 CHAPTER 42 Dear boy and Pip's comrade, I am not a going for to tell you my life like a song or a story book, but to give it to you short and handy, I'll put it once into a mouthful of English, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There you've got it. That's my life pretty much, down to such times as I got shipped off after Pip stood my friend. I've been done everything too, pretty well, except hanged. I've been locked up as much as a silver tea kettle. I've been carted here and carted there, and put out of this town and put out of that town, and stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove. I've no more notion where I was born than you have, if so much. I first became aware of myself down in Essex, a thieve in turnips for my livin'. Someone had run away from me, a man, a tinker, and he took the fire with him and left me very cold. I knowed my name to be Magwitch, christened Abel. How did I know it? Much as I knowed the bird's names in the hedges to be Chaffinch, Spara, Thrush, I might have thought it was all lies together, only as the bird's names come out true, I supposed mine did. So far as I could find, there warn't a soul that see young Abel Magwitch with us little on him as in him, but what caught fright at him, and either drove him off or took him up. I was took up, took up, took up to that extent that I regularly grode up, took up. This is the way it was. They went I was a ragged little creature as much to be pitied as ever I see, not that I looked in the glass, for there warn't many insides of furnish houses known to me. I got the name of being hardened. This is a terrible hardened one, they says to prison visitors, picking out me. Maybe said to live in jails, this boy. Then they looked at me, and I looked at them, and they measured my heads, some on them. They had better have measured my stomach. And others on them give me tracks what I couldn't read, and made me speeches what I couldn't understand. They always went on to get me about the devil. But what the devil was I to do? I must put something into my stomach mustn't I. Howsoever, I'm getting low, and I know what's due. Dear boy and pips comrade, don't you be a fear to me being low? Tramping, begging, thieving, working sometimes when I could, though that warn't as often as you may think, till you put the question whether you would've been over ready to give me work yourselves. A bit of a poacher, a bit of a laborer, a bit of a waggoner, a bit of a haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things that don't pay and lead to trouble, I got to be a man. A deserting soldier in a traveler's rest, what lay hid up to the chin under a load of taters, learnt me to read, and a traveling giant what signed his name at a penny a time, learnt me to write. I warn't locked up as often now as formerly, but I wore out my good share of key-metal still. At Epsom races, a matter of over twenty years ago, I got acquainted with a man whose skull I'd crack with his poker like the claw of a lobster if I got it on this hob. His right name was Kompison, and that's the man, dear boy, what you see me, a poundin' in the ditch, according to what you truly told your comrade Arder I was gone last night. He set up for a gentleman this Kompison, and he'd been to a public boarding school and had learnin'. He was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the way of gentle folks. He was good-lookin' too. It was the night of four of the great race when I found him on the heath, in a booth that I'd known on. Him and S'more was a-sittin' among the tables when I went in, and the landlord, which had a knowledge of me and was a sporting one, called him out and said, I think this is a man that might suit you. Meaning I was. Kompison, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him. He has a watch and a chain and a ring and a breast-pin and a handsome suit of clothes. To judge from appearances, you're out of luck, says Kompison to me. Yes, master, and I've never been in it much. I had come out of Kingston jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what it might have been for something else, but it weren't. Luck changes, says Kompison. Perhaps yours is going to change. I says I hope it may be so. There's room. What can you do, says Kompison. Eat and drink, I says, if you'll find the materials. Kompison laughed, looked at me again very noticing, give me five shillings, and appointed me for next night, same place. I went to Kompison next night, same place, and Kompison took me on to be his man and partner. And what was Kompison's business in which we was to go partners? Kompison's business was the Swindlin hand-writing foraging, stolen banknote-passen, and such like. All sorts of traps as Kompison could set with his head and keep his own legs out of and get the profits from and let another man in for was Kompison's business. He'd know more heart than an iron file. He was as cold as death, and he had the head of the devil aforementioned. There was another in with Kompison, as was called Arthur, not as being so christened but as a surname. He was in a decline, and was a shadow to look at. Him and Kompison had been in a bad thing with a rich lady some years before, and they'd made a pot of money by it. But Kompison bedded and gamed, and he'd run through the king's taxes. So Arthur was a dyin, and a dyin poor, and with the horrors on him. And Kompison's wife, which Kompison kicked mostly, was a havin' pity on him when she could, and Kompison was havin' pity on nothin' and no body. I mighta took warning by Arthur, but I didn't, and I won't pretend I was particular. For where be the good on it, dear boy and comrade? So I've begun with Kompison, and a poor tool I was in his hands. Arthur lived at the top of Kompison's house, over Nye Brentford it was, and Kompison kept a careful account again him for board and lodging, in case he should ever get better to work it out. But Arthur soon settled the account. The second or third time as ever I see him, he come a tearing down into Kompison's parlor late at night, in only a flannel gown, with his hair all in a sweat. And he says to Kompison's wife, Sally, she really is upstairs a longer me now, and I can't get rid of her. She's all in white, he says, with white flowers in her hair, and she's awful mad, and she's got a shroud hangin' over her arm, and she says she'll put it on me at five in the mornin'. Says Kompison, why you fool, don't you know she's got a living body? And how should she be up there, without coming through the door, or in at the window, and up the stairs? I don't know how she's there, says Arthur, shake and dreadful with the horrors, but she's standing in the corner at the foot of the bed awful mad, and over where her hearts broke you broke it, there's drops of blood. Kompison spoke hearty, but he was always a coward. Go up alonger this drivelin' sick man, he says to his wife, and Magwitch lend her a hand, will ya? And he never come nigh himself. Kompison's wife and me took him up to bed again, and he raved most dreadful. While look at her, he cries out, she's a-shakin' the shroud at me, don't you see her? Look at her eyes, ain't it awful to see her so mad. Next he cries, she'll put it on me, and then I'm done for. Take it away from her, take it away. And then he catch-told of us, and kept on a talkin' to her, and answerin' to her, till I half-believed I see her myself. Kompison's wife, being used to him, gave him some liquor to get the horrors off, and by and by he quieted. Oh, she's gone. Has her helper been for her, he says. Yes, says Kompison's wife, did you tell him to lock her and bar her in? Yes. And to take that ugly thing away from her? Yes, yes, all right. You're a good creature, he says, and don't leave me whatever you do, and thank you. He rested pretty quiet till it might want a few minutes of five, and then he starts up with a scream and screams out, here she is. She's got the shroud again. She's unfolding it. She's comin' out of the corner. She's comin' to the bed. Hold me both on ya, one on each side. Don't let her touch me with it. Ha! She missed me that time. Don't let her throw it over my shoulders. Don't let her lift me up to get it round me. She's liftin' me up. Keep me down. Then he lifted himself up hard, and was dead. Kompison took it easy as a good riddance for both sides. Him and me was soon busy, and first he swore me, be an ever-artful, on my own book, this here little black book, dear boy, what I swore your comrade on. Not to go into the things that Kompison planned, and I'd done, which'd take a week. I'll simply say to you, dear boy, and Pip's comrade, that that man got me into such nets as made me his black slave. I was always in debt to him, always under his thumb, always a workin', always a gettin' into danger. He was younger than me, but he got craft, and he got learning, and he overmatched me five hundred times told and no mercy. My missus is I had the hard time with. Stop, though, I ain't brought her in. He looked about him in a confused way, as if he had lost his place in the book of his remembrance, and he turned his face to the fire, and spread his hands broader on his knees, and lifted them off and put them on again. There ain't no need to go into it, he said, looking round once more. The time with Kompison was almost as hard a time as ever I had. That said, all said. Did I tell you, as I was tried, alone, for misdemeanor, while with Kompison? I answered, no. Well, he said, I was, and got convicted. As to took up on suspicion, that was twice or three times in the four or five years that it lasted, but evidence was wanting. At last me and Kompison were both committed for felony, on a charge of put and stolen notes in circulation, and there was other charges behind. Kompison says to me, separate defenses, no communication. And that was all. And I was so miserable poor, that I sold all the clothes I had, except what hung on my back, before I could get jaggers. When we was put in on the dock, I noticed first of all what a gentleman Kompison looked with his curly hair, and his black clothes, and his white-pockered handkerchief, and what a common sort of wretch I looked. When the prosecution opened, and the evidence was put short, a forehand, I noticed how heavy it all bore on me, and how light on him. When the evidence was given the box, I noticed how it was always me that had come forward and could be swore to, how it was always me that the money had been paid to, how it was always me that it seemed to work the thing and get the profit. But when the defense come on, then I see the plan planer, for, says the counselor for Kompison, my lord and gentleman, here you has a for you, side by side, two persons as your eyes can separate wide, one the younger well-broad up, who will be spoke to as such, one the elder ill-broad up, who will be spoke to as such, one the younger seldom have ever seen of these here transactions, and only suspected, to other the elder always seen in them, and always with his guilt brought home. Can you doubt, if there is but one in it, which is the one, and if there is two in it, which is much the worst one? And such like. And when it come to character, weren't it Kompison as had been to the school, and warranted his school fellows as was in this position and in that, and warranted him as had been known by witnesses in such clubs and societies, and now to his disadvantage, and warranted me as had been tried before, and has been known uphill and down-dale in bridewells and lock-ups? And when it come to speech-making, weren't it Kompison as could speak to him with his face dropping every now and then into his white-pocket handkerchief? Ha! and with verses in his speech, too, and warranted me as could only say, Gentlemen, this man at my side is a most precious rascal. And when the verdict come, weren't it Kompison as was recommended to mercy on account of good character and bad company, and giving up all the information he could again me, and warranted me as got never a word but guilty? And when I says to Kompison, once out of this court, I'll smash that face of yours, ain't it Kompison as praised the judge to be protected and gets two turnkeys stood betwixt us? And when we're sentenced, ain't it him as get seven year, and me fourteen? And ain't it him as the judge is sorry for, because he might've done so well, and ain't it me as the judge perceives to be an old offender of violent passion likely to come to worse? He had worked himself into a state of great excitement, but he checked it, took two or three short breaths, swallowed as often, and stretching out his hand toward me, said in a reassuring manner, I ain't it going to be low, dear boy? He had so heated himself that he took out his handkerchief, and wiped his face and head and neck and hands before he could go on. I had said to Kompison that I'd smashed that face of his, and I swore Lord smash mine to do it. We was in the same prison ship, but I couldn't get at him for long, though I tried. At last I come behind him and hit him on the cheek to turn him round and get a smashin' one at him when I was seen and seized. The black hole of that ship weren't a strong one to a judge of black holes that could swim and dive. I escaped to the shore, and I was a-hiding among the graves there, envying them as was in them and all over when I first seen my boy. He regarded me with a look of affection that made him almost abhorrent to me again, though I had felt great pity for him. By my boy I was given to understand as Kompison was out on them marshes too. Upon my soul I half-believed he escaped in his terror to get quit with me, not knowing it was me as had got ashore. I hunted him down. I smashed his face. And now, says I, as the worst thing I can do, carrying nothing for myself, I'll drag you back. And I'd have swum off towing him by the hair if it had come to that, and I'd had got him aboard without the soldiers. Of course he'd much the best of it to the last. His character was so good. He had escaped when he had made half-wild by me and my murderous intentions, and his punishment was light. I was put in irons, brought the trial again, and sent for life. I didn't stop for life, dear boy, and Pip's comrade, being here. He wiped himself again as he had done before, and then slowly took his tangle of tobacco from his pocket, and plucked his pipe from its buttonhole, and slowly filled it, and began to smoke. Is he dead? I asked after a silence. Is who dead, dear boy? COMPISON He hopes I am if he's alive, you may be sure. With a fierce look. I never hear no more of him. Herbert had been writing with his pencil in the cover of a book. He softly pushed the book over to me, as Provis stood smoking with his eyes on the fire, and I read in it. Young Habasham's name was Arthur. COMPISON is the man who professed to be Miss Habasham's lover. I shut the book, and nodded slightly to Herbert, and put the book by. But we neither of us said anything, and both looked at Provis as he stood smoking by the fire. END OF CHAPTER 43 Why should I pause to ask how much of my shrinking from Provis might be traced to Estella? Why should I loiter on my road, to compare the state of mind in which I had tried to rid myself of the stain of the prison before meeting her at the coach-office, with a state of mind in which I now reflected on the abyss between Estella and her pride and beauty, and the return to transport whom I harbored? The road would be none the smoother for it, the end would be none the better for it. He would not be helped, nor I extenuated. A new fear had been engendered in my mind by his narrative, or rather his narrative had given form and purpose to the fear that was already there. If COMPISON were alive and should discover his return, I could hardly doubt the consequence. That COMPISON stood in mortal fear of him, neither of the two could know much better than I, and that any such man as that man had been described to be would hesitate to release himself for good from a dreaded enemy by the safe means of becoming an informer was scarcely to be imagined. Never had I breathed, and never would I breathe, or so I resolved, a word of Estella to Provost. But I said to Herbert that, before I could go abroad, I must see both Estella and Miss Havisham. This was when we were left alone on the night of the day when Provost told us his story. I resolved to go out to Richmond next day, and I went. On my presenting myself at Mrs. Bradley's, Estella's maid was called to tell that Estella had gone into the country. Where? To Saddus House, as usual. Not as usual, I said, for she had never yet gone there without me. When was she coming back? There was an error of reservation in the answer which increased my perplexity, and the answer was that her maid believed she was only coming back at all for a little while. I could make nothing of this, except that it was meant that I should make nothing of it, and I went home again in complete discomforture. Another night consultation with Herbert after Provost was gone home. I always took him home, and always looked well about me. Let us do the conclusion that nothing should be said about going abroad until I came back from his haveshams. In the meantime, Herbert and I were to consider separately what it would be best to say, whether we should devise any pretense of being afraid that he was under suspicious observation, or whether I, who had never yet been abroad, should propose an expedition. We both knew that I had but to propose anything and he would consent. We agreed that his remaining many days in his present hazard was not to be thought of. Next day I had the meanness to feign that I was under a binding promise to go down to Joe, but I was capable of almost any meanness towards Joe or his name. Provost was to be strictly careful while I was gone, and Herbert was to take the charge of him that I had taken. I was to be absent only one night, and on my return the gratification of his impatience for my starting as a gentleman on a greater scale was to be begun. It occurred to me then, and as I afterwards found to Herbert also, that he might be best got away across the water on that pretense, as to make purchases or the like. Having thus cleared the way for my expedition to Miss Haveshams, I set off by the early morning coach before it was yet light, and was out on the open country road when the day came creeping on, halting and whimpering and shivering, and wrapped in patches and wrapped in patches of cloud and rags of mist, like a beggar. When we drove up to the Blue Boar after a drizzly ride, whom should I see come out under the gateway, toothpick in hand, to look at the coach, but bently drummel. As he pretended not to see me, I pretended not to see him. It was a very lame pretence on both sides, the lame-er because we both went into the coffee room, where he had just finished his breakfast, and where I ordered mine. It was poisonous to me to see him in the town, for I very well knew why he had come there. Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long out of date, which had nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter of coffee, pickles, fish sauces, gravy, melted butter and wine with which it was sprinkled all over, as if it had taken the measles in a highly irregular form. I sat at my table while he stood before the fire. By degrees it became an enormous injury to me that he stood before the fire. And I got up, determined to have my share of it. I had to put my hand behind his legs for the poker when I went up to the fireplace to stir the fire, but still pretended not to know him. Is this a cut? said Mr. Drummel. Oh! said I, poker in hand. It's you, is it? How do you do? I was wondering who it was who kept the fire off. With that I poked tremendously, and having done so, planted myself side by side with Mr. Drummel, my shoulders squared and my back to the fire. You have just come down, said Mr. Drummel, edging me a little away with his shoulder. Yes, said I, edging him a little away with my shoulder. Beastly place, said Drummel. You're part of the country, I think. Yes, I assented. I am told it's very like your shrubsher. Not in the least like it, said Drummel. Here Mr. Drummel looked at his boots, and I looked at mine. And then Mr. Drummel looked at my boots, and I looked at his. Have you been here long? I asked, determined not to yield an inch of the fire. Long enough to be tired of it. Returned Drummel, pretending to yawn, but equally determined. Do you stay here long? Can't say, answered Mr. Drummel. Do you? Can't say, said I. I felt here, through a ting in my blood, that if Mr. Drummel's shoulder had claimed another hare's breath of room, I should have jerked him into the window. Equally that if my own shoulder had urged a similar claim, Mr. Drummel would have jerked me into the nearest box. He whistled a little. So did I. Large tract of marshes about here, I believe, said Drummel. Yes, what of that, said I. Mr. Drummel looked at me, and then at my boots, and said, Ho! Ha-ha! and laughed. Are you amused, Mr. Drummel? No, said he. Not particularly. I'm going out for a ride in the saddle. I mean to explore those marshes for amusement. Out of the way village is there, they tell me. Curious little public houses, and smithies and that. Waiter! Yes, sir. Is that horse of mine ready? Brought round to the door, sir. I say. Look here, you, sir. The lady won't ride to-day, the weather won't do. Very good, sir. And I don't dine, because I'm going to dine at the ladies. Very good, sir. Then Drummel glanced at me with an insolent triumph on his great jowled face that cut me to the heart, dull as he was, and so exasperated me that I felt inclined to take him in my arms, as the robber in the story-book is said to have taken the old lady, and seat him on the fire. One thing was manifest to both of us, and that was, that until relief came, neither of us could relinquish the fire. There we stood, well squared up before it, shoulder to shoulder and foot to foot, with our hands behind us, not budging an inch. The horse was visible outside in the drizzle at the door. My breakfast was put on the table. Drummel's was cleared away. The waiter invited me to begin. I nodded. We both stood our ground. Have you been to the grove since? said Drummel. No, said I. I had quite enough of the finches the last time I was there. Was that when we had a difference of opinion? Yes, I replied very shortly. Come, come. They let you off easily enough, sneered Drummel. You shouldn't have lost your temper. Mr. Drummel, said I, you are not competent to give advice on that subject. When I lose my temper, not that I admit having done so on that occasion, I don't throw glasses. I do, said Drummel. After glancing at him once or twice in an increased state of smoldering ferocity, I said, Mr. Drummel, I did not seek this conversation, and I don't think it an agreeable one. I am sure it's not, said he superciliously over his shoulder. I don't think anything about it. And therefore, I went on. With your leave I will suggest that we hold no kind of communication in future. Quite my opinion, said Drummel, and what I should have suggested myself, or done more likely without suggesting. But don't lose your temper. Have you lost enough without that? What do you mean, sir? Waiter, said Drummel, by way of answering me. The waiter reappeared. Look here, you sir. You quite understand that the young lady don't ride today, and that I dine at the young ladies? Quite so, sir. When the waiter had felt my fast-cooling teapot with the palm of his hand, and had looked imploringly at me, and had gone out, Drummel, careful not to move the shoulder next me, took a cigar from his pocket and bit the end off, but showed no sign of stirring. Choking and boiling as I was, I felt that we could not go a word further, without introducing Estella's name, which I could not endure to hear him utter. And therefore I looked stonily at the opposite wall, as if there were no one present, and forced myself to silence. How long we might have remained in this ridiculous position, it is impossible to say, but for the incursion of three thriving farmers, laid on by the waiter, I think, who came into the coffee-room unbuttoning their great-coats and rubbing their hands, and before whom, as they charged at the fire, we were obliged to give way. I saw him through the window, seizing his horse's mane and mounting in his blundering brutal manner, and sidling and backing away. I thought he was gone, when he came back, asking for a light for the cigar in his mouth, which he had forgotten. A man in a dust-colored dress appeared with what was wanted. I could not have said from where, whether from the in-yard or the street or where not. And as Drummel leaned down from the saddle and lighted his cigar and left, with the jerk of his head towards the coffee-room windows, the slouching shoulders and ragged hair of this man whose back was toward me, reminded me of Orlic. Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the time, whether it were he or no, or after all to touch the breakfast, I washed the weather and though journeying from my face and hands, and went out to the memorable old house that it would have been so much the better for me never to have entered, never to have seen. CHAPTER 44 In the room where the dressing table stood and where the wax candles burnt on the wall, I found Miss Havisham and Estella. Miss Havisham seated on a settee near the fire and Estella on a cushion at her feet. Estella was knitting and Miss Havisham was looking on. They both raised their eyes as I went in and both saw an alteration in me. I derived that from the look they interchanged. And what wind, said Miss Havisham, blows you here, Pip! Though she looked steadily at me, I saw that she was rather confused. Estella, pausing a moment in her knitting with her eyes upon me, and then going on, I fancied that I read in the action of her fingers, as plainly as if she had told me in the dumb alphabet, that she perceived I had discovered my real benefactor. Miss Havisham, said I, I went to Richmond yesterday to speak to Estella and finding that same wind had blown her here, I followed. Miss Havisham, motioning to me for the third or fourth time to sit down, I took the chair by the dressing table, which I had often seen her occupy. With all that ruin at my feet and about me, it seemed a natural place for me that day. What I had to say to Estella, Miss Havisham, I will say before you presently, in a few moments. It will not surprise you, it will not displease you. I am as unhappy as you can ever have met me to be. Miss Havisham continued to look steadily at me. I could see in the action of Estella's fingers as they worked that she attended to what I said, but she did not look up. I have found out who my patron is. It is not a fortunate discovery, and it is not likely ever to enrich me in reputation, station, fortune or anything. There are reasons why I must say no more of that. It is not my secret but another's. As I was silent for a while, looking at Estella and considering how to go on, Miss Havisham repeated, It is not your secret but another's. Well... When you first caused me to be brought here, Miss Havisham, when I belonged to the village over Yonder that I wish I had never left, I suppose I did really come here, as any other chance boy might have come, as a kind of servant to gratify a want or a whim, and to be paid for it. I pipe, replied Miss Havisham, steadily nodding her head. You did. And that Mr. Jaggers, Mr. Jaggers, said Miss Havisham, taking me up in a firm tone, had nothing to do with it, and knew nothing of it. His being my lawyer, and his being the lawyer of your patron is a coincidence. He holds the same relation towards numbers of people, and it might easily arise. Be that as it may, it did arise, and was not brought about by any one. Any one might have seen in her haggard face that there was no suppression or evasion so far. But when I fell into the mistake I have so long remained in, at least you led me on, said I. Yes, she returned, again nodding steadily. I let you go on. Was that kind? Who am I? cried Miss Havisham, striking her stick upon the floor, and flashing into wrath so suddenly that Estella glanced up at her in surprise. Who am I, for God's sake, that I should be kind? It was a weak complaint to have made. And I had not meant to make it. I told her so, as she sat brooding after this outburst. Well, well, well, she said. What else? I was liberally paid for my old attendance here, I said to soothe her, in being a pretest, and I have asked these questions only for my own information. What follows has another, and I hope more disinterested, purpose. In humoring my mistake, Miss Havisham, you punished, practiced on. Perhaps you will supply whatever term expresses your intention, without offense, your self-seeking relations. I did. Why, they would have it so. So would you. What has been my history that I should be at the pains of entreating either them or you not to have it so? You made your own snares. I never made them. Waiting until she was quiet again, for this too flashed out of her in a wild and sudden way, I went on. I have been thrown among one family of your relations, Miss Havisham, and have been constantly among them since I went to London. I know them to have been as honestly under my delusion as I myself. And I should be false and base, if I did not tell you, whether it is acceptable to you or no, and whether you are inclined to give credence to it or not, that you deeply wrong both Mr. Matthew Pocket and his son Herbert, if you suppose them to be otherwise than generous, upright, open, and incapable of anything designing or mean. They are your friends, said Miss Havisham. They made themselves, my friends, said I, when they supposed me to have superseded them, and when Sarah Pocket, Miss Georgiana, and Mistress Camilla were not my friends, I think. This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was glad to see, to do them good with her. She looked at me keenly for a little while, and then said quietly, What do you want for them? Only, said I, that you would not confound them with the others. They may be of the same blood, but, believe me, they are not of the same nature. Still looking at me keenly, Miss Havisham repeated, What do you want for them? I am not so cunning, you see, I said in answer, conscious that I readened a little, as that I could hide from you even if I desired that I do want something. Miss Havisham, if you would spare the money to do my friend Herbert a lasting service in life, but which, from the nature of the case, must be done without his knowledge, I could show you how. Why must it be done without his knowledge? She asked, settling her hands upon her stick, that she might regard me the more attentively. Because, said I, I began the service myself more than two years ago, without his knowledge, and I don't want to be betrayed. Why I fail in my ability to finish it? I cannot explain. It is part of the secret which is another's and not mine. She gradually withdrew her eyes from me and turned them on the fire. After watching it for what appeared in the silence and by the light of the slowly wasting candles, to be a long time, she was roused by the collapse of some of the red coals and looked towards me again, at first, vacantly, then with a gradually concentrating attention. All this time Estella knitted on. When Miss Havisham had fixed her attention on me, she said, speaking as if there had been no lapse in our dialogue. What else? Estella, said I, turning to her now and trying to command my trembling voice, you know I love you, you know that I have loved you long and dearly. She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, and her fingers plied their work, and she looked at me with an unmoved countenance. I saw them as Havisham glanced from me to her, and from her to me. I should have said this sooner, but for my long mistake. It induced me to hope that Miss Havisham meant us for one another. While I thought you could not help yourself, as it were, I refrained from saying it. But I must say it now. Preserving her unmoved countenance and with her fingers still going, Estella shook her head. I know, said I, an answer to that action. I know. I have no hope that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what may become of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may go. Still, I love you. I have loved you ever since I first saw you in this house. Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers busy, she shook her head again. It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practice on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that, in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella. I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and hold it there, as she sat looking by turns at Estella and at me. It seems, said Estella very calmly, that there are sentiments, fancies. I don't know how to call them, which I am not able to comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a form of words, but nothing more. You address nothing in my breast. You touch nothing there. I don't care for what you say at all. I have tried to warn you of this, now, have I not? I said, in a miserable manner, Yes. Yes, but you would not be warned, for you thought I did not mean it. Now, did you not think so? I thought and hoped you could not mean it. You, so young, untried, and beautiful, Estella. Surely it is not in nature. It is in my nature, she returned, and then she added, with a stress upon the words, It is in the nature formed within me. I make a great difference between you and all other people when I say so much. I can do no more. Is it not true, said I, that Bentley Drummel is in town here and pursuing you? It is quite true, she replied, referring to him with the indifference of utter contempt, that you encourage him and write out with him, and that he dines with you this very day. She seemed a little surprised that I should know it, but again replied, quite true. You cannot love him, Estella? Her fingers stopped for the first time as she retorted rather angrily. What have I told you? Do you still think, in spite of it, that I do not mean what I say? You would never marry him, Estella? She looked towards Miss Havisham, and considered for a moment with her work in her hands. Then she said, Why not tell you the truth? I am going to be married to him. I dropped my face into my hands, but was able to control myself better than I could have expected, considering what agony it gave me to hear her say those words. When I raised my face again there was such a ghastly look upon Miss Havisham's that it impressed me, even in my passionate hurry and grief. Estella, dearest Estella, do not let Miss Havisham lead you into this fatal step. Put me aside for ever. You have done so, I well know, but bestow yourself on some worthier person than drummel. Miss Havisham gives you to him as the greatest slight and injury that could be done to the many far better men who admire you, and to the few who truly love you. Among those few there may be one who loves you even as dearly, though he has not loved you as long as I. Take him, and I can bear it better for your sake. My earnestness awoke a wonder in her that seemed as if it would have been touched with compassion if she could have rendered me at all intelligible to her own mind. I am going, she said again in a gentler voice, to be married to him. The preparations for my marriage are making, and I shall be married soon. Why do you injuriously introduce the name of my mother by adoption? It is my own act. Your own act, Estella, to fling yourself away upon a brute? On whom should I fling myself away? She retorted, with a smile. Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the soonest feel if people do feel such things, that I took nothing to him? There, it is done. I shall do well enough, and so will my husband. As to leading me into what you call this fatal step, Miss Havisham would have had me wait, and not marry yet, but I am tired of the life I have led, which has very few charms for me, and I am willing enough to change it. Say no more. We shall never understand each other. Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute, I urged in despair. Don't be afraid of my being a blessing to him, said Estella. I shall not be that. Come, here is my hand. Do we part on this, you visionary boy or man? Oh, Estella! I answered, as my bitter tears fell fast on her hand. Do what I would to restrain them. Even if I remained in England and could hold my head up with a rest, how could I see you, drummel's wife? Nonsense! she returned. Nonsense! This will pass in no time. Never, Estella! Never, Estella! You will get me out of your thoughts in a week. Out of my thoughts you are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since, on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made are not more real or more impossible to be displaced by your hands than your presence and influence have been to me there and everywhere and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm. Let me feel now what sharp distress I may. Oh God bless you! God forgive you! In what ecstasy of unhappiness I got these broken words out of myself I don't know. The rhapsody welled up within me, like blood from an inward wound, and gushed out. I held her hand to my lips some lingering moments, and so I left her. But ever afterwards I remembered, and soon afterwards with stronger reason, that while Estella looked at me merely with incredulous wonder, the spectral figure of Miss Havisham, her hand still covering her heart, seemed all resolved into a ghastly stare of pity and remorse. All done! All gone! So much was done and gone that when I went out at the gate the light of the day seemed of a darker color than when I went in. For a while I hid myself among some lanes and bypass, and then struck off to walk all the way to London. For I had by that time come to myself so far as to consider that I could not go back to the inn and see drummel there, that I could not bear to sit upon the coach and be spoken to, that I could do nothing half so good for myself as tire myself out. It was past midnight when I crossed London Bridge. Pursuing the narrow intricacies of the streets which at that time tended westward near the Middlesex shore of the river, my readiest access to the temple was closed by the riverside through Whitefriars. I was not expected till to-morrow, but I had my keys, and if Herbert were gone to bed, could get to bed myself without disturbing him. As seldom happened that I came in at that Whitefriars gate after the temple was closed, and as I was very muddy and weary, I did not take it ill that the night-porter examined me with much attention as he held the gate a little way open for me to pass in. To help his memory I mentioned my name. I was not quite sure, sir, but I thought so. Here's a note, sir. The messenger that brought it said you would be so good as read it by my lantern. Much surprised by the request I took the note. It was directed to Philip Pipp Esquire. And on the top of the superscription were the words, please read this here. I opened it, the watchman holding up his light, and read inside, in Wemmick's writing, Don't Go Home. End of chapter. Chapter 45 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 45 Turning from the temple gate as soon as I had read the warning, I made the best of my way to Fleet Street, and there got a late Hackney chariot, and drove to the Hummins in Covent Garden. In those times a bed was always to be got there at any hour of the night, and the Chamberlain, letting me in at his ready wicket, lighted the candle next in order on his shelf, and showed me straight into the bedroom next in order on his list. It was a sort of vault on the ground floor at the back, where the despotic monster of a four-post bedstead in it straddling over the whole place, putting one of his arbitrary legs into the fireplace and another into the doorway, and squeezing the wretched little washing-standing quite a divinely righteous manner. As I had asked for a night-light, the Chamberlain had brought me in, before he left me, the good old constitutional rush-light of those virtuous days. An object like the ghost of a walking cane, which instantly broke its back if it were touched, which nothing could ever be lighted at, and which was placed in solitary confinement at the bottom of a high tin tower, perforated with round holes that made a staringly wide-awake pattern on the walls. When I had got into bed and lay there, foot sore, weary, and wretched, I found that I could no more close my own eyes than I could close the eyes of this foolish Argus, and thus in the gloom and death of the night we stared at one another. What a doleful night! How anxious! How dismal! How long! There was an inhospitable smell in the room of cold soot and hot dust, and as I looked up into the corners of the tester over my head, I thought what a number of blue-bottle flies from the butchers, and earwigs from the market, and grubs from the country must be holding on up there, lying by for next summer. This led me to speculate whether any of them ever tumbled down, and then I fancied that I felt light falls on my face. A disagreeable turn of thought, suggesting other and more objectionable approaches up my back. When I had lain awake a little while, these extraordinary voices with which silence teams began to make themselves audible. The closet whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washing stand ticked, and one guitar string played occasionally in the chest of drawers. At about the same time the eyes on the wall acquired a new expression, and in every one of those staring rounds I saw written, Don't Go Home. Whatever night fancies and night noises crowded on me, they never warded off this Don't Go Home. It plated itself into whatever I thought of, as a bodily pain would have done. Not long before I had read in the newspapers how a gentleman unknown had come to the Hummins in the night, and had gone to bed, and had destroyed himself, and had been found in the morning weltering in blood, it came into my head that he must have occupied this very vault of mine, and I got out of bed to assure myself that there were no red marks about. Then opened the door to look out into the passages, and cheer myself with the companionship of a distant light, near which I knew the chamberlain to be dozing. But all this time, why I was not to go home, and what had happened at home, and when I should go home, and whether Provost was safe at home, were questions occupying my mind so busily that one might have supposed there could be no more room in it for any other theme. Even when I thought of Estella and how we had parted that day, forever, and when I recalled all the circumstances of our parting, and all her looks and tones, and the action of her fingers while she knitted, even then I was pursuing here and there and everywhere, the caution, don't go home. When at last I dozed in sheer exhaustion of mind and body, it became a vast shadowy verb which I had to conjugate. Imperative mood, present tense. Do not thou go home? Let him not go home. Let us not go home. Do not ye or you go home? Let not them go home. Then, potentially, I may not and I cannot go home, and I might not, could not, would not, and should not go home, until I felt that I was going distracted and rolled over on the pillow, and looked at the staring rounds upon the wall again. I had left directions that I was to be called at seven, for it was plain that I must see Wemmick before seeing any one else, and equally plain that this was a case in which his Walworth sentiments only could be taken. It was a relief to get out of the room where the night had been so miserable, and I needed no second knocking at the door to startle me from my uneasy bed. The castle battlements arose upon my view at eight o'clock. The little servant happening to be entering the fortress with two hot rolls, I passed through the postern and crossed the drawbridge in her company, and so came without announcement into the presence of Wemmick as he was making tea for himself and the aged. An open door afforded a perspective view of the aged in bed. Hello, Mr. Pip, said Wemmick. You did come home, then? Yes, I returned, but I didn't go home. That's all right, said he, rubbing his hands. I left a note for you at each of the temple gates on the chance. Which gate did you come to? I told him. I'll go round to the others in the course of the day and destroy the notes, said Wemmick. It's a good rule never to leave documentary evidence if you can help it, because you don't know when it may be put in. I'm going to take a liberty with you. Would you mind toasting this sausage for the aged pea? I said I should be delighted to do it. Then you can go about your work, Mary Ann, said Wemmick to the little servant. Which leaves us to ourselves, don't you see, Mr. Pip? He added, winking as she disappeared. I thanked him for his friendship and caution, and our discourse proceeded in a low tone, while I toasted the aged sausage, and he buttered the crumb of the aged's roll. Now, Mr. Pip, you know, said Wemmick, you and I understand one another. We are in our private and personal capacities, and we have been engaged in a confidential transaction before today. Official sentiments are one thing. We are extra-official. I cordially assented. I was so very nervous that I had already lighted the aged sausage like a torch, and then obliged to blow it out. I accidentally heard, yesterday morning, said Wemmick, being in a certain place where I once took you, even between you and me, it's as well not to mention names when avoidable. Much better not, said I. I understand you. I heard there by chance yesterday morning, said Wemmick, that a certain person not altogether of uncolonial pursuits, and not unpossessed of portable property, I don't know who it may really be, we won't name this person. Not necessary, said I. Had made some little stir in a certain part of the world where good many people go, not always in gratification of their own inclinations, and not quite irrespective of the government expense. In watching his face I made quite a firework of the aged sausage, and greatly discomposed both my own attention and Wemmick's, for which I apologized. By disappearing from such place, and being no more heard of thereabouts, from which, said Wemmick, conjectures had been raised and theories formed. I also heard that you at your chambers and guarding court, Temple, had been watched, and might be watched again. By whom, said I? I wouldn't go into that, said Wemmick evasively. It might clash with official responsibilities. I heard it, as I have in my time heard other curious things in the same place. I don't tell it to you on information received. I heard it. He took the toasting fork and sausage from me as he spoke, and set forth the aged's breakfast neatly on a little tray. Previous to placing it before him, he went into the aged's room with a clean white cloth, and tied the same under the old gentleman's chin, and propped him up, and put his nightcap on one side, and gave him quite a rakish air. Then he placed his breakfast before him with great care, and said, All right, ain't you, aged P? To which the cheerful aged replied, All right, John, my boy, all right. As there seemed to be a tacit understanding that the aged was not in a presentable state, and was therefore to be considered invisible, I made a pretense of being in complete ignorance of these proceedings. This watching of me at my chambers, which I have once had reason to suspect, I said to Wemmick when he came back, is inseparable from the person to whom you have adverted, is it? Wemmick looked very serious. I couldn't undertake to say that of my own knowledge. I mean, I couldn't undertake to say it was at first. But it either is, or it will be, or it's in great danger of being. As I saw that he was restrained by fealty to little Britain from saying as much as he could, and as I knew with thankfulness to him how far out of his way he went to say what he did, I could not press him. But I told him, after a little meditation over the fire, that I would like to ask him a question subject to his answering or not answering as he deemed right, and sure that his course would be right. He paused in his breakfast, and crossing his arms and pinching his shirt sleeves, his notion of indoor comfort was to sit without any coat. He nodded to me once to put my question. You have heard of a man of bad character whose true name is Compson? He answered with one other nod. Is he living? One other nod. Is he in London? He gave me one other nod, compressed the post office exceedingly, gave me one last nod, and went on with his breakfast. Now, said Wimmick, questioning being over, which he emphasized and repeated for my guidance, I come to what I did after hearing what I heard. I went to garden court to find you, not finding you, I went to clericers to find Mr. Herbert. And him you found? said I, with great anxiety. And him I found. Without mentioning any names or going into any details, I gave him to understand that if he was aware of anybody, Tom, Jack, or Richard, being about the chambers or about the immediate neighborhood, he had better get Tom, Jack, or Richard out of the way while you were out of the way. He would be greatly puzzled what to do? He was puzzled what to do, not the less because I gave him my opinion that it was not safe to try to try to get Tom, Jack, or Richard too far out of the way at present. Mr. Pip, I'll tell you something. Under existing circumstances there is no place like a great city when you are once in it. Don't break cover too soon. Lie close. Lie close. Wait till things slacken before you try the open, even for foreign air. I thanked him for his valuable advice, and asked him what Herbert had done. Mr. Herbert, said Wemmick, after being all of a heap for half an hour, struck out a plan. He motioned to me as a secret that he is courting a young lady who has, as no doubt you are aware, a bed-ridden paw. Which paw, having been in the purser line of life, lies a bed in a bow-window where he can see the ship sail up and down the river. You are acquainted with the young lady most probably? Not personally, said I. The truth was that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confine the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance to Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy. He and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews, and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and though the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. The house with the bow-window, said Wemmick, being by the riverside, down the pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me. What did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack or Richard? Now I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say, firstly, it's altogether out of all your beats and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly, without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly, after a while, and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack or Richard, on board a foreign packet boat, there he is, ready. Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. Well, sir, Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a wheel, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack or Richard, whichever it may be, you and I don't want to know, quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and in fact he was taken down the Dover Road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is that it was done without you, and when, if anyone was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it, and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings him more confusion, and you want confusion. Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch and began to get his coat on. And now Mr. Pip, said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, I have probably done the most I can do, but if I can ever do more, from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity, I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here tonight, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack or Richard, before you go home, which is another reason for your not going home last night. But after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip. His hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them, and let me finally impress one important point upon you. He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper, avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property. Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. Times up, said Wemmick, and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the agent. He'll be up presently, and a little bit of, you remember the pig? Of course, said I. Well, and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-reader. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance's sake. Goodbye, ancient parent. In a cheery shout. All right, John, all right, my boy. Piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the agent and I enjoyed one another society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate, and I nodded at the agent with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark I left the agent preparing the fire for toast, and I inferred from the number of tea-cups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors and the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. End of chapter. Chapter 46 Of Great Expectations This is the Lieber-Vox recording. All Lieber-Vox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Lieber-Vox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Chapter 46 Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the longshore boat-builders, and mast, ore, and block-makers. All that waterside region of the upper and lower pool below bridge was unknown ground to me, and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Milpond Bank, Chinks Basin, and I had no other guide to Chinks Basin than the old green copper rope walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope walks that were not the old green copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner upon Milpond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round, and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the old green copper rope walk, whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, and that looked like superannuated hay-making rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Milpond Bank, a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window, not bay-window, which is another thing, I looked at the plate upon the door and read there Mrs. Wimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region, and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner covered with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook. A ship-launch, and His Majesty King George III in a steak-coachman's wig, leather-breaches, and top-boots on the terrace at Windsor. All is well, Handel, said Herbert, and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father, and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make her known to you, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father. I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and it probably expressed the fact in my countenance. I am afraid he is a sad old rascal, said Herbert, smiling, but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it. At rum? said I. Yes, returned Herbert, and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room and serving them out. He keeps them on shells over his head and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop. While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. What else can be the consequence? said Herbert, in explanation. If he will cut the cheese. A man with a gout in his right hand, and everywhere else, can't expect to get through a double-glauster without hurting himself. He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. To have provice for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Wimple, said Herbert, for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, handle, isn't it? It was a curious place, indeed, but remarkably well kept and clean. Mrs. Wimple, said Herbert, when I told him so, is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For Clara has no mother of her own handle, and no relation in the world but old gruff and grim. Surely that's not his name, Herbert? No, no, said Herbert. That's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family. Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Ms. Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Wimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than gout, rum, and purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone, while old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened and a very pretty, slight, dark-haired girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand, whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket and presented, blushing, as Clara. She really was a most charming girl and might have passed for a captive fairy whom that truculent ogre, old Barley, had pressed into his service. Look here, said Herbert, showing me the basket with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little. Here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum, which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for tomorrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think. There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out, and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm, and something so gentle in her, so much-needing protection on Milpawne Bank, by Chinks Basin, and the old green copper rope-walk with old Barley growling in the bean, that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg was trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, Papa wants me, darling, and ran away. There is an unconscionable old shark for you, said Herbert. What do you suppose he wants now, Handel? I don't know, said I. Something to drink? That's it! cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes! another roar with a prolonged shake at the end. Now, said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, he's drinking. Now, said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, he's down again on his back. Clara returns soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanies me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following refrain in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse. Ahoy, bless your eyes, there's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord, lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder. Here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy, bless you. In the strain of consolation Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together. Often while it was light, having at the same time one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provost comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning, but it struck me that he was softened, indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for a reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting copieson. For anything I knew his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him, first of all, whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information. I, I, dear boy! he answered with a grave nod. Jagger's nose! Then I have talked with Wemmick, said I, and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice. This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned, and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate Prison, whether from officers or prisoners, I could not say, that he was under some suspicion and that my chambers had been watched, how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him, and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added that, of course, when the time came I should go with him, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon, neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances it would not be simply ridiculous if it were no worse. He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worthwhile to pursue. We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen. That would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season. Don't you think it might be a good thing if you began it once to keep a boat at the temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices are mines. Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it, the twenty first or fifty first. I liked this scheme, and Provost was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provost should never recognize us if we came below bridge, and rode past Milpont Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window, which gave upon the east whenever he saw us, and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go, remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. I don't like to leave you here, I said to Provost, though I cannot doubt you're being safer here than near me. Goodbye. Dear boy! he answered, clasping my hands. I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like goodbye. Say good night. Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night. Good night. We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms, and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repast his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provost. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he, Herbert, had Mr. Campbell's consign to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Wimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the old green copper rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust, and hope enough in chinks basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in, for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued, made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the temple's stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then I began to go out, as for training and practice, sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first I kept above Blackfriars Bridge, but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to shoot the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the pool, and down to Aerith. The first time I passed Millpond Bank Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars, and both in going and returning we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received it is a haunting idea how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, and when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing with everything it bore towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers going swiftly, silently, and surely to take him. This is a 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 47 Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the castle, I might have doubted him. Not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money. I mean of ready money in my own pocket. And to relieve it by converting some easily-spared articles of jewelry into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction, whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know, in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview, never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year—last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived, and its one dominant anxiety towering above all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered. Let me sit listening as I would with dread for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news. For all that, and much more to like-purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rode about in my boat, and waited—waited—waited—as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge. Then I left my boat at a wharf near the custom house, to be brought up afterwards to the temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the waterside people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf, at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine, bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning I had seen the signal in his window, all well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once, and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that waterside neighbourhood, it is nowhere now, and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the drama, but on the contrary had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of through the playbills, as a faithful black in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the table-cloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives. To this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical, and wore out the time endosing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by I roused myself and went to the play. There I found a virtuous boson in his Majesty's service a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others, who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed furniture, with great rejoicings, the whole population of Portsmouth, nine in number at the last census, turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing, Fill, Fill! A certain dark complexion's swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated by the boson to be as black as his figurehead, proposed to two other swabs to get all mankind into difficulties, which was so effectually done, the swab family having considerable political influence, that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gators, and red nose, getting into a clock with a grid-iron and listening, and coming out and knocking everybody down from behind with the grid-iron whom I couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsles, who had never been heard of before, coming in with a star and garteron, as a plentipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boson down the Union Jack as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boson, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up and addressing Mr. Wopsle as, your honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe, and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented eye, became aware of me. The second piece was the last new grand comic, Christmas Panamime, in the first scene of which it pained me to suspect that I detect Mr. Wopsle with red worsted legs under a highly magnified phosphoric countenance and a shock of red curtain fringe for his hair, engaged in the manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine, and displaying great cowardice when his gigantic master came home, very hoarse, to dinner. But he presently presented himself under worthier circumstances, for the genius of youthful love being in want of assistance, on account of the parental brutality of an ignorant farmer who opposed the chance of his daughter's heart by purposely falling upon the object in a flower sack out of the first floor window, summoned a sententious enchanter, and he, coming up from the antipodes rather unsteadily, after an apparently violent journey, proved to me Mr. Wopsle in a high crowned hat, with a necromatic work in one volume under his arm. The business of this enchanter on earth being principally to be talked at, sung at, butted at, danced at, and flashed at with fires of various colors, he had a good deal of time on his hands, and I observed with great surprise that he devoted it to staring in my direction as if he were lost in amazement. There was something so remarkable in the increasing glare of Mr. Wopsle's eye, and he seemed to be turning so many things over in his mind, and a gross so confused, that I could not make it out. I sat thinking of it long after he had ascended to the clouds in a large watch case, and still I could not make it out. I was still thinking of it when I came out of the theatre an hour afterwards, and found him waiting for me, near the door. How do you do? said I, shaking hands with him as we turned down the street together. I saw that you saw me. Saw you, Mr. Pip? he returned. Yes, of course I saw you, but who else was there? Who else? It is the strangest thing, said Mr. Wopsle, drifting into his lost look again, and yet I could swear to him. Becoming alarmed I entreated Mr. Wopsle to explain his meaning. Whether I should have noticed him at first, but for your being there, said Mr. Wopsle, going on in the same lost way. I can't be positive, yet I think I should. Involuntarily I looked round me, as I was accustomed to look round me when I went home, for these mysterious words gave me a chill. Oh, he can't be in sight, said Mr. Wopsle. He went out before I went off. I saw him go. Having the reason that I had for being suspicious, I even suspected this poor actor. I mistrusted a design to entrap me into some admission. Therefore I glanced at him as we walked on together, but said nothing. I had a ridiculous fancy that he must be with you, Mr. Pip. Till I saw that you were quite unconscious of him, sitting behind you there like a ghost. My former chill crept over me again, but I was resolved not to speak yet, for it was quite consistent with his words that he might be set on to induce me to connect these references with Provis. Of course, I was perfectly sure and safe that Provis had not been there. I dare say you wonder at me, Mr. Pip. Indeed, I see you do, but it is so very strange. You will hardly believe what I am going to tell you. I could hardly believe it myself if you told me. Indeed, said I. No, indeed. Mr. Pip, you remember in old times a certain Christmas day when you were quite a child, and I dined at Gargary's, and some soldiers came to the door to get a pair of handcuffs mended? I remember it very well. And you remember that there was a chase after two convicts, and that we joined in it, and that Gargary took you on his back, and that I took the lead, and you kept with me as well as you could? I remember it all very well. Better than he thought, except the last clause. And you remember that we came up with the two in a ditch, and that there was a scuffle between them, and that one of them had been severely handled and much mauled about the face by the other? I see it all before me. And that the soldiers lighted torches, and put the two in the center, and that we went on to see the last of them, over the black marshes, with the torchlight shining on their faces. I am particular about that, with the torchlight shining on their faces, when there was an outer ring of dark night all about us. Yes, said I. I remember all that. Then, Mr. Pip, one of those two prisoners sat behind you to-night. I saw him over your shoulder. Steady, I thought. I asked him then, which of the two do you suppose you saw? The one who had been mauled. He answered readily, and I'll swear I saw him. The more I think of him, the more certain I am of him. This is very curious, said I, with the best assumption I could put on of its being nothing more to me. Very curious indeed. I cannot exaggerate the enhanced disquiet into which this conversation threw me, or the special and peculiar terror I felt at composence, having been behind me, like a ghost. If he had ever been out of my thoughts for a few moments together since the hiding had begun, it was in those very moments when he was closest to me, and to think that I should be so unconscious and off my guard after all my care was as if I had shut an avenue of a hundred doors to keep him out, and then had found him at my elbow. I could not doubt, either, that he was there, because I was there, and that, however slight an appearance of danger there might be about us, danger was always near and active. I put such questions to Mr. Wopsil as, When did the man come in? He could not tell me that. He saw me, and over my shoulder he saw the man. It was not until he had seen him for some time that he began to identify him, but he had from the first vaguely associated him with me, and known him as somehow belonging to me in the old village time. How was he dressed? Prosperously, but not noticeably otherwise, he thought, in black. Was his face at all disfigured? No, he believed not. I believe not, too, for although in my brooding state I had taken no special notice of the people behind me, I thought it likely that a face at all disfigured would have attracted my attention. When Mr. Wopsil had imparted to me all that he could recall or I extract, and when I had treated him to a little appropriate refreshment after the fatigues of the evening, we parted. It was between twelve and one o'clock when I reached the temple and the gates were shut. No one was near me when I went in and went home. Herbert had come in and we held a very serious council by the fire. But there was nothing to be done, saving to communicate to Wemmick what I had that night found out, and to remind him that we waited for his hint. As I thought that I might compromise him if I went too often to the castle, I made this communication by letter. I wrote it before I went to bed, and went out and posted it, and again no one was near me. Herbert and I agreed that we could do nothing else but be very cautious. And we were very cautious indeed. More cautious than before, if that were possible.