Charles Dickens 38 page

from the places where they were, but felt as if they were

more hopeful and less desperate when I was near them. In

this unreasonable restlessness and pain of mind, I would

roam the streets of an evening, wandering by those offices

and houses where I had left the petitions. To the present

hour, the weary western streets of London on a cold dusty

spring night, with their ranges of stern shut-up mansions

and their long rows of lamps, are melancholy to me from

Great Expectations

this association.

The daily visits I could make him were shortened now,

and he was more strictly kept. Seeing, or fancying, that I

was suspected of an intention of carrying poison to him, I

asked to be searched before I sat down at his bedside, and

told the officer who was always there, that I was willing to

do anything that would assure him of the singleness of my

designs. Nobody was hard with him, or with me. There was

duty to be done, and it was done, but not harshly. The officer

always gave me the assurance that he was worse, and some

other sick prisoners in the room, and some other prisoners

who attended on them as sick nurses (malefactors, but not

incapable of kindness, God be thanked!), always joined in

the same report.

As the days went on, I noticed more and more that he

would lie placidly looking at the white ceiling, with an

absence of light in his face, until some word of mine bright-

ened it for an instant, and then it would subside again.

Sometimes he was almost, or quite, unable to speak; then,

he would answer me with slight pressures on my hand, and

I grew to understand his meaning very well.

The number of the days had risen to ten, when I saw a

greater change in him than I had seen yet. His eyes were

turned towards the door, and lighted up as I entered.

‘Dear boy,’ he said, as I sat down by his bed: ‘I thought

you was late. But I knowed you couldn’t be that.’

‘It is just the time,’ said I. ‘I waited for it at the gate.’

‘You always waits at the gate; don’t you, dear boy?’

‘Yes. Not to lose a moment of the time.’

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‘Thank’ee dear boy, thank’ee. God bless you! You’ve nev-

er deserted me, dear boy.’

I pressed his hand in silence, for I could not forget that I

had once meant to desert him.

‘And what’s the best of all,’ he said, ‘you’ve been more

comfortable alonger me, since I was under a dark cloud,

than when the sun shone. That’s best of all.’

He lay on his back, breathing with great difficulty. Do

what he would, and love me though he did, the light left his

face ever and again, and a film came over the placid look at

the white ceiling.

‘Are you in much pain to-day?’

‘I don’t complain of none, dear boy.’

‘You never do complain.’

He had spoken his last words. He smiled, and I under-

stood his touch to mean that he wished to lift my hand, and

lay it on his breast. I laid it there, and he smiled again, and

put both his hands upon it.

The allotted time ran out, while we were thus; but, look-

ing round, I found the governor of the prison standing near

me, and he whispered, ‘You needn’t go yet.’ I thanked him

gratefully, and asked, ‘Might I speak to him, if he can hear

me?’

The governor stepped aside, and beckoned the officer

away. The change, though it was made without noise, drew

back the film from the placid look at the white ceiling, and

he looked most affectionately at me.

‘Dear Magwitch, I must tell you, now at last. You under-

stand what I say?’

Great Expectations

A gentle pressure on my hand.

‘You had a child once, whom you loved and lost.’

A stronger pressure on my hand.

‘She lived and found powerful friends. She is living now.

She is a lady and very beautiful. And I love her!’

With a last faint effort, which would have been powerless

but for my yielding to it and assisting it, he raised my hand

to his lips. Then, he gently let it sink upon his breast again,

with his own hands lying on it. The placid look at the white

ceiling came back, and passed away, and his head dropped

quietly on his breast.

Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought

of the two men who went up into the Temple to pray, and I

knew there were no better words that I could say beside his

bed, than ‘O Lord, be merciful to him, a sinner!’

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Chapter 57

Now that I was left wholly to myself, I gave notice of my

intention to quit the chambers in the Temple as soon as

my tenancy could legally determine, and in the meanwhile

to underlet them. At once I put bills up in the windows; for,

I was in debt, and had scarcely any money, and began to be

seriously alarmed by the state of my affairs. I ought rather

to write that I should have been alarmed if I had had energy

and concentration enough to help me to the clear percep-

tion of any truth beyond the fact that I was falling very ill.

The late stress upon me had enabled me to put off illness,

but not to put it away; I knew that it was coming on me now,

and I knew very little else, and was even careless as to that.

For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor - any-

where, according as I happened to sink down - with a heavy

head and aching limbs, and no purpose, and no power.

Then there came one night which appeared of great dura-

tion, and which teemed with anxiety and horror; and when

in the morning I tried to sit up in my bed and think of it, I

found I could not do so.

Whether I really had been down in Garden Court in the

dead of the night, groping about for the boat that I sup-

posed to be there; whether I had two or three times come

to myself on the staircase with great terror, not knowing

how I had got out of bed; whether I had found myself light-

Great Expectations

ing the lamp, possessed by the idea that he was coming up

the stairs, and that the lights were blown out; whether I

had been inexpressibly harassed by the distracted talking,

laughing, and groaning, of some one, and had half suspect-

ed those sounds to be of my own making; whether there

had been a closed iron furnace in a dark corner of the room,

and a voice had called out over and over again that Miss

Havisham was consuming within it; these were things that

I tried to settle with myself and get into some order, as I

lay that morning on my bed. But, the vapour of a limekiln

would come between me and them, disordering them all,

and it was through the vapour at last that I saw two men

looking at me.

‘What do you want?’ I asked, starting; ‘I don’t know you.’

‘Well, sir,’ returned one of them, bending down and

touching me on the shoulder, ‘this is a matter that you’ll

soon arrange, I dare say, but you’re arrested.’

‘What is the debt?’

‘Hundred and twenty-three pound, fifteen, six. Jeweller’s

account, I think.’

‘What is to be done?’

‘You had better come to my house,’ said the man. ‘I keep

a very nice house.’

I made some attempt to get up and dress myself. When I

next attended to them, they were standing a little off from

the bed, looking at me. I still lay there.

‘You see my state,’ said I. ‘I would come with you if I

could; but indeed I am quite unable. If you take me from

here, I think I shall die by the way.’

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Perhaps they replied, or argued the point, or tried to

encourage me to believe that I was better than I thought.

Forasmuch as they hang in my memory by only this one

slender thread, I don’t know what they did, except that they

forbore to remove me.

That I had a fever and was avoided, that I suffered greatly,

that I often lost my reason, that the time seemed intermi-

nable, that I confounded impossible existences with my

own identity; that I was a brick in the house wall, and yet

entreating to be released from the giddy place where the

builders had set me; that I was a steel beam of a vast engine,

clashing and whirling over a gulf, and yet that I implored in

my own person to have the engine stopped, and my part in

it hammered off; that I passed through these phases of dis-

ease, I know of my own remembrance, and did in some sort

know at the time. That I sometimes struggled with real peo-

ple, in the belief that they were murderers, and that I would

all at once comprehend that they meant to do me good, and

would then sink exhausted in their arms, and suffer them

to lay me down, I also knew at the time. But, above all, I

knew that there was a constant tendency in all these people

- who, when I was very ill, would present all kinds of ex-

traordinary transformations of the human face, and would

be much dilated in size - above all, I say, I knew that there

was an extraordinary tendency in all these people, sooner

or later to settle down into the likeness of Joe.

After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I began

to notice that while all its other features changed, this one

consistent feature did not change. Whoever came about me,

Great Expectations

still settled down into Joe. I opened my eyes in the night,

and I saw in the great chair at the bedside, Joe. I opened

my eyes in the day, and, sitting on the window-seat, smok-

ing his pipe in the shaded open window, still I saw Joe. I

asked for cooling drink, and the dear hand that gave it me

was Joe’s. I sank back on my pillow after drinking, and the

face that looked so hopefully and tenderly upon me was the

face of Joe.

At last, one day, I took courage, and said, ‘Is it Joe?’

And the dear old home-voice answered, ‘Which it air, old

chap.’

‘O Joe, you break my heart! Look angry at me, Joe. Strike

me, Joe. Tell me of my ingratitude. Don’t be so good to me!’

For, Joe had actually laid his head down on the pillow

at my side and put his arm round my neck, in his joy that I

knew him.

‘Which dear old Pip, old chap,’ said Joe, ‘you and me was

ever friends. And when you’re well enough to go out for a

ride - what larks!’

After which, Joe withdrew to the window, and stood with

his back towards me, wiping his eyes. And as my extreme

weakness prevented me from getting up and going to him, I

lay there, penitently whispering, ‘O God bless him! O God

bless this gentle Christian man!’

Joe’s eyes were red when I next found him beside me; but,

I was holding his hand, and we both felt happy.

‘How long, dear Joe?’

‘Which you meantersay, Pip, how long have your illness

lasted, dear old chap?’

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‘Yes, Joe.’

‘It’s the end of May, Pip. To-morrow is the first of June.’

‘And have you been here all that time, dear Joe?’

‘Pretty nigh, old chap. For, as I says to Biddy when the

news of your being ill were brought by letter, which it

were brought by the post and being formerly single he is

now married though underpaid for a deal of walking and

shoe-leather, but wealth were not a object on his part, and

marriage were the great wish of his hart—‘

‘It is so delightful to hear you, Joe! But I interrupt you in

what you said to Biddy.’

‘Which it were,’ said Joe, ‘that how you might be amongst

strangers, and that how you and me having been ever

friends, a wisit at such a moment might not prove unac-

ceptabobble. And Biddy, her word were, ‘Go to him, without

loss of time.’ That,’ said Joe, summing up with his judicial

air, ‘were the word of Biddy. ‘Go to him,’ Biddy say, ‘without

loss of time.’ In short, I shouldn’t greatly deceive you,’ Joe

added, after a little grave reflection, ‘if I represented to you

that the word of that young woman were, ‘without a min-

ute’s loss of time.’

There Joe cut himself short, and informed me that I was

to be talked to in great moderation, and that I was to take

a little nourishment at stated frequent times, whether I felt

inclined for it or not, and that I was to submit myself to all

his orders. So, I kissed his hand, and lay quiet, while he pro-

ceeded to indite a note to Biddy, with my love in it.

Evidently, Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in bed

looking at him, it made me, in my weak state, cry again

Great Expectations

with pleasure to see the pride with which he set about his

letter. My bedstead, divested of its curtains, had been re-

moved, with me upon it, into the sittingroom, as the airiest

and largest, and the carpet had been taken away, and the

room kept always fresh and wholesome night and day. At

my own writing-table, pushed into a corner and cumbered

with little bottles, Joe now sat down to his great work, first

choosing a pen from the pen-tray as if it were a chest of

large tools, and tucking up his sleeves as if he were going

to wield a crowbar or sledgehammer. It was necessary for

Joe to hold on heavily to the table with his left elbow, and

to get his right leg well out behind him, before he could be-

gin, and when he did begin, he made every down-stroke so

slowly that it might have been six feet long, while at every

up-stroke I could hear his pen spluttering extensively. He

had a curious idea that the inkstand was on the side of him

where it was not, and constantly dipped his pen into space,

and seemed quite satisfied with the result. Occasionally, he

was tripped up by some orthographical stumbling-block,

but on the whole he got on very well indeed, and when he

had signed his name, and had removed a finishing blot from

the paper to the crown of his head with his two forefingers,

he got up and hovered about the table, trying the effect of

his performance from various points of view as it lay there,

with unbounded satisfaction.

Not to make Joe uneasy by talking too much, even if I

had been able to talk much, I deferred asking him about

Miss Havisham until next day. He shook his head when I

then asked him if she had recovered.

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‘Is she dead, Joe?’

‘Why you see, old chap,’ said Joe, in a tone of remon-

strance, and by way of getting at it by degrees, ‘I wouldn’t go

so far as to say that, for that’s a deal to say; but she ain’t—‘

‘Living, Joe?’

‘That’s nigher where it is,’ said Joe; ‘she ain’t living.’

‘Did she linger long, Joe?’

‘Arter you was took ill, pretty much about what you might

call (if you was put to it) a week,’ said Joe; still determined,

on my account, to come at everything by degrees.

‘Dear Joe, have you heard what becomes of her proper-

ty?’‘Well, old chap,’ said Joe, ‘it do appear that she had settled

the most of it, which I meantersay tied it up, on Miss Estella.

But she had wrote out a little coddleshell in her own hand a

day or two afore the accident, leaving a cool four thousand

to Mr. Matthew Pocket. And why, do you suppose, above all

things, Pip, she left that cool four thousand unto him? ‘Be-

cause of Pip’s account of him the said Matthew.’ I am told

by Biddy, that air the writing,’ said Joe, repeating the legal

turn as if it did him infinite good, ‘account of him the said

Matthew.’ And a cool four thousand, Pip!’

I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conven-

tional temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it

appeared to make the sum of money more to him, and he

had a manifest relish in insisting on its being cool.

This account gave me great joy, as it perfected the only

good thing I had done. I asked Joe whether he had heard if

any of the other relations had any legacies?

Great Expectations

‘Miss Sarah,’ said Joe, ‘she have twenty-five pound per-

annium fur to buy pills, on account of being bilious. Miss

Georgiana, she have twenty pound down. Mrs. - what’s the

name of them wild beasts with humps, old chap?’

‘Camels?’ said I, wondering why he could possibly want

to know.

Joe nodded. ‘Mrs. Camels,’ by which I presently under-

stood he meant Camilla, ‘she have five pound fur to buy

rushlights to put her in spirits when she wake up in the

night.’

The accuracy of these recitals was sufficiently obvious to

me, to give me great confidence in Joe’s information. ‘And

now,’ said Joe, ‘you ain’t that strong yet, old chap, that you

can take in more nor one additional shovel-full to-day. Old

Orlick he’s been a bustin’open a dwelling-ouse.’

‘Whose?’ said I.

‘Not, I grant, you, but what his manners is given to blus-

terous,’ said Joe, apologetically; ‘still, a Englishman’s ouse is

his Castle, and castles must not be busted ‘cept when done

in war time. And wotsume’er the failings on his part, he

were a corn and seedsman in his hart.’

‘Is it Pumblechook’s house that has been broken into,

then?’

‘That’s it, Pip,’ said Joe; ‘and they took his till, and they

took his cash-box, and they drinked his wine, and they

partook of his wittles, and they slapped his face, and they

pulled his nose, and they tied him up to his bedpust, and

they giv’ him a dozen, and they stuffed his mouth full of

flowering annuals to prewent his crying out. But he knowed

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Orlick, and Orlick’s in the county jail.’

By these approaches we arrived at unrestricted conversa-

tion. I was slow to gain strength, but I did slowly and surely

become less weak, and Joe stayed with me, and I fancied I

was little Pip again.

For, the tenderness of Joe was so beautifully propor-

tioned to my need, that I was like a child in his hands. He

would sit and talk to me in the old confidence, and with the

old simplicity, and in the old unassertive protecting way, so

that I would half believe that all my life since the days of

the old kitchen was one of the mental troubles of the fever

that was gone. He did everything for me except the house-

hold work, for which he had engaged a very decent woman,

after paying off the laundress on his first arrival. ‘Which I

do assure you, Pip,’ he would often say, in explanation of

that liberty; ‘I found her a tapping the spare bed, like a cask

of beer, and drawing off the feathers in a bucket, for sale.

Which she would have tapped yourn next, and draw’d it off

with you a laying on it, and was then a carrying away the

coals gradiwally in the souptureen and wegetable-dishes,

and the wine and spirits in your Wellington boots.’

We looked forward to the day when I should go out for

a ride, as we had once looked forward to the day of my ap-

prenticeship. And when the day came, and an open carriage

was got into the Lane, Joe wrapped me up, took me in his

arms, carried me down to it, and put me in, as if I were still

the small helpless creature to whom he had so abundantly

given of the wealth of his great nature.

And Joe got in beside me, and we drove away together

Great Expectations

into the country, where the rich summer growth was al-

ready on the trees and on the grass, and sweet summer

scents filled all the air. The day happened to be Sunday, and

when I looked on the loveliness around me, and thought

how it had grown and changed, and how the little wild flow-

ers had been forming, and the voices of the birds had been

strengthening, by day and by night, under the sun and un-

der the stars, while poor I lay burning and tossing on my

bed, the mere remembrance of having burned and tossed

there, came like a check upon my peace. But, when I heard

the Sunday bells, and looked around a little more upon

the outspread beauty, I felt that I was not nearly thankful

enough - that I was too weak yet, to be even that - and I laid

my head on Joe’s shoulder, as I had laid it long ago when he

had taken me to the Fair or where not, and it was too much

for my young senses.

More composure came to me after a while, and we talk-

ed as we used to talk, lying on the grass at the old Battery.

There was no change whatever in Joe. Exactly what he had

been in my eyes then, he was in my eyes still; just as simply

faithful, and as simply right.

When we got back again and he lifted me out, and car-

ried me - so easily - across the court and up the stairs, I

thought of that eventful Christmas Day when he had car-

ried me over the marshes. We had not yet made any allusion

to my change of fortune, nor did I know how much of my

late history he was acquainted with. I was so doubtful of

myself now, and put so much trust in him, that I could not

satisfy myself whether I ought to refer to it when he did

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not.‘Have you heard, Joe,’ I asked him that evening, upon

further consideration, as he smoked his pipe at the window,

‘who my patron was?’

‘I heerd,’ returned Joe, ‘as it were not Miss Havisham, old

chap.’

‘Did you hear who it was, Joe?’

‘Well! I heerd as it were a person what sent the person

what giv’you the bank-notes at the Jolly Bargemen, Pip.’

‘So it was.’

‘Astonishing!’ said Joe, in the placidest way.

‘Did you hear that he was dead, Joe?’ I presently asked,

with increasing diffidence.

‘Which? Him as sent the bank-notes, Pip?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think,’ said Joe, after meditating a long time, and look-

ing rather evasively at the window-seat, ‘as I did hear tell

that how he were something or another in a general way in

that direction.’

‘Did you hear anything of his circumstances, Joe?’

‘Not partickler, Pip.’

‘If you would like to hear, Joe—’ I was beginning, when

Joe got up and came to my sofa.

‘Lookee here, old chap,’ said Joe, bending over me. ‘Ever

the best of friends; ain’t us, Pip?’

I was ashamed to answer him.

‘Wery good, then,’ said Joe, as if I had answered; ‘that’s

all right, that’s agreed upon. Then why go into subjects, old

chap, which as betwixt two sech must be for ever onneces-

Great Expectations

sary? There’s subjects enough as betwixt two sech, without

onnecessary ones. Lord! To think of your poor sister and

her Rampages! And don’t you remember Tickler?’

‘I do indeed, Joe.’

‘Lookee here, old chap,’ said Joe. ‘I done what I could to

keep you and Tickler in sunders, but my power were not

always fully equal to my inclinations. For when your poor

sister had a mind to drop into you, it were not so much,’ said

Joe, in his favourite argumentative way, ‘that she dropped

into me too, if I put myself in opposition to her but that she

dropped into you always heavier for it. I noticed that. It ain’t

a grab at a man’s whisker, not yet a shake or two of a man (to

which your sister was quite welcome), that ‘ud put a man off

from getting a little child out of punishment. But when that

little child is dropped into, heavier, for that grab of whisker

or shaking, then that man naterally up and says to himself,

‘Where is the good as you are a-doing? I grant you I see the

‘arm,’ says the man, ‘but I don’t see the good. I call upon you,

sir, therefore, to pint out the good.’

‘The man says?’ I observed, as Joe waited for me to

speak.

‘The man says,’ Joe assented. ‘Is he right, that man?’

‘Dear Joe, he is always right.’

‘Well, old chap,’ said Joe, ‘then abide by your words. If

he’s always right (which in general he’s more likely wrong),

he’s right when he says this: - Supposing ever you kep any

little matter to yourself, when you was a little child, you kep

it mostly because you know’d as J. Gargery’s power to part

you and Tickler in sunders, were not fully equal to his incli-

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nations. Therefore, think no more of it as betwixt two sech,

and do not let us pass remarks upon onnecessary subjects.

Biddy giv’ herself a deal o’ trouble with me afore I left (for I

am almost awful dull), as I should view it in this light, and,

viewing it in this light, as I should so put it. Both of which,’

said Joe, quite charmed with his logical arrangement, ‘be-

ing done, now this to you a true friend, say. Namely. You

mustn’t go a-over-doing on it, but you must have your sup-

per and your wine-and-water, and you must be put betwixt

the sheets.’

The delicacy with which Joe dismissed this theme, and

the sweet tact and kindness with which Biddy - who with

her woman’s wit had found me out so soon - had prepared

him for it, made a deep impression on my mind. But wheth-

er Joe knew how poor I was, and how my great expectations

had all dissolved, like our own marsh mists before the sun,

I could not understand.

Another thing in Joe that I could not understand when

it first began to develop itself, but which I soon arrived at a

sorrowful comprehension of, was this: As I became stron-

ger and better, Joe became a little less easy with me. In my

weakness and entire dependence on him, the dear fellow

had fallen into the old tone, and called me by the old names,

the dear ‘old Pip, old chap,’ that now were music in my ears.

I too had fallen into the old ways, only happy and thankful

that he let me. But, imperceptibly, though I held by them

fast, Joe’s hold upon them began to slacken; and whereas I

wondered at this, at first, I soon began to understand that

the cause of it was in me, and that the fault of it was all

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mine.

Ah! Had I given Joe no reason to doubt my constancy,

and to think that in prosperity I should grow cold to him

and cast him off? Had I given Joe’s innocent heart no cause

to feel instinctively that as I got stronger, his hold upon me

would be weaker, and that he had better loosen it in time

and let me go, before I plucked myself away?

It was on the third or fourth occasion of my going out

walking in the Temple Gardens leaning on Joe’s arm, that

I saw this change in him very plainly. We had been sit-

ting in the bright warm sunlight, looking at the river, and I

chanced to say as we got up:

‘See, Joe! I can walk quite strongly. Now, you shall see me

walk back by myself.’

‘Which do not over-do it, Pip,’ said Joe; ‘but I shall be

happy fur to see you able, sir.’

The last word grated on me; but how could I remonstrate!

I walked no further than the gate of the gardens, and then

pretended to be weaker than I was, and asked Joe for his

arm. Joe gave it me, but was thoughtful.

I, for my part, was thoughtful too; for, how best to check

this growing change in Joe, was a great perplexity to my re-

morseful thoughts. That I was ashamed to tell him exactly

how I was placed, and what I had come down to, I do not

seek to conceal; but, I hope my reluctance was not quite an

unworthy one. He would want to help me out of his little

savings, I knew, and I knew that he ought not to help me,

and that I must not suffer him to do it.

It was a thoughtful evening with both of us. But, be-

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