Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter LIII Page 2
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
Ropewalk, 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
asunder, on these meshes ever so many year ago, and wot he kep by
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
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 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
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
hope left. Wild as my inward hurry was, and wonderful the force of
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
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, 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.
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.
"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
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,
sky, and the night, though rainy, was much lighter. The white vapor
of the kiln was passing from us as we went by, and as I had
thought a prayer before, I thought a thanksgiving now.
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 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 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 his intervention saved me from
the limekiln. Not that Trabb's boy was of a malignant nature, but
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
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
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 days wore on, and no ill news came, as the
day closed in and darkness fell, my overshadowing dread of being
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
fretfulness, for after that I slept soundly.
Wednesday morning was dawning when I looked out of window. The
was like a marsh of fire on the horizon. The river, still dark and
mysterious, was spanned by bridges that were turning coldly gray,
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!"