She had only a bruise or two about her, nothing for a tramp. But the backs of her hands were lacerated, and the question was, was it with fingernails? Now Mr. Jaggers showed that she had struggled through a great lot of brambles which were not as high as her face, but which she could not have got through and kept her hands out of, and bits of those brambles were actually found in her skin and put in evidence, as well as the fact that the brambles in question were found on examination to have been broken through and to have little shreds of her dress and little spots of blood upon them here and there. But the boldest point he made was this. It was attempted to be set up, in proof of her jealousy, that she was under strong suspicion of having, at about the time of the murder, frantically destroyed her child by this man, some three years old, to revenge herself upon him. Mr. Jaggers worked that in this way. We say these are not marks of fingernails, but marks of brambles, and we show you the brambles. You say they are marks of fingernails, and you set up the hypothesis that she destroyed her child. You must accept all consequences of that hypothesis. For anything we know she may have destroyed her child, and the child in clinging to her may have scratched her hands. What then? You are not trying her for the murder of her child. Why don't you? As to this case, if you will have scratches, we say that, for anything we know, you may have accounted for them, assuming for the sake of argument that you have not invented them. To sum up, sir, said Wemmick. Mr. Jaggers was altogether too many for the jury, and they gave in. Has she been in his service ever since? Yes, but not only that, said Wemmick. She went into his service immediately after her acquittal, tamed as she is now. She has since been taught one thing and another in the way of her duties, but she was tamed from the beginning. Do you remember the sex of the child? Said to have been a girl. You have nothing more to say to me tonight? Nothing. I got your letter and destroyed it. Nothing. We exchanged a cordial good night, and I went home with new matter for my thoughts, though with no relief from the old. CHAPTER 49 Famous Havisham's note in my pocket that it might serve as my credentials for so soon reappearing at Satish's house, in case her waywardness should lead her to express any surprise at seeing me, I went down again by the coach next day, but I alighted at the half-way-house, and breakfasted there, and walked the rest of the distance, for I sought to get into the town quietly by the unfrequented ways, and to leave it in the same manner. The best light of the day was gone when I passed along the quiet echoing courts behind the high street. The nooks of ruin where the old monks had once had their refectories and gardens, and where the strong walls were now pressed into the service of humble sheds and stables, were almost as silent as the old monks in their graves. The cathedral chimes had at once a sadder and a more remote sound to me, as I hurried on avoiding observation, than they had ever had before. So the swell of the old organ was born to my ears like funeral music, and the rooks, as they hovered about the grey tower and swung in the bare-high trees of the priory garden, seemed to call to me that the place was changed and that Estella was gone out of it forever. An elderly woman whom I had seen before as one of the servants who lived in the supplementary house across the back courtyard opened the gate. The lighted candle stood in the dark passage within, as of old, and I took it up and ascended the staircase, alone. Miss Havisham was not in her own room, but was in the larger room across the landing. Looking in at the door, after knocking in vain, I saw her sitting on the hearth in a ragged chair, close before, and lost in the contemplation of the ashy fire. Doing as I had often done, I went in, and stood touching the old chimney piece where she could see me when she raised her eyes. There was an air of utter loneliness upon her that would have moved me to pity, though she had willfully done me a deeper injury than I could charge her with. As I stood compassionating her, and thinking how, in the progress of time, I too had come to be a part of the wrecked fortunes of that house. Her eyes rested on me. She stared, and said in a low voice, "'Is it real?' "'It is I, Pip.' Mr. Jaggers gave me your note yesterday, and I have lost no time. "'Thank you, thank you.' As I brought another of the ragged chairs to the hearth and sat down, I remarked a new expression on her face, as if she were afraid of me. "'I went,' she said, "'do you pursue that subject you mentioned to me when you were last here, and to show you that I am not all stone? But perhaps you can never believe now that there is anything human in my heart?' When I said some reassuring words, she stretched out her tremulous right hand, as though she was going to touch me. But she recalled it again before I understood the action, or knew how to receive it. "'You said, speaking for your friend, that you could tell me how to do something useful and good. Something that you would like done, is it not?' "'Something that I would like done very much.' "'What is it?' I began explaining to her that secret history of the partnership. I had not got far into it, when I judged from her looks that she was thinking in a discursive way of me, rather than of what I said. It seemed to be so, for when I stopped speaking many moments past before she showed that she was conscious of the fact. "'Do you break off?' She asked then, with her former error of being afraid of me. "'Because you hate me so much to bear to speak to me?' "'No, no,' I answered. "'How can you think so, Miss Havisham? I stopped because I thought you were not following what I said.' "'Perhaps I was not,' she answered, putting a hand to her head. "'Peek in again, and let me look at something else. Stay. Now tell me.' She set her hand upon her stick in the resolute way that sometimes was habitual to her, and looked at the fire with a strong expression of forcing herself to attend. I went on with my explanation, and told her how I had hoped to complete the transaction out of my means, but how in this I was disappointed. That part of the subject, I reminded her, involved matters which could form no part of my explanation, for they were the weighty secrets of another. "'So,' said she, assenting with her head, but not looking at me. "'And how much money is wanting to complete the purchase?' I was rather afraid of stating it, for it sounded a large sum. Nine hundred pounds. "'If I give you the money for this purpose, will you keep my secret as you have kept your own?' Quite as faithfully. "'And your mind will be more at rest?' Much more at rest. "'Are you very unhappy now?' She asked this question still without looking at me, but in an unwanted tone of sympathy. I could not reply at the moment, for my voice failed me. She put her left arm across the head of her stick, and softly laid her forehead on it. "'I am far from happy, Miss Havisham, but I have other causes of disquiet than any you know of. They are the secrets I have mentioned.' After a little while she raised her head and looked at the fire again. "'It is noble in you to tell me that you have other causes of unhappiness. Is it true?' Too true. "'Can I only serve you, Pip, by serving your friend? Regarding that as done, is there nothing I can do for you yourself?' "'Nothing. I thank you for the question. I thank you even more for the tone of the question. But there is nothing.' She presently rose from her seat and looked about the blighted room for the means of writing. There were none there, and she took from her pocket a yellow set of ivory tablets, mounted in tarnished gold, and wrote upon them with a pencil, in a case of tarnished gold, that hung from her neck. "'You are still on friendly terms with Mr. Jaggers?' "'Quite. I dined with him yesterday.' "'This is an authority to him to pay you that money. You lay out at your irresponsible discretion for your friend. I keep no money here. But if you would rather Mr. Jaggers knew nothing of the matter, I will send it to you.' "'Thank you, Miss Havisham. I have not the least objection to receiving it from him.' She read me what she had written, and it was direct and clear, and evidently intended to absolve me from any suspicion of profiting by the receipt of the money. I took the tablets from her hand, and it trembled again, and it trembled more as she took off the chain to which the pencil was attached, and put it in mine. All this she did without looking at me. "'My name is on the first leaf. If you can ever write under my name, I forgive her, though ever so long after my broken heart is dust, pray do it.' "'Oh, Miss Havisham,' said I, I can do it now. There have been sore mistakes, and my life has been a blind and thankless one, and I want forgiveness and direction far too much to be bitter with you.' She turned her face to me for the first time since she had averted it, and to my amazement, I may even add to my terror, dropped on her knees at my feet with her folded hands raised to me in the manner in which, when her poor heart was young and fresh and whole, they must often have been raised to heaven from her mother's side. To see her with her white hair and her worn face kneeling at my feet gave me a shock through all my frame. I entreated her to rise, and got my arms about her to help her up, but she only pressed that hand of mine which was nearest to her grasp, and hung her head over it, and wept. I had never seen her shed a tear before, and, in the hope that the relief might do her good, I bent over her without speaking. She was not kneeling now, but was down upon the ground. Oh! she cried despairingly. What have I done? What have I done? If you mean, Miss Havisham, what have you done to injure me? Let me answer. Very little. I should have loved her under any circumstances. Is she married? Yes. It was a needless question, for a new desolation in the Desolate House had told me so. What have I done? What have I done? She wrung her hands and crushed her white hair, and returned to this cry over and over again. What have I done? I knew not how to answer or how to comfort her. That she had done an aggrievous thing in taking an impressionable child to mold into the form that her wild resentment, spurned affection, and wounded pride found vengeance in. I knew full well. But that, in shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more. That in seclusion she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences. But her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do in must and will that reverse the appointed order of their maker. I knew equally well. And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a mastermania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that had been curses in this world? Until you spoke to her the other day, and until I saw in you a looking-glass that showed me what I once felt myself, I did not know what I had done. What have I done? What have I done? And so again, twenty, fifty times over, what had she done? Miss Havisham, I said when her cry had died away. You may dismiss me from your mind and conscience, but Estella is a different case, and if you can ever undo any scrap of what you have done amiss in keeping a part of her right nature away from her, it will be better to do that than to bemoan the past through a hundred years. Yes, yes, I know it, but Pip, my dear! There was an earnest womanly compassion for me and her new affection. My dear, believe this, when she first came to me, I meant to save her from misery like my own. At first I meant no more. Well, well, said I, I hope so. But as she grew and promised to be very beautiful, I gradually did worse, and with my praises, and with my jewels, and with my teachings, and with this figure of myself always before her, a warning to back and point my lessons, I stole her heart away and put ice in its place. Better, I could not help saying, to have left her a natural heart, even to be bruised or broken. With that, Miss Havisham looked distractedly at me for a while, and then burst out again what had she done. If you knew all my story, she pleaded, you would have some compassion for me and a better understanding of me. Miss Havisham, I answered as delicately as I could. I believe I may say that I do know your story, and have known it ever since I first left this neighborhood. It has inspired me with great commiseration, and I hope I understand it and its influences. Does what has passed between us give me any excuse for asking you a question relative to Estella? Not as she is, but as she was when she first came here. She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the ragged chair, and her head leaning on them. She looked full at me when I said this, and replied, Go on! Whose child was Estella? She shook her head. You don't know? She shook her head again. But Mr. Jaggers brought her here, or sent her here? Brought her here. Will you tell me how that came about? She answered in a low whisper, and with caution. I had been shut up in these rooms a long time. I don't know how long you know what time the clocks keep here. When I told him that I wanted a little girl to rear and love, and save from my fate, I had first seen him when I sent for him to lay this play waste for me, having read of him in the newspapers before I and the world parted. He told me that he would look about him for such an orphan child. One night he brought her here asleep, and I called her Estella. Might I ask her age, then? Two or three. She herself knows nothing, but that she was left an orphan, and I adopted her. So convinced I was of that woman's being her mother, that I wanted no evidence to establish the fact in my own mind. But to any mind, I thought, the connection here was clear and straight. What more could I hope to do by prolonging the interview? I had succeeded on behalf of Herbert. Ms. Havisham had told me all she knew of Estella. I had said and done what I could to ease her mind. No matter with what other words we parted, we parted. Night was closing in when I went downstairs into the natural air. I called to the woman who had opened the gate when I entered, that I would not trouble her just yet, but would walk round the place before leaving. For I had a presentiment that I should never be there again, and I felt that the dying light was suited to my last view of it. By the wilderness of casks that I had walked on long ago, and on which the rain of years had fallen since, rotting them in many places, and leaving miniature swamps and pools of water upon those that stood on end, I made my way to the ruined garden. I went all round it, round by the corner where Herbert and I had fought our battle, round by the paths where Estella and I had walked, so cold, so lonely, so dreary all. Seeing the brewery on my way back, I raised the rusty latch of a little door at the garden end of it and walked through. I was going out at the opposite door, not easy to open now, for the damp wood had started and swelled, and the hinges were yielding, and the threshold was encumbered with a growth of fungus. When I turned my head to look back, a childish association revived with wonderful force in the moment of the slight action, and I fancied that I saw Miss Havisham hanging to the beam. So strong was the impression that I stood under the beam shuddering from head to foot before I knew it was a fancy, though to be sure I was there in an instant. The mournfulness of the place and time, and the great terror of this illusion, though it was but momentary, caused me to feel an indescribable awe as I came out between the open wooden gates where I had once wrung my hair after a Stella had wrung my heart. Passing on into the front courtyard, I hesitated whether to call the woman to let me out at the locked gate of which she had the key, or first to go upstairs and assure myself that Miss Havisham was as safe and well as I had left her. I took the latter course and went up. I looked into the room where I had left her and saw her seated in the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the fire, with her back towards me. In the moment when I was withdrawing my head to go quietly away I saw a great flaming light spring up. In the same moment I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her, and soaring at least as many feet above her head as she was high. I had a double-caped, great coat on, and over my arm another thick coat. That I got them off, closed with her, threw her down and got them over her, that I dragged the great cloth from the table for the same purpose, and with it dragged down the heap of rottenness in the midst, and all the ugly things that sheltered there, that we were on the ground struggling like desperate enemies, and that the closer I covered her the more wildly she shrieked and tried to free herself. That this occurred I knew through the result, but not through anything I felt, or thought, or knew I did. I knew nothing until I knew that we were on the floor by the great table, and that patches of tinder yet a light were floating in the smoky air, which a moment ago had been her faded bridal dress. Then I looked round and saw the disturbed beetles and spiders running away over the floor, and the servants coming in with breathless cries at the door. I still held her forcibly down with all my strength, like a prisoner who might escape, and I doubt if I even knew who she was, or why we had struggled, or that she had been in flames, or that the flames were out, until I saw the patches of tinder that had been her garments no longer a light but falling in a black shower around us. She was insensible, and I was afraid to have her moved or even touched. Assistance was sent for, and I held her until it came, as if I unreasonably fancied, I think I did. That, if I let her go, the fire would break out again and consume her. When I got up, on the surgeons coming to her with other aid, I was astonished to see that both my hands were burnt, for I had no knowledge of it through the sense of feeling. On examination it was pronounced that she had received serious hurts, but that they of themselves were far from hopeless, the danger lay mainly in the nervous shock. By the surgeons' directions her bed was carried into that room and laid upon the great table, which happened to be well suited to the dressing of her injuries. When I saw her again an hour afterwards, she lay indeed where I had seen her striker stick, and had heard her say that she would lie one day. Though every vestige of her dress was burnt, as they told me, she still had something of her old ghastly bridal appearance, for they had covered her to the throat with white cotton wool, and as she lay with a white sheet loosely overlying that, the phantom air of something that had been and was changed, was still upon her. I found, unquestioning the servants that Estella was in Paris, and I got a promise from the surgeon that he would write to her by the next post. Miss Havisham's family I took upon myself, intending to communicate with Mr. Matthew Pocket only, and leave him to do as he liked about informing the rest. This I did next day, through Herbert, as soon as I returned to town. There was a stage that evening, when she spoke collectively of what had happened, though with a certain terrible vivacity. Towards midnight she began to wander in her speech, and after that it gradually set in that she said innumerable times in a low, solemn voice, What have I done? And then, when she first came I meant to save her from misery like mine. And then, take the pencil and write under my name, I forgive her. She never changed the order of these three sentences, but she sometimes left out a word in one or other of them, never putting in another word, but always leaving a blank and going on to the next word. As I could do no service there, and as I had, nearer home, that pressing reason for anxiety and fear which even her wanderings could not drive out of my mind, I decided, in the course of the night, that I would return by the early morning coach, walking a mile or so, and being taken up clear of the town. At about six o'clock of the morning, therefore, I leaned over her and touched her lips with mine, just as they said, not stopping for being touched, Take the pencil and write under my name, I forgive her. CHAPTER 50 My hands have been dressed twice or thrice in the night, and again in the morning. My left arm was a good deal burned to the elbow, and less severely as high as the shoulder. It was very painful, but the flames had set in that direction, and I felt thankful it was no worse. My right hand was not so badly burnt, but that I could move the fingers. It was bandaged, of course, but much less inconveniently than my left hand and arm, those I carried in a sling, and I could only wear my coat like a cloak, loose over my shoulders and fastened at the neck. My hair had been caught by the fire, but not my head or face. When Herbert had been down to Hammersmith and seen his father, he came back to me at our chambers and devoted the day to attending on me. He was the kindest of nurses, and at stated times took off the bandages and steeped them in the cooling liquid that was kept ready, and put them on again with the patient tenderness that I was deeply grateful for. At first, as I lay quiet on the sofa, I found it painfully difficult, I might say impossible, to get rid of the impression of the glare of the flames, their hurry and noise, and the fierce burning smell. If I dozed for a minute I was awakened by Miss Havisham's cries and by her running at me with all that height of fire above her head. This pain of the mind was much harder to strive against than any bodily pain I suffered, and Herbert, seeing that, did his utmost to hold my attention engaged. Neither of us spoke of the boat, but we both thought of it. That was made apparent by our avoidance of the subject and by our agreeing, without agreement, to make my recovery of the use of my hands a question of so many hours, not of so many weeks. My first question when I saw Herbert had been, of course, whether all was well down the river. As he replied in the affirmative, with perfect confidence and cheerfulness, we did not resume the subject until the day was wearing away. But then, as Herbert changed the bandages, more by the light of the fire than by the outer light, he went back to it spontaneously. I sat with Provis last night, Handel, two good hours. Where was Clara? Dear little thing, said Herbert, she was up and down with gruffing grim all the evening. He was perpetually pegging at the floor the moment she left his sight. I doubt if he can hold out long, though, what with rum and pepper and pepper and rum I should think his pegging must be nearly over. And then you will be married, Herbert. How can I take care of the dear child otherwise? Lay your arm out upon the back of the sofa, my dear boy, and I'll sit down here and get the bandage off so gradually that you shall not know when it comes. I was speaking of Provis. Do you know, Handel, he improves? I said to you I thought he was softened when I last saw him. So you did. And so he is. He was very communicative last night and told me more of his life. You remember his breaking off here about some woman that he had had great trouble with? Until I hurt you. I had started, but not under his touch. His words had given me a start. I had forgotten that, Herbert, but I remember it now you speak of it. Well, he went into that part of his life, and a dark wild part it is. Shall I tell you? Or would it worry you just now? Tell me by all means, every word. Herbert bent forward to look at me more nearly as if my reply had been rather more hurried or more eager than he could quite account for. Your head is cool, he said, touching it. Wait, said I. Tell me what provis said, my dear Herbert. It seems, said Herbert, there's a bandage off most charmingly, and now comes the cool one. Makes you shrink it first, my poor dear fellow, don't it? But it will be comfortable presently. It seems that the woman was a young woman, and a jealous woman, and a revengeful woman, revengeful handle to the last degree. Murder! Does it strike too cold on that sensitive place? I don't feel it. How did she murder? Whom did she murder? Why, the deed may not have merited quite so terrible a name, said Herbert, but she was tried for it, and Mr. Jaggers defended her, and the reputation of that defense first made his name known to provis. It was another and a stronger woman than Herbert, it was another and a stronger woman who was the victim, and there had been a struggle, in a barn, who began it, or how fair it was, or how unfair may be doubtful, but how it ended is certainly not doubtful, for the victim was found throttled. Was the woman brought in guilty? No, she was acquitted. My poor handle, I hurt you. It is impossible to be gentler, Herbert. Yes, what else? The acquitted young woman in provis had a little child, a little child of whom provis was exceedingly fond. On the evening of the very night when the object of her jealousy was strangled, as I tell you, the young woman presented herself before provis for one moment and swore that she would destroy the child, which was in her possession, and he should never see it again. And she vanished. There's the worst arm comfortably in the sling once more, and now there remains but the right hand, which is a far easier job. I can do it better by this light than by a stronger, for my hand is steadiest when I don't see the poor blistered patches too distinctly. You don't think your breathing is effective, my dear boy? You seem to breathe quickly. Perhaps I do, Herbert. Did the woman keep her oath? There comes the darkest part of provis's life. She did. That is, he says she did. Why, of course, my dear boy! Returned Herbert in a tone of surprise, and again bending forward to get a nearer look at me. He says it all. I have no other information. No, to be sure. Now whether, pursued Herbert, he had used the child's mother ill, or whether he had used the child's mother well, provis doesn't say, but she had shared some four or five years of the wretched life he described to us at this fireside, and he seems to have felt pity for her and forbearance towards her. Therefore, fearing he should be called upon to depose about this destroyed child, and so be the cause of her death, he hid himself, much as he grieved for the child, kept himself dark, as he says, out of the way and out of the trial, and was only vaguely talked of as a certain man called Abel, out of whom the jealousy arose. After the acquittal she disappeared, and thus he lost the child and the child's mother. I want to ask, a moment, my dear boy, and I have done. That evil genius, Compison, the worst of scoundrels among many scoundrels, knowing of his keeping out of the way at that time and of his reasons for doing so, of course afterwards held the knowledge over his head as a means of keeping him poorer and working him harder. It was clear last night that this barbed the point of provis's animosity. I want to know, said I, and particularly, Herbert, whether he told you when this happened. Particularly? Let me remember, then, what he said as to that. His impression was, a round score a year ago and almost directly after I took up with Compison. How old were you when you came upon him in the little churchyard? I think in my seventh year. I. It had happened some three or four years, then, he said, and you brought into his mind the little girl so tragically lost, who would have been about your age. Herbert, said I, after a short silence in a hurried way, can you see me best by the light of the window or the light of the fire? By the firelight, answered Herbert, coming close again. Look at me. I do look at you, my dear boy. Touch me. I do touch you, my dear boy. You are not afraid that I am in any fever or that my head is much disordered by the accident of last night? No, my dear boy, said Herbert, after taking time to examine me. You are rather excited, but you are quite yourself. I know I am quite myself, and the man we have in hiding down the river is Estella's father. Chapter 51 of Great Expectations This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Chapter 51 What purpose I had in view when I was hot on tracing out improving Estella's parentage, I cannot say. It will presently be seen that the question was not before me in a distinct shape until it was put before me by a wiser head than my own. But when Herbert and I had held our momentous conversation, I was seized with a feverish conviction that I ought to hunt the matter down, that I ought not to let it rest, but that I ought to see Mr. Jaggers, and come at the bare truth. I really do not know whether I felt that I did this for Estella's sake, or whether I was glad to transfer to the man in whose preservation I was so much concerned, some rays of the romantic interest that had so long surrounded me. Perhaps the latter possibility may be the nearer to the truth. Anyway, I could scarcely be withheld from going out to Gerard Street that night. Herbert's representation's that, if I did, I should probably be laid up and stricken useless when our fugitive's safety would depend upon me, alone restrained by impatience. On the understanding, again and again reiterated, that, come what would, I was to go to Mr. Jaggers to-morrow, I at length submitted to keep quiet, and to have my hurts looked after, and to stay at home. Early next morning we went out together, and at the corner of Guiltspur Street by Smithfield, I left Herbert to go his way into the city, and took my way to Little Britain. There were periodical occasions when Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick went over the office accounts and checked off the vouchers, and put all things straight. On these occasions Wemmick took his books and papers into Mr. Jaggers' room, and one of the upstairs clerks came down into the outer office. Finding such clerk on Wemmick's post that morning I knew what was going on, but I was not sorry to have Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick together, as Wemmick would then hear for himself that I said nothing to compromise him. My appearance, with my arm bandaged in my coat loose over my shoulders, favored my object. Although I had sent Mr. Jaggers a brief account of the accident as soon as I had arrived in town, yet I had to give him all the details now, and the speciality of the occasion caused our talk to be less dry and hard, and less strictly regulated by the rules of evidence than it had been before. When I described the disaster Mr. Jaggers stood, according to his want, before the fire. Wemmick leaned back in his chair, staring at me, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and his pen put horizontally into the post. The two brutal casts, always inseparable in my mind from the official proceedings, seemed to be congestively considering whether they didn't smell fire at the present moment. My narrative finished, and their questions exhausted. I then produced Miss Havisham's authority to receive the nine hundred pounds for Herbert. Mr. Jaggers's eyes retired a little deeper into his head when I handed him the tablets, but he presently handed them over to Wemmick, with instructions to draw the check for his signature. While that was in course of being done I looked on at Wemmick as he wrote, and Mr. Jaggers, poising and swaying himself on his well-polished boots, looked on at me. I am sorry, Pip," said he, as I put the check in my pocket when he had signed it. That we do nothing for you. Miss Havisham was good enough to ask me, I returned, whether she could do nothing for me, and I told her no. Everybody should know his own business, said Mr. Jaggers, and I saw Wemmick's lips form the words, Portable Property. I should not have told her no if I had been you, said Mr. Jaggers, but every man ought to know his own business best. Every man's business, said Wemmick rather reproachfully towards me, is Portable Property. As I thought the time was now come for pursuing the theme I had at heart, I said, turning on Mr. Jaggers, I did ask something of Miss Havisham, however, sir. I asked her to give me some information relative to her adopted daughter, and she gave me all she possessed. Did she? said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to look at his boots, and then straightening himself. Ha! I don't think I should have done so if I had been Miss Havisham. But she ought to know her own business best. I know more of the history of Miss Havisham's adopted child than Miss Havisham herself does, sir. I know her mother. Mr. Jaggers looked at me inquiringly and repeated, Mother? I have seen her mother within these three days. Yes, said Mr. Jaggers. And so have you, sir, and you have seen her still more recently. Yes, said Mr. Jaggers. Perhaps I know more of Estella's history than even you do, said I. I know her father, too. A certain stop that Mr. Jaggers came to in his manner. He was too self-possessed to change his manner, but he could not help its being brought to an indefinably attentive stop, assured me that he did not know who her father was. This I had strongly suspected from Provost's account, as Herbert had repeated it, of his having kept himself dark, which I pieced on to the fact that he himself was not Mr. Jaggers' client until some four years later, and when he could have no reason for claiming his identity. But I could not be sure of this unconsciousness on Mr. Jaggers' part before, though I was quite sure of it now. So, you know the young lady's father, Pip, said Mr. Jaggers. Yes, I replied, and his name is Provis, from New South Wales. Even Mr. Jaggers started when I said those words. It was the slightest start that could escape a man, the most carefully repressed and the sooner checked, but he did start, though he made it a part of the action of taking out his pocket-hangerchief. How Wemmick received the announcement I am unable to say, for I was afraid to look at him just then, lest Mr. Jaggers' sharpness should detect that there had been some communication unknown to him between us. And on what evidence, Pip? asked Mr. Jaggers very coolly, as he paused with his handkerchief halfway to his nose. Does Provis make this claim? He does not make it, said I, and has never made it, and has no knowledge or belief that his daughter is in existence. For once the powerful pocket-hangerchief failed. My reply was so unexpected that Mr. Jaggers put the handkerchief back into his pocket without completing the usual performance, folded his arms, and looked with stern attention at me, though with an immovable face. Then I told him all I knew, and how I knew it, with the one reservation that I left him to infer that I knew from his havesham what I, in fact, knew from Wemmick. I was very careful, indeed, as to that. Nor did I look towards Wemmick until I had finished all I had to tell, and had been for some time silently meeting Mr. Jaggers' look. When I did at last turn my eyes in Wemmick's direction, I found that he had unposted his pen, and was intent upon the table before him. Ha! said Mr. Jaggers, at last, as he moved towards the papers on the table. What item was it you were at, Wemmick, when Mr. Pip came in? But I could not submit to be thrown off in that way, and I made a passionate, almost an indignant appeal, to him to be more frank and manly with me. I reminded him of the false hopes into which I had lapsed, the length of time they had lasted, and the discovery I had made, and I hinted at the danger that weighed upon my spirits. I represented myself as being surely worthy of some little confidence from him, in return for the confidence I had just now imparted. I said that I did not blame him, or suspect him, or mistrust him, but I wanted assurance of the truth from him. And if he asked me why I wanted it, and why I thought I had any right to it, I would tell him, little as he cared for such poor dreams, that I had loved Distella dearly and long, and that although I had lost her, and must live a bereaved life, whatever concerned her was still nearer and dearer to me than anything else in the world. And seeing that Mr. Jaggers stood quite still and silent, and apparently quite obdurate under this appeal, I turned to Wemmick and said, Wemmick, I know you to be a man with a gentle heart. I have seen your pleasant home, and your old father, and all the innocent, cheerful, playful ways with which you refresh your business life. And I entreat you to say a word for me to Mr. Jaggers, and to represent to him that, all circumstances considered, he ought to be more open with me. I have never seen two men look more oddly at one another than Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick did after this apostrophe. At first a misgiving crossed me that Wemmick would be instantly dismissed from his employment. But it melted as I saw Mr. Jaggers relax into something like a smile, and Wemmick became bolder. What's all this, said Mr. Jaggers? You with an old father, and you with pleasant and playful ways? Well, returned Wemmick, if I don't bring him here, what does it matter? Pip! Said Mr. Jaggers, laying his hand upon my arm, and smiling openly. This man must be the most cunning impostor in all London. Not a bit of it! Returned Wemmick, growing bolder and bolder, I think you're another! Again they exchanged their former odd looks, each apparently still distrustful that the other was taking him in. You with a pleasant home? Said Mr. Jaggers. Since you don't interfere with business, returned Wemmick, let it be so. Now I look at you, sir. I shouldn't wonder if you might be planning and contriving to have a pleasant home of your own, one of these days, when you're tired of all this work. Mr. Jaggers nodded his head retrospectively two or three times, and actually drew a sigh. Pip! Said he. We won't talk about poor dreams. And you know more about such things than I. Having much pressure experience of that kind. But now about this other matter. I'll put a case to you. Mind? Admit nothing. He waited for me to declare that I quite understood that he expressly said that he admitted nothing. Now Pip! Said Mr. Jaggers. Put this case. Put the case that a woman, under such circumstances as you have mentioned, held her child concealed, and was obliged to communicate the fact to her legal adviser, on his representing to her that he must know, with an eye to the latitude of his defence. How the fact stood about that child. Put the case that, at the same time he held a trust to find a child for an eccentric rich lady to adopt and bring up. I follow you, sir. Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all he saw of children was there being generated in great numbers for certain destruction. Put the case that he often saw children solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where they were held up to be seen. Put the case that he habitually knew of there being imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangmen, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case that pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business life he had reason to look upon as so much spawn to develop into the fish that were to come to his net, to be prosecuted, defended, foresworn, made orphans, bedeviled somehow. I follow you, sir. Put the case, Pip, that here was one pretty little child out of the heap who could be saved, whom the father believed dead, and dared make no stir about, as to whom over the mother the legal adviser had this power. I know what you did and how you did it. You came so and so. You did such and such things to divert suspicion. I have tracked you through it all, and I tell it you all. Part with the child, unless it should be necessary to produce it to clear you, and then it shall be produced. Give the child into my hands, and I will do my best to bring you off. If you are saved, your child is saved, too. If you are lost, your child is still saved. Put the case that this was done, and that the woman was cleared. I understand you perfectly. But that I make no admissions? That you make no admissions, and Wemmick repeated, no admissions. Put the case, Pip, that passion and the terror of death had a little shaken the woman's intellects, and that when she was set at liberty she was scared out of the waves of the world, and went to him to be sheltered. Put the case that he took her in, and that he kept down the old, wild, violent nature whenever he saw an inkling of its breaking out, by asserting his power over her in the old way. Do you comprehend the imaginary case? Quite. Put the case that the child grew up and was married for money, that the mother was still living, that the father was still living, that the mother and father, unknown to one another, were dwelling within so many miles, furlongs, yards, if you like, of one another, that the secret was still a secret, except that you had got wind of it. Put that last case to yourself very carefully. I do. I asked Wemmick to put it to himself very carefully. And Wemmick said, I do. For whose sake would you reveal the secret? For the father's. I think he would not be much the better for the mother. For the mother's. I think if she had done such a deed she would be safer where she was. For the daughter's. I think it would hardly serve her to establish her parentage for the information of her husband, and to drag her back to disgrace, after an escape of twenty years, pretty secure to last for life. But add the case that you had loved her, Pip, and had made her the subject of those poor dreams, which have at one time or another been in the heads of more men than you think likely, then I tell you that you had better. I would much sooner, when you would thought well of it. Chop off that bandaged left hand of yours with your bandaged right hand, and then pass the chopper on to Wemmick here to cut that off too. I looked at Wemmick, whose face was very grave. He gravely touched his lips with his forefinger. I did the same. Mr. Jaggers did the same. Now, Wemmick, said the latter then, resuming his usual manner, what item was it you were at when Mr. Pip came in? Standing by for a little while they were at work, I observed that the odd looks they had cast at one another were repeated several times with this difference now that each of them seemed suspicious, not to say conscious, of having shown himself in a weak and unprofessional light to the other. For this reason I suppose they were now inflexible with one another, Mr. Jaggers being highly dictatorial, and Wemmick obstinately justifying himself whenever there was the smallest point in abeyance for a moment. I had never seen them on such ill terms, for generally they got on very well indeed together. But they were both happily relieved by the opportune appearance of Mike, the client with the fur cap and the habit of wiping his nose on his sleeve, whom I had seen on the very first day of my appearance within these walls. This individual, who either in his own person or in that of some member of his family, seemed to be always in trouble, which in that place meant Newgate, called to announce that his eldest daughter was taken up on suspicion of shoplifting. As he imparted this melancholy circumstance to Wemmick, Mr. Jaggers standing majestarily before the fire and taking no share in the proceedings, Mike's eye happened to twinkle with a tear. What are you about? demanded Wemmick with the utmost indignation. What do you come sniveling here for? I didn't go to do it, Mr. Wemmick. You did, said Wemmick. How dare you! You're not in a fit state to come here, if you can't come here without spluttering like a bad pen. What do you mean by it? A man can't help his feelings, Mr. Wemmick, pleaded Mike. He's what? demanded Wemmick quite savagely. See that again. Now look here, my man, said Mr. Jaggers, advancing a step and pointing to the door. Get out of this office. I'll have no feelings here. Get out. It serves you right, said Wemmick. Get out. So the unfortunate Mike, very humbly withdrew, and Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick appeared to have re-established their good understanding and went to work again with an air of refreshment upon them as if they had just had lunch. End of chapter. Chapter 52 of Great Expectations. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Chapter 52. From Little Britain I went, with my check in my pocket, to Miss Skippen's brother, the accountant, and Miss Skippen's brother, the accountant, going straight to clericers and bringing clericur to me, I had the great satisfaction of concluding that arrangement. It was the only good thing I had done, and the only completed thing I had done, since I was first apprised of my great expectations. Clericur informing me on that occasion that the affairs of the house were steadily progressing, that he would now be able to establish a small branch house in the east which was much wanted for the extension of the business, and that Herbert in his new partnership capacity would go out and take charge of it, I found that I must have prepared for a separation from my friend, even though my own affairs had been more settled. And now, indeed, I felt as if my last anchor were loosening its hold, and I should soon be driving with the winds and waves. But there was recompense in the joy with which Herbert would come home of a night and tell me of these changes, little imagining that he told me no news, and would sketch airy pictures of himself conducting Clara Barley to the land of the Arabian Knights, and of me going out to join them, with a caravan of camels, I believe, and of our all going up the Nile and seeing wonders. Without being sanguine as to my own part in these bright plans, I felt that Herbert's way was clearing fast, and that old Bill Barley had but to stick to his pepper and rum, and his daughter would soon be happily provided for. We had now got into the month of March. My left arm, though it presented no bad symptoms, took in the natural course so long to heal that I was still unable to get a coat on. My right arm was tolerably restored, disfigured, but fairly serviceable. On a Monday morning, when Herbert and I were at breakfast, I received the following letter from Wemmick by the post. While worth, burn this as soon as read. Early in the week, or say Wednesday, you might do what you know of, if you felt disposed to try it. Now burn. When I had shown this to Herbert and had put it in the fire, but not before we had both got it by heart, we considered what to do. For of course my being disabled could now be no longer kept out of you. I have thought it over again and again," said Herbert, and I think I know a better course than taking a Thames Waterman. Take Star Top. A good fellow, a skilled hand, fond of us, and enthusiastic and honourable. I had thought of him more than once. But how much would you tell him, Herbert? It is necessary to tell him very little. Let him suppose it a mere freak, but a secret one, until the morning comes. Then let him know that there is urgent reason for your getting provis abhorred in a way. You go with him? No doubt. Where? It had seemed to me in the many anxious considerations I had given the point, almost indifferent what port we made for—Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp—the place signified little so that he was out of England. Any foreign steamer that fell in our way and would take us up would do. I had always proposed to myself to get him well down the river in the boat, certainly well beyond Gravesend, which was a critical place for search or inquiry if suspicion were afoot. As foreign steamers would leave London in about the time of high water, our plan would be to get down the river by a previous ebb tide and lie by in some quiet spot until we could pull off to one. The time when one would be due where we lay, wherever that might be, could be calculated pretty nearly if we made inquiries beforehand. Herbert ascended to all this, and we went out immediately after breakfast to pursue our investigations. We found that a steamer for Hamburg was likely to suit our purpose best, and we directed our thoughts chiefly to that vessel. But we noted down what other foreign steamers would leave London with the same tide, and we satisfied ourselves that we knew the build and colour of each. We then separated for a few hours. I, to get at once such passports as were necessary, Herbert, to see Star-top at his lodgings. We both did what we had to do without any hindrance, and when we met again at one o'clock reported it done. I, for my part, was prepared with passports. Herbert had seen Star-top, and he was more than ready to join. Those two should pull a pair of oars, we settled, and I would steer. Our charge would be, sitter, and keep quiet. As speed was not our object, we should make way enough. We arranged that Herbert should not come home to dinner before going to Millpond Bank that evening, that he should not go there at all to-morrow evening, Tuesday, that he should prepare provost to come down to some stairs hard by the house, on Wednesday, when he saw us approach, and not sooner, that all the arrangements with him should be concluded that Monday night, and he should be communicated with, no more in any way, until we took him on board. These precautions well understood by both of us, I went home. On opening the outer door of our chambers with my key I found a letter in the box, directed to me, a very dirty letter, though not ill-written. It had been delivered by hand, of course, since I left home, and its contents were these. If you are not afraid to come to the old marshes to-night or to-morrow night at nine, and to come to the little sluice-house by the lime kiln, you had better come. If you want information regarding your uncle Provost, you had much better come and tell no one, and lose no time. You must come alone. I had had load enough upon my mind before the receipt of this strange letter. What to do now, I could not tell. And the worst was that I must decide quickly, or I should miss the afternoon coach, which would take me down in time for to-night. Tomorrow night I could not think of going, for it would be too close upon the time of the flight. And again, for anything I knew, the proffered information might have some important bearing on the flight itself. If I had had ample time for consideration, I believe I should still have gone. Having hardly any time for consideration, my watch showing me that the coach started within half an hour, I resolved to go. I should certainly not have gone, but for the reference to my uncle Provost. That, coming on Wimmick's letter and the morning's busy preparation, turned the scale. It is so difficult to become clearly possessed of the contents of almost any letter, in a violent hurry, that I had to read this mysterious epistle again twice, before its injunction to me to be secret got mechanically into my mind. Yielding to it in the same mechanical kind of way, I left a note in pencil for Herbert, telling him that as I should be so soon going away, I knew not for how long, I had decided to hurry down and back, to ascertain for myself how Miss Havisham was faring. I had then barely time to get my great coat, lock up the chambers, and make for the coach office by the short by-ways. If I had taken a hackney chariot and gone by the streets, I should have missed my aim, going as I did, I caught the coach just as it came out of the yard. I was the only inside passenger, jolting away knee-deep and straw when I came to myself. I really had not been myself since the receipt of the letter. It had so bewildered me in suing on the hurry of the morning. The morning hurry and flutter had been great, for, long and anxiously as I had waited for Wemmick, his hint had come like a surprise at last, and now I began to wonder at myself for being in the coach, and to doubt whether I had sufficient reason for being there, and to consider whether I should get out presently and go back, and to argue against ever-heating and anonymous communication, and, in short, to pass through all those phases of contradiction and indecision to which I suppose very few hurried people are strangers. Still, the reference to provost by name mastered everything. I reasoned as I had reasoned already without knowing it, if that be reasoning, in case any harm should befall him through my not going, how could I ever forgive myself? It was dark before we got down, and the journey seemed long and dreary to me, who could see little of it inside, and who could not go outside in my disabled state. Avoiding the blue boar, I put up at an inn of minor reputation down the town, and ordered some dinner. While it was preparing, I went to Settis House and inquired for Miss Havisham. She was still very ill, though considered something better. My inn had once been a part of an ancient ecclesiastical house, and I dined in a little octagonal common room, like a font. As I was not able to cut my dinner, the old landlord with a shining bald head did it for me. This bringing us into conversation, he was so good as to entertain me with my own story. Of course, with the popular feature that Pumblechook was my earliest benefactor, and the founder of my fortunes. Do you know the young man? said I. Know him! repeated the landlord, ever since he was, and no height at all. Does he ever come back to this neighborhood? I, he comes back, said the landlord, to his great friends now and again, and gives the cold shoulder to the man that made him. What man is that? Him that I speak of, said the landlord, Mr. Pumblechook. Is he ungrateful to no one else? No doubt he would be, if he could, returned the landlord, but he can't, and why? Because Pumblechook done everything for him. Does Pumblechook say so? Say so, replied the landlord, he ain't no call to say so. But does he say so? It would turn a man's blood to white wine vinegar to hear him tell of it, sir, said the landlord. I thought, yet, Joe, dear Joe, you never tell of it. Long suffering and loving Joe, you never complain. Nor you, sweet-tempered bitty. Your appetite's been touched like by your accident, said the landlord, glancing at the bandage-arm under my coat. Try a tenderer bit. No, thank you. I replied, turning from the table to brood over the fire. I can eat no more. Please take it away. I had never been struck at so keenly, for my thanklessness to Joe, as through the brazen impostor, Pumblechook. The falser he, the truer Joe. The meaner he, the nobler Joe. My heart was deeply and most deservedly humbled as I am used over the fire for an hour or more. The striking of the clock aroused me, but not from my dejection or remorse, and I got up and had my coat fastened round my neck and went out. I had previously sought in my pockets for the letter that I might refer to it again, but I could not find it, and was uneasy to think that it must have been dropped in the straw of the coach. I knew very well, however, that the appointed place was the little sluice-house by the lime kiln on the marshes, and the hour nine. Towards the marshes I now went straight, having no time to spare. CHAPTER 53 It was a dark night, though the full moon rose as I left the enclosed lands, and passed out upon the marshes. Beyond their dark line there was a ribbon of clear sky, hardly broad enough to hold the red large moon. In a few minutes she had ascended out of that clear field, in among the piled mountains of cloud. There was a melancholy wind, and the marshes were very dismal. A stranger would have found them insupportable, and even to me they were so oppressive that I hesitated, half inclined to go back. But I knew them well, and could have found my way on a far darker night, and had no excuse for returning, being there. So having come there against my inclination, I went on against it. The direction that I took was not that in which my old home lay, nor that in which we had pursued the convicts. My back was turned towards the distant hulks as I walked on, and though I could see the old lights away on the spits of sand, I saw them over my shoulder. I knew the lime kiln as well as I knew the old battery, but they were miles apart, so that if a light had been burning at each point that night, there would have been a long strip of the blank horizon between the two bright specks. At first I had to shut some gates after me, and now and then to stand still while the cattle that were lying in the banked-up pathway arose and blundered down among the grass and reeds. But after a little while I seemed to have the whole flats to myself. It was another half-hour before I drew near to the kiln. The lime was burning with a sluggish, stifling smell, but the fires were made up and left, and no workmen were visible. Hard-bye was a small stone quarry. It lay directly in my way, and had been worked that day as I saw by the tools and barrows that were lying about. Coming up again to the marsh-level out of this excavation, for the rude path lay through it, I saw a light in the old sluse-house. I quickened my pace and knocked at the door with my hand. Waiting for some reply, I looked about me, noticing how the sluse was abandoned and broken, and how the house, of wood with a tiled roof, would not be proof against the weather much longer if it were so even now, and how the mud and ooze were coated with lime, and how the choking vapor of the kiln crept in a ghostly way towards me. Still there was no answer, and I knocked again. No answer still, and I tried the latch. It rose under my hand and the door yielded. Looking in I saw a lighted candle on a table, a bench, and a mattress on a chuckle-bedstead. Since there was a loft above, I called. Is anyone here? But no voice answered. Then I looked at my watch, and finding that it was past nine, called again. Is there anyone here? There being still no answer, I went out at the door, irresolute what to do. It was beginning to rain fast. Seeing nothing save what I had seen already, I turned back into the house and stood just within the shelter of the doorway, looking out into the night. While I was considering that someone must have been there lately and must soon be coming back, or the candle would not be burning, it came into my head to look if the wick were long. I turned round to do so and had taken up the candle in my hand when it was extinguished by some violent shock, and the next thing I comprehended was that I had been caught in a strong running noose thrown over my head from behind. Now, said a suppressed voice with an oath, I've got you. What is this? I cried, struggling. Who is it? Help! Help! Help! Not only were my arms pulled close to my sides, but the pressure on my bad arm caused me exquisite pain. Sometimes a strong man's hand, sometimes a strong man's breast, was set against my mouth to deaden my cries, and with a hot breath always close to me I struggled ineffectually in the dark while I was fastened tight to the wall. And now, said the suppressed voice with another oath, call out again, and I'll make short work of you. Faint and sick with the pain of my injured arm bewildered by the surprise, and yet conscious how easily this threat could be put in execution, I desisted, and tried to ease my armward ever so little. But it was bound too tight for that. I felt as if, having been burnt before, it was now being broiled. The sudden exclusion of the night, and the substitution of black darkness in its place, warned me that the man had closed a shutter. After groping about for a little, he found the flint in steel he wanted, and began to strike a light. I strained my sight upon the sparks that fell among the tinder, and upon which he breathed and breathed, match in hand, but I could only see his lips, and the blue point of the match, even those but fitfully. The tinder was damp, no wonder there, and one after another the sparks died out. The man was in no hurry, and struck again with the flint in steel. As the sparks fell thick and bright about him, I could see his hands and touches of his face, and could make out that he was seated and bending over the table, but nothing more. Presently I saw his blue lips again, breathing on the tinder, and then a flare of light flashed up, and showed me, orlic. Whom I had looked for, I don't know. I had not looked for him. Seeing him, I felt that I was in a dangerous strait indeed, and I kept my eyes upon him. He lighted the candle from the flaring match with great deliberation, and dropped the match and trotted out. Then he put the candle away from him on the table, so that he could see me, and sat with his arms folded on the table, and looked at me. I made out that I was fastened to a stout perpendicular ladder a few inches from the wall, a fixture there, the means of ascent to the loft above. Now, said he, when we had surveyed one another for some time, I've got you. Unbind me. Let me go. Ha! He returned. I'll let you go. I'll let you go to the moon. I'll let you go to the stars. All in good time. Why have you lured me here? Don't you know, said he, with a deadly look. Why have you set upon me in the dark? Because I mean to do it all myself. Nothing keeps a secret better than two. Oh, you enemy! You enemy! His enjoyment of the spectacle I furnished as he sat with his arms folded on the table, shaking his head at me and hugging himself, had a malignity in it that made me tremble. As I watched him in silence he put his hand into the corner at his side, and took up a gun with a brass-bound stock. Do you know this, said he, making as if he would take aim at me? Do you know where you saw it afore? Speak, wolf. Yes, I answered. You cost me that place. You did. Speak. What else could I do? You did that, and that would be enough without more. How dared you to come betwixt me and a young woman I liked? When did I? When didn't you? It was you who's always give old Orlik a bad name to her. You gave it to yourself. You gained it for yourself. I could have done you no harm if you had done yourself none. You're a liar, and you'll take any pains and spend any money to drive me out of this country, will you? Said he, repeating my words to Biddy in the last interview I had with her. Now I'll tell you a piece of information. It was never so well worth your while to get me out of this country as it is tonight. Ah, if it was all your money twenty times told to the last brass far than. As he shook his heavy hand at me with his mouth snarling like a tiger's, I felt that it was true. What are you going to do to me? I'm a-going, said he, bringing his fist down upon the table with a heavy blow, and rising as the blow fell to give it greater force, I'm a-going to have your life. He leaned forward, staring at me, slowly unclenched his hand and drew it across his mouth as if his mouth watered for me, and sat down again. You was always an old Orlik's ways, ever since you was a child. You goes out of his way this present night. He'll have no more on you. You're dead. I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a moment I looked wildly round my trap for any chance of escape, but there was none. More than that, said he, folding his arms on the table again, I won't have a rag of you. I won't have a bone of you left on earth. I'll put your body in the kiln. I'd carry two such to it on my shoulders, and let people suppose what they may have you, they shall never know nothing. My mind, with inconceivable rapidity, followed out all the consequences of such a death. Estella's father would believe I had deserted him, would be taken, would die accusing me. Even Herbert would doubt me, when he compared the letter I had left for him with the fact that I'd called at Miss Havisham's gate for only a moment. Joe and Biddy would never know how sorry I had been that night. One would ever know what I had suffered, how true I had meant to be, what an agony I had passed through. The death close before me was terrible, but far more terrible than death was the dread of being misremembered after death. And so quick were my thoughts that I saw myself despised by unborn generations, Estella's children and their children, while the wretched words were yet on his lips. Now, a wolf, said he, Before I kill you like any other beast, which is what I mean to do and what I have tied you up for, I'll have a good look at you and have a good goad at you—oh, you enemy! It had passed through my thoughts to cry out for help again, though few could know better than I, the solitary nature of the spot, and the hopelessness of aid. But as he sat gloating over me I was supported by a scornful detestation of him that sealed my lips. Above all things I resolved that I would not entreat him and that I would die making some last poor resistance to him. Soffin'd as my thoughts of all the rest of men were in that dire extremity, humbly beseeching pardon, as I did, of heaven, melted at heart, as I was, by the thought that I had taken no farewell, and never now could take farewell of those who were dear to me, or could explain myself to them, or ask for their compassion on my miserable errors. Still, if I could have killed him, even in dying, I would have done it. He had been drinking, and his eyes were red and bloodshot. Around his neck was slung a tin bottle, as I'd often seen his meat and drink slung about him in other days. He brought the bottle to his lips and took a fiery drink from it, and I smelt the strong spirits that I saw flashing to his face. "'Wolf!' said he, folding his arms again. "'Old Orlex, I'm going to tell you something. It was you as did for your shrew's sister.' Again, my mind, with its former inconceivable rapidity, had exhausted the whole subject of the attack upon my sister, her illness and her death, before his slow and hesitating speech had formed these words. "'It was you, villain!' said I. "'I tell you it was your doing. I tell you it was done through you.' He retorted, catching up the gun and making a blow with the stock at the vacant air between us. I come upon her from behind, as I come upon you tonight. I give it her. I left her for dead. And if there had been a lime kiln as nigh her as there is now nigh you, she shouldn't have come to life again. But it warn't, old Orlex, as did it. It was you. You was favoured, and he was bullied and beat. Old Orlex bullied and beat, eh? Now you pays for it. You done it. Now you pays for it.' He drank again and became more ferocious. I saw by his tilting of the bottle that there was no great quantity left in it. I distinctly understood that he was working himself up with its contents to make an end of me. I knew that every drop it held was a drop of my life. I knew that when I was changed into a part of the vapor that crept towards me, but a little while before, like my own warning ghost, he would do as he had done in my sister's case. Like all haste to the town and be seen slouching about there drinking at the ale-houses, my rapid mind pursued him to the town, made a picture of the street with him in it, and contrasted its lights and life with the lonely marsh and the white vapor creeping over it into which I should have dissolved. It was not only that I could have summed up years and years and years while he said a dozen words, but that what he did say presented pictures to me and not mere words. In the excited and exalted state of my brain I could not think of a place without seeing it, or of persons without seeing them. It is impossible to overstate the vividness of these images, and yet I was so intent all the time upon him himself, who would not be intent on the tiger crouching to bring, that I knew of the slightest action of his fingers. When he had drunk the second time he rose from the bench on which he sat and pushed the table aside. Then he took up the candle, and shading it with his murderous hand so as to throw its light on me, stood before me, looking at me, and enjoying the sight. Wolf, I'll tell you something more. It was old or like as you tumbled over on your stairs that night. I saw the staircase with its extinguished lamps. I saw the shadows of the heavy stair-rails thrown by the watchmen's lantern on the wall. I saw the rooms that I was never to see again, here, a door half open, there, a door closed, all the articles of furniture around. And why was old or like there? I'll tell you something more, Wolf. You and her have pretty well hunted me out of this country, so far as getting an easy living in it goes. And I've took up with new companions and new masters. Some of them writes my letters when I want some rote, do you mind? Writes my letters, Wolf. They writes fifty hands. They're not like sneaking you, as writes but one. I have a firm mind and a firm will to have your life, since she was down here at your sister's burying. I hadn't seen a way to get you safe, and I've looked out of you to know your ins and outs. For, says old or like to himself, somehow or another, I'll have him. What? When I look for you, I find your uncle Provis, eh? Neil Pond Bank, and Chinks Basin, and the old Green Copper Rope Walk, also clear and plain. Provis in his rooms, the signal whose use was over. Pretty Clara, the good motherly woman, old Bill Barley on his back, all drifting by, as on the swift stream of my life fast running out to see. You with a uncle, too. Why I knowed you at gargheries when you were so small a Wolf that I could have took your wheezing betwixt this finger in thumb and chucked you away dead, as I'd thought to do in odd times when I see you loitering amongst the Pollards on a Sunday. And you hadn't found no uncles then. No, not you. But when old Orlik come forward to hear that your uncle Provis had most like wore the leg-iron what old Orlik had picked up, filed a sunder on these meshes ever so many years ago, and what he kept by him till he dropped your sister with it, like a bullock, as he means to drop you, hey? When he come forward to hear that, hey? In his savage taunting he flared the candle so close at me that I turned my face aside to save it from the flame. Ah! he cried, laughing, after doing it again. The burnt child dreads the fire. Old Orlik knowed you was burnt. Old Orlik knowed you was smuggling your uncle Provis away. Old Orlik's a match for you, and knowed you'd come to-night. Now I'll tell you something more, Wolf, and this ends it. There's them that's as good a match for your uncle Provis as old Orlik has been for you. Let him wear them, when he's lost his nevy. Let him wear them when no man can't find a rag of his dear relations' clothes, nor yet a bone of his body. There's them that can't, and that won't have Magwitch. Yes, I know the name, alive in the same land with them, and that's had such sure information of him when he was alive in another land as that he couldn't and shouldn't leave it unbeknown and put them in danger. Perhaps it's them that writes fifty hands, and that's not like sneaking you his rights but one. Wear compison, Magwitch, and the gallows. He flared the candle at me again, smoking my face and hair, and for an instant blinding me, and turned his powerful back as he replaced the light on the table. I had thought a prayer, and had been with Joe, and Biddy, and Herbert, before he turned towards me again. There was a clear space of a few feet between the table and the opposite wall. Within this space he now slouched backwards and forwards. His great strength seemed to sit stronger upon him than ever before, as he did this with his hands hanging loose and heavy at his sides, and with his eyes scowling at me. I had no grain of hope left. Wild as my inward hurry was, and wonderful the force of the pictures that rushed by me instead of thoughts, I could yet clearly understand that, unless he had resolved that I was within a few moments of surely perishing out of all human knowledge, he would never have told me what he had told. Of a sudden he stopped, took the cork out of his bottle, and tossed it away. Light as it was I heard it fall like a plummet. He swallowed slowly, tilting up the bottle by little and little, and now he looked at me no more. The last few drops of liquor he poured into the palm of his hand and licked up. Then with a sudden hurry of violence and swearing horribly, he threw the bottle from him, and stooped, and I saw in his hand a stone hammer with a long, heavy handle. The resolution I had made did not desert me, for without uttering one vain word of appeal to him, I shouted out with all my might, and struggled with all my might. It was only my head and my legs that I could move, but to that extent I struggled with all the force, until then unknown, that was within me. In the same instant I heard responsive shouts, saw figures and a gleam of light dash in at the door, heard voices in tumult, and saw Orlick emerge from a struggle of men, as if it were tumbling water, clear the table at a leap, and fly out into the night. After a blank I found that I was lying unbound on the floor, in the same place with my head on someone's knee. My eyes were fixed on the ladder against the wall when I came to myself, had opened on it before my mind saw it, and thus as I recovered consciousness I knew that I was in the place where I had lost it. Too indifferent at first, even to look round and ascertain who supported me, I was lying looking at the ladder, when there came between me and it a face. The face of Trab's boy. I think he's all right, said Trab's boy in a sober voice. But ain't he just pale, though? At these words the face of him who supported me looked over into mine, and I saw my supporter to be— Herbert! Great Heaven! Softly, said Herbert, gently handle, don't be too eager. Find our old comrade, Star-top! I cried as he too bent over me. Remember what he is going to assist us in, said Herbert, and be calm. The illusion made me spring up, though I dropped again from the pain in my arm. The time has not gone by, Herbert, has it. What night is tonight? How long have I been here? For I had a strange and strong misgiving that I had been lying there a long time, a day and a night, two days and nights, more. The time has not gone by. It is still Monday night. Thank God! And you have all to-morrow, Tuesday, to rest in, said Herbert. But you can't help groaning, my dear handle. What hurt have you got? Can you stand? Yes. Yes, said I. I can walk. I have no hurt but in this throbbing arm. They laid it bare and did what they could. It was violently swollen and inflamed, and I could scarcely endure to have it touched. But they tore up their handkerchiefs to make fresh bandages and carefully replaced it in the sling, until we could get to the town and obtain some cooling lotion to put upon it. In a little while we had shut the door of the dark and empty sluice-house and were passing through the quarry on our way back. Trab's boy, Trab's overgrown young man now, went before us with a lantern, which was the light I had seen come in at the door. But the moon was a good two hours higher than when I had last seen the sky, and the night, though rainy, was much lighter. The white vapor of the kiln was passing from us as we went by, and as I had thought a prayer before, I thought a thanksgiving now. In treating Herbert to tell me how he had come to my rescue, which at first he had flatly refused to do, but had insisted on my remaining quiet, I learnt that I had in my hurry dropped the letter open in our chambers, where he, coming home to bring with him Star Top, whom he had met in the street on his way to me, found it very soon after I had was gone. Its tone made him uneasy, and the more so because of the inconsistency between it and the hasty letter I had left for him. His uneasiness increasing, instead of subsiding, after a quarter of an hour's consideration, he set off for the coach office with Star Top, who volunteered his company to make inquiry when the next coach went down, finding that the afternoon coach was gone and finding that his uneasiness grew into positive alarm, as obstacles came in his way, he resolved to follow in a post-chez. So he and Star Top arrived at the Blue Boar, fully expecting there to find me, or tidings of me, but finding neither went on to Miss Havasham's, where they lost me. Hereupon they went back to the hotel, doubtless at about the time when I was hearing the popular local version of my own story, to refresh themselves, and get someone to guide them out upon the marshes. Among the loungers under the Boar's archway happened to be Trabs Boye, true to his ancient habit of happening to be everywhere where he had no business, and Trabs Boye had seen me passing from Miss Havasham's in the direction of my dining-place. Thus Trabs Boye became their guide, and with him they went out to the Sluice House, though by the townway to the marshes, which I had avoided. Now as they went along, Herbert reflected that I might, after all, had been brought there on some genuine and serviceable errand tending to Provis's safety, and be thinking himself that in that case interruption must be mischievous, left his guide and Star Top on the edge of the quarry, and went on by himself, and stole round the house two or three times, endeavouring to ascertain whether all was right within. As he could hear nothing but indistinct sounds of one deep rough voice, this was while my mind was so busy, he even at last began to doubt whether I was there, when suddenly I cried out loudly, and he answered the cries, and rushed in, closely followed by the other two. When I told Herbert what had passed within the house he was for our immediately going before a magistrate in the town, late at night as it was, and getting out a warrant. But I had already considered that such a course, by detaining us there, or binding us to come back, might be fatal to Provis. There was no gain saying this difficulty, and we relinquished all thoughts of pursuing Orlik at that time. For the present, under the circumstances, we deemed it prudent to make rather light of the matter to Trab's boy, who I am convinced would have been much affected by disappointment if he had known that his intervention saved me from the lime kiln. Not that Trab's boy was of a malignant nature, but that he had too much spare by vacity, and that it was in his constitution to want variety and excitement at any body's expense. When we parted, I presented him with two guineas, which seemed to meet his views, and told him that I was sorry ever to have had an ill opinion of him, which made no impression on him at all. The next day being so close upon us, we determined to go back to London that night, three in the post-jez, the rather, as we should then be clear away before the night's adventure began to be talked of. Herbert got a large bottle of stuff from my arm, and by dint of having this stuff dropped over at all the night through, I was just able to bear its pain on the journey. It was daylight when we reached the temple, and I went at once to bed, and lay in bed all day. My terror, as I lay there, of falling ill and being unfitted for to-morrow, was so besetting that I wonder it did not disable me of itself. It would have done so, pretty surely, in conjunction with the mental wear and tear I had suffered, but for the unnatural strain upon me that to-morrow was. So anxiously looked forward to, charged with such consequences, its results so impenetrably hidden, though so near. No precaution could have been more obvious than our refraining from communication with him that day, yet this again increased my restlessness. I started at every footstep and every sound, believing that he was discovered and taken, and this was the messenger to tell me so. I persuaded myself that I knew he was taken, that there was something more upon my mind than a fear or a presentiment that the fact had occurred, and I had a mysterious knowledge of it. As the days wore on, and no ill news came, as the day closed in and darkness fell, my overshadowing dread of being disabled by illness before to-morrow morning altogether mastered me. My burning arm throbbed, and my burning head throbbed, and I fancied I was beginning to wander. I counted up to high numbers to make sure of myself, and repeated passages that I knew in prose and verse. It happened sometimes that in the mere escape of a fatigued mind I doze for some moments or forgot. Then I would say to myself with a start, Now it has come, and I am turning delirious. They kept me very quiet all day, and kept my arm constantly dressed, and gave me cooling drinks. Whenever I fell asleep I awoke with the notion I had had in the sluice-house that a long time had elapsed, and the opportunity to save him was gone. About midnight I got out of bed and went to Herbert, with a conviction that I had been asleep for four and twenty hours, and that Wednesday was past. It was the last self-exhausting effort of my fretfulness, for after that I slept soundly. Wednesday morning was dawning when I looked out of window. The winking lights upon the bridges were already pale. The coming sun was like a marsh of fire on the horizon. The river, still dark and mysterious, was spanned by bridges that were turning coldly gray, with here and there at top a warm touch from the burning in the sky. As I looked along the clustered roofs, with church towers and spires shooting into the unusually clear air, the sun rose up, and a veil seemed to be drawn from the river, and millions of sparkles burst out upon its waters. From me too a veil seemed to be drawn, and I felt strong and well. Herbert lay asleep in his bed, and our old fellow student lay asleep on the sofa. I could not dress myself without help, but I made up the fire, which was still burning, and got some coffee ready for them. In good time they too started up strong and well, and we admitted the sharp morning air at the windows and looked at the tide that was still flowing towards us. When it turns at nine o'clock, said Herbert cheerfully, look out for us and stand up.