Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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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 Provis; that, coming on Wemmick'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 in straw, when I came to myself.

For, I really had not been myself since the receipt of the letter;
it had so bewildered me ensuing 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 heeding an 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 Provis 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 Satis 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 - no height
at all."

"Does he ever come back to this neighbourhood?"

"Ay, 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 han't no call to say so."

"But does he say so?"

"It would turn a man's blood to white wine winegar 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 Biddy!"

"Your appetite's been touched like, by your accident," said the
landlord, glancing at the bandaged 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 mused 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 limekiln 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 limekiln 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 by, 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 sluice-house. I
quickened my pace, and knocked at the door with my hand. Waiting
for some reply, I looked about me, noticing how the sluice 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 vapour 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 truckle
bedstead. As there was a loft above, I called, "Is there any one
here?" but no voice answered. Then, I looked at my watch, and,
finding that it was past nine, called again, "Is there any one
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 some one 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 arm were it ever so
little. But, it was bound too tight for that. I felt as if, having
been burnt before, it were now being boiled.

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 and 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 and 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 Orlick.

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 trod it 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!"

"Ah!" 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. One 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 as always give Old Orlick 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 to-night. Ah! If it
was all your money twenty times told, to the last brass farden!" 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 in Old Orlick's way since ever 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 of 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 had called at Miss Havisham's gate for only a
moment; Joe and Biddy would never know how sorry I had been that
night; none 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 wretch's words
were yet on his lips.

"Now, wolf," said he, "afore I kill you like any other beast -
which is wot I mean to do and wot I have tied you up for - I'll
have a good look at you and 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. Softened 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 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 had 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 flash into his face.

"Wolf!" said he, folding his arms again, "Old Orlick's a-going to
tell you somethink. It was you as did for your shrew 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 to-night. I giv' it her! I left her for dead,
and if there had been a limekiln as nigh her as there is now nigh
you, she shouldn't have come to life again. But it warn't Old
Orlick as did it; it was you. You was favoured, and he was bullied
and beat. Old Orlick 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 vapour that had 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 - make 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
vapour 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
over-state 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 spring! - that I knew of the slightest action of
his fingers.

When he had drunk this 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 Orlick 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 watchman'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 Orlick there? I'll tell you something more, wolf.
You and her have pretty well hunted me out of this country, so far
as getting a easy living in it goes, and I've took up with new
companions, and new masters. Some of 'em writes my letters when I
wants 'em wrote - do you mind? - writes my letters, wolf! They
writes fifty hands; they're not like sneaking you, as writes but
one. I've had a firm mind and a firm will to have your life, since
you was down here at your sister's burying. I han't seen a way to
get you safe, and I've looked arter you to know your ins and outs.
For, says Old Orlick to himself, 'Somehow or another I'll have
him!' What! When I looks for you, I finds your uncle Provis, eh?"

Mill Pond Bank, and Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper
Rope-Walk, all so 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 sea!

"You with a uncle too! Why, I know'd you at Gargery's when you was
so small a wolf that I could have took your weazen betwixt this
finger and thumb and chucked you away dead (as I'd thoughts o'
doing, 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 Orlick come for to hear that your uncle Provis had
mostlike wore the leg-iron wot Old Orlick had picked up, filed
asunder, on these meshes ever so many year ago, and wot he kep by
him till he dropped your sister with it, like a bullock, as he
means to drop you - hey? - when he come for 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 Orlick knowed you was burnt, Old Orlick knowed
you was smuggling your uncle Provis away, Old Orlick's a match for
you and know'd 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 Orlick has been for you. Let him 'ware
them, when he's lost his nevvy! Let him 'ware them, when no man
can't find a rag of his dear relation's 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. P'raps it's them that writes fifty hands,
and that's not like sneaking you as writes but one. 'Ware
Compeyson, 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 and 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 some one'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 Trabb's boy!

"I think he's all right!" said Trabb'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, Handel. Don't be too eager."

"And our old comrade, Startop!" I cried, as he too bent over me.

"Remember what he is going to assist us in," said Herbert, "and be
calm."

The allusion 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 to-night? 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 Handel. 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.
Trabb's boy - Trabb'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 vapour
of the kiln was passing from us as we went by, and, as I had
thought a prayer before, I thought a thanksgiving now.

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