Charles Dickens 31 page there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump
of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper
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Rope-Walk - whose long and narrow vista I could trace in
the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the
ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes
which had grown old and lost most of their teeth.
Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond
Bank, a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-
window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked
at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple.
That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly
woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded.
She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who
silently led me into the parlour and shut the door. It was
an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established
quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and
I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the cor-
ner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the
chimney-piece, and the coloured engravings on the wall,
representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch,
and his Majesty King George the Third in a state-coach-
man’s wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace
at Windsor.
‘All is well, Handel,’ said Herbert, ‘and he is quite satis-
fied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father;
and if you’ll wait till she comes down, I’ll make you known
to her, and then we’ll go up-stairs. - That’s her father.’
I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead,
and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance.
‘I am afraid he is a sad old rascal,’ said Herbert, smiling,
‘but I have never seen him. Don’t you smell rum? He is al-
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ways at it.’
‘At rum?’ said I.
‘Yes,’ returned Herbert, ‘and you may suppose how mild
it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provi-
sions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps
them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His
room must be like a chandler’s shop.’
While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a pro-
longed roar, and then died away.
‘What else can be the consequence,’ said Herbert, in ex-
planation, ‘if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout
in his right hand - and everywhere else - can’t expect to get
through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself.’
He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave
another furious roar.
‘To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to
Mrs. Whimple,’ said Herbert, ‘for of course people in gener-
al won’t stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn’t it?’
It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept
and clean.
‘Mrs. Whimple,’ said Herbert, when I told him so, ‘is
the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my
Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has
no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world
but old Gruffandgrim.’
‘Surely that’s not his name, Herbert?’
‘No, no,’ said Herbert, ‘that’s my name for him. His name
is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my fa-
ther and mother, to love a girl who has no relations, and
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who can never bother herself, or anybody else, about her
family!’
Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now re-
minded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she
was completing her education at an establishment at Ham-
mersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse
her father, he and she had confided their affection to the
motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and
regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It
was understood that nothing of a tender nature could pos-
sibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally
unequal to the consideration of any subject more psycho-
logical than Gout, Rum, and Purser’s stores.
As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Bar-
ley’s sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the
ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty slight dark-
eyed girl of twenty or so, came in with a basket in her hand:
whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and present-
ed blushing, as ‘Clara.’ She really was a most charming girl,
and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that trucu-
lent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service.
‘Look here,’ said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a
compassionate and tender smile after we had talked a little;
‘here’s poor Clara’s supper, served out every night. Here’s
her allowance of bread, and here’s her slice of cheese, and
here’s her rum - which I drink. This is Mr. Barley’s breakfast
for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton chops,
three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of
butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It’s stewed
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up together, and taken hot, and it’s a nice thing for the gout,
I should think!’
There was something so natural and winning in Clara’s
resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert
pointed them out, - and something so confiding, loving, and
innocent, in her modest manner of yielding herself to Her-
bert’s embracing arm - and something so gentle in her, so
much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks’s
Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-Walk, with Old
Barley growling in the beam - that I would not have undone
the engagement between her and Herbert, for all the money
in the pocket-book I had never opened.
I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when
suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful
bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden
leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come to us.
Upon this Clara said to Herbert, ‘Papa wants me, darling!’
and ran away.
‘There is an unconscionable old shark for you!’ said Her-
bert. ‘What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?’
‘I don’t know,’ said I. ‘Something to drink?’
‘That’s it!’ cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of ex-
traordinary merit. ‘He keeps his grog ready-mixed in a little
tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you’ll hear Clara lift
him up to take some. - There he goes!’ Another roar, with
a prolonged shake at the end. ‘Now,’ said Herbert, as it was
succeeded by silence, ‘he’s drinking. Now,’ said Herbert, as
the growl resounded in the beam once more, ‘he’s down
again on his back!’
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Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accom-
panied me up-stairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr.
Barley’s door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in
a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain;
in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the
reverse.
‘Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here’s old Bill Barley. Here’s old
Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here’s old Bill Barley on the flat
of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back, like a
drifting old dead flounder, here’s your old Bill Barley, bless
your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you.’
In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the
invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day
and night together; often while it was light, having, at the
same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his
bed for the convenience of sweeping the river.
In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which
were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less au-
dible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He
expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was
worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened -
indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never
afterwards recall how when I tried; but certainly.
The opportunity that the day’s rest had given me for
reflection, had resulted in my fully determining to say
nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I
knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead
to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction.
Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his
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fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick’s
judgment and sources of information?
‘Ay, ay, dear boy!’ he answered, with a grave nod, ‘Jag-
gers knows.’
‘Then, I have talked with Wemmick,’ said I, ‘and have
come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice.’
This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned;
and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate pris-
on (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that
he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had
been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keep-
ing close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and
what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I add-
ed, that of course, when the time came, I should go with
him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in
Wemmick’s judgment. What was to follow that, I did not
touch upon; neither indeed was I at all clear or comfortable
about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer
condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering
my way of living, by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him
whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstanc-
es, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse?
He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable
throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he
had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing
to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of
his safety with such good help.
Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and ponder-
ing, here said that something had come into his thoughts
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arising out of Wemmick’s suggestion, which it might be
worth while to pursue. ‘We are both good watermen, Han-
del, and could take him down the river ourselves when the
right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the pur-
pose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of
suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the
season; don’t you think it might be a good thing if you be-
gan at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were
in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into
that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or
fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the
twenty-first or fifty-first.’
I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We
agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that
Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge
and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But, we further agreed that
he should pull down the blind in that part of his window
which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was
right.
Our conference being now ended, and everything ar-
ranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had
better not go home together, and that I would take half an
hour’s start of him. ‘I don’t like to leave you here,’ I said to
Provis, ‘though I cannot doubt your being safer here than
near me. Good-bye!’
‘Dear boy,’ he answered, clasping my hands, ‘I don’t
know when we may meet again, and I don’t like Good-bye.
Say Good Night!’
‘Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and
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when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready.
Good night, Good night!’
We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms,
and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding
a light over the stair-rail to light us down stairs. Looking
back at him, I thought of the first night of his return when
our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my
heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from
him as it was now.
Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed
his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of mean-
ing to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked
Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He
replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell.
He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell
there, was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned
to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well
cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into
the parlour where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at
work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell,
but kept it to myself.
When I had taken leave of the pretty gentle dark-eyed
girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her
honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if
the Old Green Copper Rope-Walk had grown quite a differ-
ent place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might
swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeem-
ing youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks’s Basin to
fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of
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our parting, and went home very sadly.
All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen
them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occu-
pied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger
in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice
before I descended the steps that were between me and my
rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert coming to my bedside
when he came in - for I went straight to bed, dispirited and
fatigued - made the same report. Opening one of the win-
dows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told
me that the pavement was a solemnly empty as the pave-
ment of any Cathedral at that same hour.
Next day, I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done,
and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and
lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then,
I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes
alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain,
and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been
out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but
as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London
Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at cer-
tain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there
which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough
how to ‘shoot’ the bridge after seeing it done, and so began
to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down
to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert
and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and
returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down.
Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times
Great Expectations
in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intel-
ligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was
cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of be-
ing watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many
undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would
be hard to calculate.
In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man
who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that
he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after
dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that
it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But
I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch,
and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursu-
ers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him.
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Chapter 47
Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We
waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had nev-
er known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed
the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I
might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing
him as I did.
My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance,
and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even
I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready
money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting
some easily spared articles of jewellery into cash. But I had
quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take
more money from my patron in the existing state of my un-
certain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the
unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keep-
ing, and I felt a kind of satisfaction - whether it was a false
kind or a true, I hardly know - in not having profited by his
generosity since his revelation of himself.
As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon
me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed,
though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers,
and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circum-
stances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me.
Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of
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hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know!
Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar in-
consistency of your own, last year, last month, last week?
It was an unhappy life that I lived, and its one dominant
anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties like a high
mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared
from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start
from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that
he was discovered; let me sit listening as I would, with dread,
for Herbert’s returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter
than ordinary, and winged with evil news; for all that, and
much more to like purpose, the round of things went on.
Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness
and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited,
waited, as I best could.
There were states of the tide when, having been down the
river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches
and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at
a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up after-
wards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this,
as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident
among the water-side people there. From this slight occa-
sion, sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of.
One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came
ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as
Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide.
It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the
sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the
shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I
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had seen the signal in his window, All well.
As it was a raw evening and I was cold, I thought I would
comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of
dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Tem-
ple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre
where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph,
was in that waterside neighbourhood (it is nowhere now),
and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr.
Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on
the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had
been ominously heard of, through the playbills, as a faith-
ful Black, in connexion with a little girl of noble birth, and
a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar
of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an
outrageous hat all over bells.
I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a Geographical
chop-house - where there were maps of the world in porter-
pot rims on every half-yard of the table-cloths, and charts
of gravy on every one of the knives - to this day there is
scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor’s do-
minions which is not Geographical - and wore out the time
in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot
blast of dinners. By-and-by, I roused myself and went to the
play.
There, I found a virtuous boatswain in his Majesty’s ser-
vice - a most excellent man, though I could have wished
his trousers not quite so tight in some places and not quite
so loose in others - who knocked all the little men’s hats
over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave,
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and who wouldn’t hear of anybody’s paying taxes, though
he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket,
like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married
a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the
whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last
Census) turning out on the beach, to rub their own hands
and shake everybody else’s, and sing ‘Fill, fill!’ A certain
dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn’t fill, or do
anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart
was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his
figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all man-
kind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the
Swab family having considerable political influence) that it
took half the evening to set things right, and then it was
only brought about through an honest little grocer with a
white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock,
with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knock-
ing everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom
he couldn’t confute with what he had overheard. This led to
Mr. Wopsle’s (who had never been heard of before) coming
in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great
power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were
all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the
boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledg-
ment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for
the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and
then cheering up and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Hon-
our, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle
conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately
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shoved into a dusty corner while everybody danced a horn-
pipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a
discontented eye, became aware of me.
The second piece was the last new grand comic Christ-
mas pantomime, in the first scene of which, it pained me
to suspect that I detected Mr. Wopsle with red worsted
legs under a highly magnified phosphoric countenance
and a shock of red curtain-fringe for his hair, engaged in
the manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine, and display-
ing great cowardice when his gigantic master came home
(very hoarse) to dinner. But he presently presented himself
under worthier circumstances; for, the Genius of Youthful
Love being in want of assistance - on account of the paren-
tal brutality of an ignorant farmer who opposed the choice
of his daughter’s heart, by purposely falling upon the object,
in a flour sack, out of the firstfloor window - summoned a
sententious Enchanter; and he, coming up from the antip-
odes rather unsteadily, after an apparently violent journey,
proved to be Mr. Wopsle in a high-crowned hat, with a nec-
romantic work in one volume under his arm. The business
of this enchanter on earth, being principally to be talked at,
sung at, butted at, danced at, and flashed at with fires of var-
ious colours, he had a good deal of time on his hands. And
I observed with great surprise, that he devoted it to staring
in my direction as if he were lost in amazement.
There was something so remarkable in the increasing
glare of Mr. Wopsle’s eye, and he seemed to be turning so
many things over in his mind and to grow so confused, that
I could not make it out. I sat thinking of it, long after he
Great Expectations
had ascended to the clouds in a large watch-case, and still I
could not make it out. I was still thinking of it when I came
out of the theatre an hour afterwards, and found him wait-
ing for me near the door.
‘How do you do?’ said I, shaking hands with him as we
turned down the street together. ‘I saw that you saw me.’
‘Saw you, Mr. Pip!’ he returned. ‘Yes, of course I saw you.
But who else was there?’
‘Who else?’
‘It is the strangest thing,’ said Mr. Wopsle, drifting into
his lost look again; ‘and yet I could swear to him.’
Becoming alarmed, I entreated Mr. Wopsle to explain
his meaning.
‘Whether I should have noticed him at first but for your
being there,’ said Mr. Wopsle, going on in the same lost way,
‘I can’t be positive; yet I think I should.’
Involuntarily I looked round me, as I was accustomed
to look round me when I went home; for, these mysterious
words gave me a chill.
‘Oh! He can’t be in sight,’ said Mr. Wopsle. ‘He went out,
before I went off, I saw him go.’
Having the reason that I had, for being suspicious, I even
suspected this poor actor. I mistrusted a design to entrap
me into some admission. Therefore, I glanced at him as we
walked on together, but said nothing.
‘I had a ridiculous fancy that he must be with you, Mr.
Pip, till I saw that you were quite unconscious of him, sit-
ting behind you there, like a ghost.’
My former chill crept over me again, but I was resolved
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not to speak yet, for it was quite consistent with his words
that he might be set on to induce me to connect these refer-
ences with Provis. Of course, I was perfectly sure and safe
that Provis had not been there.
‘I dare say you wonder at me, Mr. Pip; indeed I see you
do. But it is so very strange! You’ll hardly believe what I am
going to tell you. I could hardly believe it myself, if you told
me.’‘Indeed?’ said I.
‘No, indeed. Mr. Pip, you remember in old times a certain
Christmas Day, when you were quite a child, and I dined at
Gargery’s, and some soldiers came to the door to get a pair
of handcuffs mended?’
‘I remember it very well.’
‘And you remember that there was a chase after two con-
victs, and that we joined in it, and that Gargery took you on
his back, and that I took the lead and you kept up with me
as well as you could?’
‘I remember it all very well.’ Better than he thought - ex-
cept the last clause.
‘And you remember that we came up with the two in a
ditch, and that there was a scuffle between them, and that
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