Great Expectations

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.



Entreating Herbert to tell me how he had come to my rescue - which

at first he had flatly refused to do, but had insisted on my

remaining quiet - I learnt that I had in my hurry dropped the

letter, open, in our chambers, where he, coming home to bring with

him Startop whom he had met in the street on his way to me, found

it, very soon after I was gone. Its tone made him uneasy, and the

more so because of the inconsistency between it and the hasty

letter I had left for him. His uneasiness increasing instead of

subsiding after a quarter of an hour's consideration, he set off

for the coach-office, with Startop, who volunteered his company, to

make inquiry when the next coach went down. Finding that the

afternoon coach was gone, and finding that his uneasiness grew into

positive alarm, as obstacles came in his way, he resolved to follow

in a post-chaise. So, he and Startop arrived at the Blue Boar,

fully expecting there to find me, or tidings of me; but, finding

neither, went on to Miss Havisham's, where they lost me. Hereupon

they went back to the hotel (doubtless at about the time when I was

hearing the popular local version of my own story), to refresh

themselves and to get some one to guide them out upon the marshes.

Among the loungers under the Boar's archway, happened to be Trabb's

boy - true to his ancient habit of happening to be everywhere where

he had no business - and Trabb's boy had seen me passing from Miss

Havisham's in the direction of my dining-place. Thus, Trabb's boy

became their guide, and with him they went out to the sluice-house:

though by the town way to the marshes, which I had avoided. Now, as

they went along, Herbert reflected, that I might, after all, have

been brought there on some genuine and serviceable errand tending

to Provis's safety, and, bethinking himself that in that case

interruption must be mischievous, left his guide and Startop on the

edge of the quarry, and went on by himself, and stole round the

house two or three times, endeavouring to ascertain whether all was

right within. As he could hear nothing but indistinct sounds of one

deep rough voice (this was while my mind was so busy), he even at

last began to doubt whether I was there, when suddenly I cried out

loudly, and he answered the cries, and rushed in, closely followed

by the other two.



When I told Herbert what had passed within the house, he was for

our immediately going before a magistrate in the town, late at

night as it was, and getting out a warrant. But, I had already

considered that such a course, by detaining us there, or binding us

to come back, might be fatal to Provis. There was no gainsaying

this difficulty, and we relinquished all thoughts of pursuing

Orlick at that time. For the present, under the circumstances, we

deemed it prudent to make rather light of the matter to Trabb's

boy; who I am convinced would have been much affected by

disappointment, if he had known that his intervention saved me from

the limekiln. Not that Trabb's boy was of a malignant nature, but

that he had too much spare vivacity, and that it was in his

constitution to want variety and excitement at anybody's expense.

When we parted, I presented him with two guineas (which seemed to

meet his views), and told him that I was sorry ever to have had an

ill opinion of him (which made no impression on him at all).



Wednesday being so close upon us, we determined to go back to

London that night, three in the post-chaise; the rather, as we

should then be clear away, before the night's adventure began to be

talked of. Herbert got a large bottle of stuff for my arm, and by

dint of having this stuff dropped over it all the night through, I

was just able to bear its pain on the journey. It was daylight when

we reached the Temple, and I went at once to bed, and lay in bed

all day.



My terror, as I lay there, of falling ill and being unfitted for

tomorrow, was so besetting, that I wonder it did not disable me of

itself. It would have done so, pretty surely, in conjunction with

the mental wear and tear I had suffered, but for the unnatural

strain upon me that to-morrow was. So anxiously looked forward to,

charged with such consequences, its results so impenetrably hidden

though so near.



No precaution could have been more obvious than our refraining from

communication with him that day; yet this again increased my

restlessness. I started at every footstep and every sound,

believing that he was discovered and taken, and this was the

messenger to tell me so. I persuaded myself that I knew he was

taken; that there was something more upon my mind than a fear or a

presentiment; that the fact had occurred, and I had a mysterious

knowledge of it. As the day wore on and no ill news came, as the

day closed in and darkness fell, my overshadowing dread of being

disabled by illness before to-morrow morning, altogether mastered

me. My burning arm throbbed, and my burning head throbbed, and I

fancied I was beginning to wander. I counted up to high numbers, to

make sure of myself, and repeated passages that I knew in prose and

verse. It happened sometimes that in the mere escape of a fatigued

mind, I dozed for some moments or forgot; then I would say to

myself with a start, "Now it has come, and I am turning delirious!"



They kept me very quiet all day, and kept my arm constantly

dressed, and gave me cooling drinks. Whenever I fell asleep, I

awoke with the notion I had had in the sluice-house, that a long

time had elapsed and the opportunity to save him was gone. About

midnight I got out of bed and went to Herbert, with the conviction

that I had been asleep for four-and-twenty hours, and that

Wednesday was past. It was the last self-exhausting effort of my

fretfulness, for, after that, I slept soundly.



Wednesday morning was dawning when I looked out of window. The

winking lights upon the bridges were already pale, the coming sun

was like a marsh of fire on the horizon. The river, still dark and

mysterious, was spanned by bridges that were turning coldly grey,

with here and there at top a warm touch from the burning in the

sky. As I looked along the clustered roofs, with Church towers and

spires shooting into the unusually clear air, the sun rose up, and

a veil seemed to be drawn from the river, and millions of sparkles

burst out upon its waters. From me too, a veil seemed to be drawn,

and I felt strong and well.



Herbert lay asleep in his bed, and our old fellow-student lay

asleep on the sofa. I could not dress myself without help, but I

made up the fire, which was still burning, and got some coffee

ready for them. In good time they too started up strong and well,

and we admitted the sharp morning air at the windows, and looked at

the tide that was still flowing towards us.



"When it turns at nine o'clock," said Herbert, cheerfully, "look

out for us, and stand ready, you over there at Mill Pond Bank!"