Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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It was completely done, however, and when we were going out of
church, Wemmick took the cover off the font, and put his white
gloves in it, and put the cover on again. Mrs. Wemmick, more heedful
of the future, put her white gloves in her pocket and assumed her
green. "Now, Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, triumphantly shouldering the
fishing-rod as we came out, "let me ask you whether anybody would
suppose this to be a wedding-party!"

Breakfast had been ordered at a pleasant little tavern, a mile or
so away upon the rising ground beyond the Green, and there was a
bagatelle board in the room, in case we should desire to unbend our
minds after the solemnity. It was pleasant to observe that Mrs.
Wemmick no longer unwound Wemmick's arm when it adapted itself to
her figure, but sat in a high-backed chair against the wall, like a
violoncello in its case, and submitted to be embraced as that
melodious instrument might have done.

We had an excellent breakfast, and when any one declined anything
on table, Wemmick said, "Provided by contract, you know; don't be
afraid of it!" I drank to the new couple, drank to the Aged, drank
to the Castle, saluted the bride at parting, and made myself as
agreeable as I could.

Wemmick came down to the door with me, and I again shook hands with
him, and wished him joy.

"Thankee!" said Wemmick, rubbing his hands. "She's such a manager
of fowls, you have no idea. You shall have some eggs, and judge for
yourself. I say, Mr. Pip!" calling me back, and speaking low. "This
is altogether a Walworth sentiment, please."

"I understand. Not to be mentioned in Little Britain," said I.

Wemmick nodded. "After what you let out the other day, Mr. Jaggers
may as well not know of it. He might think my brain was softening,
or something of the kind."

Chapter 56

He lay in prison very ill, during the whole interval between his
committal for trial, and the coming round of the Sessions. He had
broken two ribs, they had wounded one of his lungs, and he breathed
with great pain and difficulty, which increased daily. It was a
consequence of his hurt, that he spoke so low as to be scarcely
audible; therefore, he spoke very little. But, he was ever ready to
listen to me, and it became the first duty of my life to say to
him, and read to him, what I knew he ought to hear.

Being far too ill to remain in the common prison, he was removed,
after the first day or so, into the infirmary. This gave me
opportunities of being with him that I could not otherwise have
had. And but for his illness he would have been put in irons, for
he was regarded as a determined prison-breaker, and I know not what
else.

Although I saw him every day, it was for only a short time; hence,
the regularly recurring spaces of our separation were long enough
to record on his face any slight changes that occurred in his
physical state. I do not recollect that I once saw any change in it
for the better; he wasted, and became slowly weaker and worse, day
by day, from the day when the prison door closed upon him.

The kind of submission or resignation that he showed, was that of a
man who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression, from his
manner or from a whispered word or two which escaped him, that he
pondered over the question whether he might have been a better man
under better circumstances. But, he never justified himself by a
hint tending that way, or tried to bend the past out of its eternal
shape.

It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, that his
desperate reputation was alluded to by one or other of the people
in attendance on him. A smile crossed his face then, and he turned
his eyes on me with a trustful look, as if he were confident that I
had seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as when
I was a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and
contrite, and I never knew him complain.

When the Sessions came round, Mr. Jaggers caused an application to
be made for the postponement of his trial until the following
Sessions. It was obviously made with the assurance that he could
not live so long, and was refused. The trial came on at once, and,
when he was put to the bar, he was seated in a chair. No objection
was made to my getting close to the dock, on the outside of it, and
holding the hand that he stretched forth to me.

The trial was very short and very clear. Such things as could be
said for him, were said - how he had taken to industrious habits,
and had thriven lawfully and reputably. But, nothing could unsay
the fact that he had returned, and was there in presence of the
Judge and Jury. It was impossible to try him for that, and do
otherwise than find him guilty.

At that time, it was the custom (as I learnt from my terrible
experience of that Sessions) to devote a concluding day to the
passing of Sentences, and to make a finishing effect with the
Sentence of Death. But for the indelible picture that my
remembrance now holds before me, I could scarcely believe, even as
I write these words, that I saw two-and-thirty men and women put
before the Judge to receive that sentence together. Foremost among
the two-and-thirty, was he; seated, that he might get breath enough
to keep life in him.

The whole scene starts out again in the vivid colours of the
moment, down to the drops of April rain on the windows of the
court, glittering in the rays of April sun. Penned in the dock, as
I again stood outside it at the corner with his hand in mine, were
the two-and-thirty men and women; some defiant, some stricken with
terror, some sobbing and weeping, some covering their faces, some
staring gloomily about. There had been shrieks from among the women
convicts, but they had been stilled, a hush had succeeded. The
sheriffs with their great chains and nosegays, other civic gewgaws
and monsters, criers, ushers, a great gallery full of people - a
large theatrical audience - looked on, as the two-and-thirty and
the Judge were solemnly confronted. Then, the Judge addressed them.
Among the wretched creatures before him whom he must single out for
special address, was one who almost from his infancy had been an
offender against the laws; who, after repeated imprisonments and
punishments, had been at length sentenced to exile for a term of
years; and who, under circumstances of great violence and daring
had made his escape and been re-sentenced to exile for life. That
miserable man would seem for a time to have become convinced of his
errors, when far removed from the scenes of his old offences, and
to have lived a peaceable and honest life. But in a fatal moment,
yielding to those propensities and passions, the indulgence of
which had so long rendered him a scourge to society, he had quitted
his haven of rest and repentance, and had come back to the country
where he was proscribed. Being here presently denounced, he had for
a time succeeded in evading the officers of Justice, but being at
length seized while in the act of flight, he had resisted them, and
had - he best knew whether by express design, or in the blindness
of his hardihood - caused the death of his denouncer, to whom his
whole career was known. The appointed punishment for his return to
the land that had cast him out, being Death, and his case being
this aggravated case, he must prepare himself to Die.

The sun was striking in at the great windows of the court, through
the glittering drops of rain upon the glass, and it made a broad
shaft of light between the two-and-thirty and the Judge, linking
both together, and perhaps reminding some among the audience, how
both were passing on, with absolute equality, to the greater
Judgment that knoweth all things and cannot err. Rising for a
moment, a distinct speck of face in this way of light, the prisoner
said, "My Lord, I have received my sentence of Death from the
Almighty, but I bow to yours," and sat down again. There was some
hushing, and the Judge went on with what he had to say to the rest.
Then, they were all formally doomed, and some of them were
supported out, and some of them sauntered out with a haggard look
of bravery, and a few nodded to the gallery, and two or three shook
hands, and others went out chewing the fragments of herb they had
taken from the sweet herbs lying about. He went last of all,
because of having to be helped from his chair and to go very
slowly; and he held my hand while all the others were removed, and
while the audience got up (putting their dresses right, as they
might at church or elsewhere) and pointed down at this criminal or
at that, and most of all at him and me.

I earnestly hoped and prayed that he might die before the
Recorder's Report was made, but, in the dread of his lingering on,
I began that night to write out a petition to the Home Secretary of
State, setting forth my knowledge of him, and how it was that he
had come back for my sake. I wrote it as fervently and pathetically
as I could, and when I had finished it and sent it in, I wrote out
other petitions to such men in authority as I hoped were the most
merciful, and drew up one to the Crown itself. For several days and
nights after he was sentenced I took no rest except when I fell
asleep in my chair, but was wholly absorbed in these appeals. And
after I had sent them in, I could not keep away from the places
where they were, but felt as if they were more hopeful and less
desperate when I was near them. In this unreasonable restlessness
and pain of mind, I would roam the streets of an evening, wandering
by those offices and houses where I had left the petitions. To the
present hour, the weary western streets of London on a cold dusty
spring night, with their ranges of stern shut-up mansions and their
long rows of lamps, are melancholy to me from this association.

The daily visits I could make him were shortened now, and he was
more strictly kept. Seeing, or fancying, that I was suspected of an
intention of carrying poison to him, I asked to be searched before
I sat down at his bedside, and told the officer who was always
there, that I was willing to do anything that would assure him of
the singleness of my designs. Nobody was hard with him, or with me.
There was duty to be done, and it was done, but not harshly. The
officer always gave me the assurance that he was worse, and some
other sick prisoners in the room, and some other prisoners who
attended on them as sick nurses (malefactors, but not incapable of
kindness, God be thanked!), always joined in the same report.

As the days went on, I noticed more and more that he would lie
placidly looking at the white ceiling, with an absence of light in
his face, until some word of mine brightened it for an instant, and
then it would subside again. Sometimes he was almost, or quite,
unable to speak; then, he would answer me with slight pressures on
my hand, and I grew to understand his meaning very well.

The number of the days had risen to ten, when I saw a greater
change in him than I had seen yet. His eyes were turned towards the
door, and lighted up as I entered.

"Dear boy," he said, as I sat down by his bed: "I thought you was
late. But I knowed you couldn't be that."

"It is just the time," said I. "I waited for it at the gate."

"You always waits at the gate; don't you, dear boy?"

"Yes. Not to lose a moment of the time."

"Thank'ee dear boy, thank'ee. God bless you! You've never deserted
me, dear boy."

I pressed his hand in silence, for I could not forget that I had
once meant to desert him.

"And what's the best of all," he said, "you've been more
comfortable alonger me, since I was under a dark cloud, than when
the sun shone. That's best of all."

He lay on his back, breathing with great difficulty. Do what he
would, and love me though he did, the light left his face ever and
again, and a film came over the placid look at the white ceiling.

"Are you in much pain to-day?"

"I don't complain of none, dear boy."

"You never do complain."

He had spoken his last words. He smiled, and I understood his touch
to mean that he wished to lift my hand, and lay it on his breast. I
laid it there, and he smiled again, and put both his hands upon it.

The allotted time ran out, while we were thus; but, looking round,
I found the governor of the prison standing near me, and he
whispered, "You needn't go yet." I thanked him gratefully, and
asked, "Might I speak to him, if he can hear me?"

The governor stepped aside, and beckoned the officer away. The
change, though it was made without noise, drew back the film from
the placid look at the white ceiling, and he looked most
affectionately at me.

"Dear Magwitch, I must tell you, now at last. You understand what I
say?"

A gentle pressure on my hand.

"You had a child once, whom you loved and lost."

A stronger pressure on my hand.

"She lived and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a
lady and very beautiful. And I love her!"

With a last faint effort, which would have been powerless but for
my yielding to it and assisting it, he raised my hand to his lips.
Then, he gently let it sink upon his breast again, with his own
hands lying on it. The placid look at the white ceiling came back,
and passed away, and his head dropped quietly on his breast.

Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought of the two
men who went up into the Temple to pray, and I knew there were no
better words that I could say beside his bed, than "O Lord, be
merciful to him, a sinner!"

Chapter 57

Now that I was left wholly to myself, I gave notice of my intention
to quit the chambers in the Temple as soon as my tenancy could
legally determine, and in the meanwhile to underlet them. At once I
put bills up in the windows; for, I was in debt, and had scarcely
any money, and began to be seriously alarmed by the state of my
affairs. I ought rather to write that I should have been alarmed if
I had had energy and concentration enough to help me to the clear
perception of any truth beyond the fact that I was falling very
ill. The late stress upon me had enabled me to put off illness, but
not to put it away; I knew that it was coming on me now, and I knew
very little else, and was even careless as to that.

For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor - anywhere,
according as I happened to sink down - with a heavy head and aching
limbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came one night
which appeared of great duration, and which teemed with anxiety and
horror; and when in the morning I tried to sit up in my bed and
think of it, I found I could not do so.

Whether I really had been down in Garden Court in the dead of the
night, groping about for the boat that I supposed to be there;
whether I had two or three times come to myself on the staircase
with great terror, not knowing how I had got out of bed; whether I
had found myself lighting the lamp, possessed by the idea that he
was coming up the stairs, and that the lights were blown out;
whether I had been inexpressibly harassed by the distracted
talking, laughing, and groaning, of some one, and had half
suspected those sounds to be of my own making; whether there had
been a closed iron furnace in a dark corner of the room, and a
voice had called out over and over again that Miss Havisham was
consuming within it; these were things that I tried to settle with
myself and get into some order, as I lay that morning on my bed.
But, the vapour of a limekiln would come between me and them,
disordering them all, and it was through the vapour at last that I
saw two men looking at me.

"What do you want?" I asked, starting; "I don't know you."

"Well, sir," returned one of them, bending down and touching me on
the shoulder, "this is a matter that you'll soon arrange, I dare
say, but you're arrested."

"What is the debt?"

"Hundred and twenty-three pound, fifteen, six. Jeweller's account,
I think."

"What is to be done?"

"You had better come to my house," said the man. "I keep a very
nice house."

I made some attempt to get up and dress myself. When I next
attended to them, they were standing a little off from the bed,
looking at me. I still lay there.

"You see my state," said I. "I would come with you if I could; but
indeed I am quite unable. If you take me from here, I think I shall
die by the way."

Perhaps they replied, or argued the point, or tried to encourage me
to believe that I was better than I thought. Forasmuch as they hang
in my memory by only this one slender thread, I don't know what
they did, except that they forbore to remove me.

That I had a fever and was avoided, that I suffered greatly, that I
often lost my reason, that the time seemed interminable, that I
confounded impossible existences with my own identity; that I was a
brick in the house wall, and yet entreating to be released from the
giddy place where the builders had set me; that I was a steel beam
of a vast engine, clashing and whirling over a gulf, and yet that I
implored in my own person to have the engine stopped, and my part
in it hammered off; that I passed through these phases of disease,
I know of my own remembrance, and did in some sort know at the
time. That I sometimes struggled with real people, in the belief
that they were murderers, and that I would all at once comprehend
that they meant to do me good, and would then sink exhausted in
their arms, and suffer them to lay me down, I also knew at the
time. But, above all, I knew that there was a constant tendency in
all these people - who, when I was very ill, would present all
kinds of extraordinary transformations of the human face, and would
be much dilated in size - above all, I say, I knew that there was
an extraordinary tendency in all these people, sooner or later to
settle down into the likeness of Joe.

After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I began to notice
that while all its other features changed, this one consistent
feature did not change. Whoever came about me, still settled down
into Joe. I opened my eyes in the night, and I saw in the great
chair at the bedside, Joe. I opened my eyes in the day, and,
sitting on the window-seat, smoking his pipe in the shaded open
window, still I saw Joe. I asked for cooling drink, and the dear
hand that gave it me was Joe's. I sank back on my pillow after
drinking, and the face that looked so hopefully and tenderly upon
me was the face of Joe.

At last, one day, I took courage, and said, "Is it Joe?"

And the dear old home-voice answered, "Which it air, old chap."

"O Joe, you break my heart! Look angry at me, Joe. Strike me, Joe.
Tell me of my ingratitude. Don't be so good to me!"

For, Joe had actually laid his head down on the pillow at my side
and put his arm round my neck, in his joy that I knew him.

"Which dear old Pip, old chap," said Joe, "you and me was ever
friends. And when you're well enough to go out for a ride - what
larks!"

After which, Joe withdrew to the window, and stood with his back
towards me, wiping his eyes. And as my extreme weakness prevented
me from getting up and going to him, I lay there, penitently
whispering, "O God bless him! O God bless this gentle Christian
man!"

Joe's eyes were red when I next found him beside me; but, I was
holding his hand, and we both felt happy.

"How long, dear Joe?"

"Which you meantersay, Pip, how long have your illness lasted, dear
old chap?"

"Yes, Joe."

"It's the end of May, Pip. To-morrow is the first of June."

"And have you been here all that time, dear Joe?"

"Pretty nigh, old chap. For, as I says to Biddy when the news of
your being ill were brought by letter, which it were brought by the
post and being formerly single he is now married though underpaid
for a deal of walking and shoe-leather, but wealth were not a
object on his part, and marriage were the great wish of his hart--"

"It is so delightful to hear you, Joe! But I interrupt you in what
you said to Biddy."

"Which it were," said Joe, "that how you might be amongst
strangers, and that how you and me having been ever friends, a
wisit at such a moment might not prove unacceptabobble. And Biddy,
her word were, 'Go to him, without loss of time.' That," said Joe,
summing up with his judicial air, "were the word of Biddy. 'Go to
him,' Biddy say, 'without loss of time.' In short, I shouldn't
greatly deceive you," Joe added, after a little grave reflection,
"if I represented to you that the word of that young woman were,
'without a minute's loss of time.'"

There Joe cut himself short, and informed me that I was to be
talked to in great moderation, and that I was to take a little
nourishment at stated frequent times, whether I felt inclined for
it or not, and that I was to submit myself to all his orders. So, I
kissed his hand, and lay quiet, while he proceeded to indite a note
to Biddy, with my love in it.

Evidently, Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in bed looking
at him, it made me, in my weak state, cry again with pleasure to
see the pride with which he set about his letter. My bedstead,
divested of its curtains, had been removed, with me upon it, into
the sittingroom, as the airiest and largest, and the carpet had
been taken away, and the room kept always fresh and wholesome night
and day. At my own writing-table, pushed into a corner and cumbered
with little bottles, Joe now sat down to his great work, first
choosing a pen from the pen-tray as if it were a chest of large
tools, and tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to wield a
crowbar or sledgehammer. It was necessary for Joe to hold on
heavily to the table with his left elbow, and to get his right leg
well out behind him, before he could begin, and when he did begin,
he made every down-stroke so slowly that it might have been six
feet long, while at every up-stroke I could hear his pen
spluttering extensively. He had a curious idea that the inkstand
was on the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped his
pen into space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result.
Occasionally, he was tripped up by some orthographical
stumbling-block, but on the whole he got on very well indeed, and
when he had signed his name, and had removed a finishing blot from
the paper to the crown of his head with his two forefingers, he got
up and hovered about the table, trying the effect of his
performance from various points of view as it lay there, with
unbounded satisfaction.

Not to make Joe uneasy by talking too much, even if I had been able
to talk much, I deferred asking him about Miss Havisham until next
day. He shook his head when I then asked him if she had recovered.

"Is she dead, Joe?"

"Why you see, old chap," said Joe, in a tone of remonstrance, and
by way of getting at it by degrees, "I wouldn't go so far as to say
that, for that's a deal to say; but she ain't--"

"Living, Joe?"

"That's nigher where it is," said Joe; "she ain't living."

"Did she linger long, Joe?"

"Arter you was took ill, pretty much about what you might call (if
you was put to it) a week," said Joe; still determined, on my
account, to come at everything by degrees.

"Dear Joe, have you heard what becomes of her property?"

"Well, old chap," said Joe, "it do appear that she had settled the
most of it, which I meantersay tied it up, on Miss Estella. But she
had wrote out a little coddleshell in her own hand a day or two
afore the accident, leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. Matthew
Pocket. And why, do you suppose, above all things, Pip, she left
that cool four thousand unto him? 'Because of Pip's account of him
the said Matthew.' I am told by Biddy, that air the writing," said
Joe, repeating the legal turn as if it did him infinite good,
"'account of him the said Matthew.' And a cool four thousand, Pip!"

I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional
temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make
the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish in
insisting on its being cool.

This account gave me great joy, as it perfected the only good thing
I had done. I asked Joe whether he had heard if any of the other
relations had any legacies?

"Miss Sarah," said Joe, "she have twenty-five pound perannium fur
to buy pills, on account of being bilious. Miss Georgiana, she have
twenty pound down. Mrs. - what's the name of them wild beasts with
humps, old chap?"

"Camels?" said I, wondering why he could possibly want to know.

Joe nodded. "Mrs. Camels," by which I presently understood he meant
Camilla, "she have five pound fur to buy rushlights to put her in
spirits when she wake up in the night."

The accuracy of these recitals was sufficiently obvious to me, to
give me great confidence in Joe's information. "And now," said Joe,
"you ain't that strong yet, old chap, that you can take in more nor
one additional shovel-full to-day. Old Orlick he's been a
bustin' open a dwelling-ouse."

"Whose?" said I.

"Not, I grant, you, but what his manners is given to blusterous,"
said Joe, apologetically; "still, a Englishman's ouse is his
Castle, and castles must not be busted 'cept when done in war time.
And wotsume'er the failings on his part, he were a corn and
seedsman in his hart."

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