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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-

 

Great Expectations

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

Great Expectations

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

 

Great Expectations

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

 

Great Expectations

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

 

Great Expectations

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,

Great Expectations

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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