Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter LIII Page 1
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.
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
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 the sluice was
abandoned and broken, and how the house--of wood with a tiled roof
even now, and how the mud and ooze were coated with lime, and how
the choking vapor 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
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 easily this threat could be put in
execution, I desisted, and tried to ease my arm were it ever so
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.
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
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?"
two. O you enemy, you enemy!"
His enjoyment of the spectacle I furnished, as he sat with his arms
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 didn't you? It was you as always give Old Orlick a bad name
"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
he shook his heavy hand at me, with his mouth snarling like a
tiger's, I felt it was true.
"What are you going to do to me?"
"I'm a going," said he, bringing his fist down upon the table 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.
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
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 otbeast,--
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. O you enemy!"
It had passed through my thoughts to cry out for help again; though
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 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
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
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 had been a limekiln as nigh her as there is now nigh
Orlick as did it; it was you. You was favored, 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 vapor that had crept towards me but a little while before,
like my own warning ghost, he would do as he had done in my
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
vapor 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
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
overstate 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!--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
"And why was Old Orlick there? I'll tell you something more, wolf.
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
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