I thanked her heartily, and I thanked him heartily,but said I could not yet make sure of joining him as he so kindly offered. Firstly,my mind was too preoccupied to be able to take in the subject clearly. Secondly,—Yes!Secondly, there was a vague something lingering in my thoughts that will come out very near the end of this slight narrative.
“But if you thought, Herbert, that you could, without doing any injury to your business,leave the question open for a little while—”
“For any while,” cried Herbert. “Six months, a year!”
“Not so long as that,” said I. “Two or three months at most.”
Herbert was highly delighted when we shook hands on this arrangement,and said he could now take courage to tell me that he believed he must go away at the end of the week.
“And Clara?” said I.
“The dear little thing,” returned Herbert, “holds dutifully to her father as long as he lasts;but he won’t last long. Mrs. Whimple confides to me that he is certainly going.”
“Not to say an unfeeling thing,” said I, “he cannot do better than go.”
“I am afraid that must be admitted,” said Herbert;“and then I shall come back for the dear little thing,and the dear little thing and I will walk quietly into the nearest church. Remember!The blessed darling comes of no family, my dear Handel, and never looked into the red book,and hasn’t a notion about her grandpapa. What a fortune for the son of my mother!”
On the Saturday in that same week, I took my leave of Herbert,—full of bright hope,but sad and sorry to leave me,—as he sat on one of the seaport mail coaches.I went into a coffee-house to write a little note to Clara, telling her he had gone off,sending his love to her over and over again, and then went to my lonely home,—if it deserved the name; for it was now no home to me, and I had no home anywhere.
On the stairs I encountered Wemmick, who was coming down,after an unsuccessful application of his knuckles to my door.I had not seen him alone since the disastrous issue of the attempted flight; and he had come,in his private and personal capacity, to say a few words of explanation in reference to that failure.
“The late Compeyson,” said Wemmick, “had by little and little got at the bottom of half of the regular business now transacted;and it was from the talk of some of his people in trouble (some of his people being always in trouble) that I heard what I did.I kept my ears open, seeming to have them shut, until I heard that he was absent,and I thought that would be the best time for making the attempt. I can only suppose now,that it was a part of his policy, as a very clever man, habitually to deceive his own instruments. You don’t blame me, I hope, Mr. Pip?I am sure I tried to serve you, with all my heart.”
“I am as sure of that, Wemmick, as you can be,and I thank you most earnestly for all your interest and friendship.”
“Thank you, thank you very much. It’s a bad job,” said Wemmick, scratching his head,“and I assure you I haven’t been so cut up for a long time.What I look at is the sacrifice of so much portable property. Dear me!”
“What _I_ think of, Wemmick, is the poor owner of the property.”
“Yes, to be sure,” said Wemmick. “Of course, there can be no objection to your being sorry for him,and I’d put down a five-pound note myself to get him out of it. But what I look at is this.The late Compeyson having been beforehand with him in intelligence of his return,and being so determined to bring him to book, I do not think he could have been saved. Whereas,the portable property certainly could have been saved.That’s the difference between the property and the owner, don’t you see?”
I invited Wemmick to come upstairs, and refresh himself with a glass of grog before walking to Walworth.He accepted the invitation. While he was drinking his moderate allowance, he said,with nothing to lead up to it, and after having appeared rather fidgety,—
“What do you think of my meaning to take a holiday on Monday, Mr. Pip?”
“Why, I suppose you have not done such a thing these twelve months.”
“These twelve years, more likely,” said Wemmick. “Yes. I’m going to take a holiday. More than that;I’m going to take a walk. More than that; I’m going to ask you to take a walk with me.”
I was about to excuse myself, as being but a bad companion just then, when Wemmick anticipated me.
“I know your engagements,” said he, “and I know you are out of sorts, Mr. Pip.But if you _could_ oblige me, I should take it as a kindness. It ain’t a long walk,and it’s an early one. Say it might occupy you (including breakfast on the walk) from eight to twelve.Couldn’t you stretch a point and manage it?”
He had done so much for me at various times, that this was very little to do for him.I said I could manage it,—would manage it,—and he was so very much pleased by my acquiescence,that I was pleased too. At his particular request,I appointed to call for him at the Castle at half past eight on Monday morning, and so we parted for the time.
Punctual to my appointment, I rang at the Castle gate on the Monday morning,and was received by Wemmick himself, who struck me as looking tighter than usual,and having a sleeker hat on. Within, there were two glasses of rum and milk prepared,and two biscuits. The Aged must have been stirring with the lark, for,glancing into the perspective of his bedroom, I observed that his bed was empty.
When we had fortified ourselves with the rum and milk and biscuits,and were going out for the walk with that training preparation on us,I was considerably surprised to see Wemmick take up a fishing-rod, and put it over his shoulder. “Why, we are not going fishing!” said I. “No,” returned Wemmick, “but I like to walk with one.”
I thought this odd; however, I said nothing, and we set off. We went towards Camberwell Green,and when we were thereabouts, Wemmick said suddenly,—
“Halloa!Here’s a church!”
There was nothing very surprising in that; but again, I was rather surprised, when he said,as if he were animated by a brilliant idea,—
“Let’s go in!”
We went in, Wemmick leaving his fishing-rod in the porch, and looked all round. In the mean time,Wemmick was diving into his coat-pockets, and getting something out of paper there.
“Halloa!” said he. “Here’s a couple of pair of gloves!Let’s put ’em on!”
As the gloves were white kid gloves, and as the post-office was widened to its utmost extent,I now began to have my strong suspicions.They were strengthened into certainty when I beheld the Aged enter at a side door, escorting a lady.
“Halloa!” said Wemmick. “Here’s Miss Skiffins!Let’s have a wedding.”
That discreet damsel was attired as usual,except that she was now engaged in substituting for her green kid gloves a pair of white.The Aged was likewise occupied in preparing a similar sacrifice for the altar of Hymen.The old gentleman, however, experienced so much difficulty in getting his gloves on,that Wemmick found it necessary to put him with his back against a pillar,and then to get behind the pillar himself and pull away at them,while I for my part held the old gentleman round the waist,that he might present an equal and safe resistance. By dint of this ingenious scheme, his gloves were got on to perfection.
The clerk and clergyman then appearing, we were ranged in order at those fatal rails.True to his notion of seeming to do it all without preparation, I heard Wemmick say to himself,as he took something out of his waistcoat-pocket before the service began, “Halloa!Here’s a ring!”
I acted in the capacity of backer, or best-man, to the bridegroom;while a little limp pew-opener in a soft bonnet like a baby’s,made a feint of being the bosom friend of Miss Skiffins.The responsibility of giving the lady away devolved upon the Aged,which led to the clergyman’s being unintentionally scandalised, and it happened thus. When he said,“Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” the old gentleman, not in the least knowing what point of the ceremony we had arrived at,stood most amiably beaming at the ten commandments. Upon which, the clergyman said again,“WHO giveth this woman to be married to this man?” The old gentleman being still in a state of most estimable unconsciousness,the bridegroom cried out in his accustomed voice, “Now Aged P. you know; who giveth?” To which the Aged replied with great briskness, before saying that _he_ gave, “All right, John, all right, my boy!” And the clergyman came to so gloomy a pause upon it,that I had doubts for the moment whether we should get completely married that day.
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 LVI.
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,and 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 LVII.
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.