I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreedthat it should be carried into execution, and that Provis shouldnever recognize us if we came below Bridge and rowed past Mill PondBank. But, we further agreed that he should pull down the blind inthat part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he sawus and all was right.

Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose togo; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go hometogether, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "Idon't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannotdoubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!"

"Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when wemay meet again, and I don't like Good-bye. Say Good Night!"

"Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when thetime comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, Goodnight!"

We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms, and weleft him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over thestair-rail to light us down stairs. Looking back at him, I thoughtof the first night of his return when our positions were reversed,and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy andanxious 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 meaning to cease. When wegot to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he hadpreserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and thatthe lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost knownof Mr. Campbell there, was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbellconsigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his beingwell cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went intothe parlour where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I saidnothing 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 ofthe motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with alittle affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green CopperRope-Walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be asold as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers,but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough inChinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought ofEstella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly.

All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. Thewindows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, weredark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walkedpast the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps thatwere between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert comingto my bedside when he came in - for I went straight to bed,dispirited and fatigued - made the same report. Opening one of thewindows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told methat the pavement was a solemnly empty as the pavement of anyCathedral at that same hour.

Next day, I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and theboat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I couldreach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as fortraining and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. Iwas often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much noteof me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept aboveBlackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I tooktowards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, andat certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of waterthere 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 aboutamong the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time Ipassed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars;and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the eastcome down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than threetimes in a week, and he never brought me a single word ofintelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there wascause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of beingwatched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigningpersons 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 inhiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasantto stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide wasrunning down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything itbore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowingtowards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might behis pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him.

Chapter 47

Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited forWemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out ofLittle Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on afamiliar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not sofor a moment, knowing him as I did.

My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I waspressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began toknow the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket),and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles ofjewellery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be aheartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existingstate of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent himthe unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping,and I felt a kind of satisfaction - whether it was a false kind ora true, I hardly know - in not having profited by his generositysince his revelation of himself.

As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me thatEstella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it wasall but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert(to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview)never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretchedlittle rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to thewinds, how do I know! Why did you who read this, commit that notdissimilar inconsistency of your own, last year, last month, lastweek?

It was an unhappy life that I lived, and its one dominant anxiety,towering over all its other anxieties like a high mountain above arange of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no newcause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with theterror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listeningas I would, with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lestit should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news; forall that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things wenton. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness andsuspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, asI best could.

There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, Icould not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings ofold London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the CustomHouse, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was notaverse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat acommoner incident among the water-side people there. From thisslight occasion, sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of.

One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at thewharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebbtide, 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 myway back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going andreturning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well.

As it was a raw evening and I was cold, I thought I would comfortmyself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection andsolitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I wouldafterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achievedhis questionable triumph, was in that waterside neighbourhood (itis nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was awarethat Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on thecontrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominouslyheard of, through the playbills, as a faithful Black, in connexionwith a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert hadseen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a facelike a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells.

I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a Geographicalchop-house - where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rimson every half-yard of the table-cloths, and charts of gravy onevery one of the knives - to this day there is scarcely a singlechop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is notGeographical - and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staringat gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By-and-by, I rousedmyself and went to the play.

There, I found a virtuous boatswain in his Majesty's service - amost excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers notquite so tight in some places and not quite so loose in others -who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though hewas very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody'spaying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of moneyin his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that propertymarried a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; thewhole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last Census)turning out on the beach, to rub their own hands and shakeeverybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certaindark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anythingelse that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated(by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed totwo other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was soeffectually done (the Swab family having considerable politicalinfluence) that it took half the evening to set things right, andthen it was only brought about through an honest little grocer witha white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock,with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knockingeverybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn'tconfute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (whohad never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garteron, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty,to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, andthat he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slightacknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned forthe first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and thencheering up and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honour, solicitedpermission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle conceding his fin witha gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty cornerwhile everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveyingthe public with a discontented eye, became aware of me.

The second piece was the last new grand comic Christmas pantomime,in the first scene of which, it pained me to suspect that Idetected Mr. Wopsle with red worsted legs under a highly magnifiedphosphoric countenance and a shock of red curtain-fringe for hishair, engaged in the manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine, anddisplaying great cowardice when his gigantic master came home (veryhoarse) to dinner. But he presently presented himself underworthier circumstances; for, the Genius of Youthful Love being inwant of assistance - on account of the parental brutality of anignorant farmer who opposed the choice of his daughter's heart, bypurposely falling upon the object, in a flour sack, out of thefirstfloor window - summoned a sententious Enchanter; and he,coming up from the antipodes rather unsteadily, after an apparentlyviolent journey, proved to be Mr. Wopsle in a high-crowned hat, witha necromantic work in one volume under his arm. The business ofthis enchanter on earth, being principally to be talked at, sungat, butted at, danced at, and flashed at with fires of variouscolours, he had a good deal of time on his hands. And I observedwith great surprise, that he devoted it to staring in my directionas 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 inhis mind and to grow so confused, that I could not make it out. Isat thinking of it, long after he had ascended to the clouds in alarge watch-case, and still I could not make it out. I was stillthinking of it when I came out of the theatre an hour afterwards,and found him waiting for me near the door.

"How do you do?" said I, shaking hands with him as we turned downthe street together. "I saw that you saw me."

"Saw you, Mr. Pip!" he returned. "Yes, of course I saw you. But whoelse was there?"

"Who else?"

"It is the strangest thing," said Mr. Wopsle, drifting into his lostlook 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 beingthere," said Mr. Wopsle, going on in the same lost way, "I can't bepositive; yet I think I should."

Involuntarily I looked round me, as I was accustomed to look roundme 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 Iwent off, I saw him go."

Having the reason that I had, for being suspicious, I evensuspected this poor actor. I mistrusted a design to entrap me intosome admission. Therefore, I glanced at him as we walked ontogether, but said nothing.

"I had a ridiculous fancy that he must be with you, Mr. Pip, till Isaw that you were quite unconscious of him, sitting behind youthere, like a ghost."

My former chill crept over me again, but I was resolved not tospeak yet, for it was quite consistent with his words that he mightbe set on to induce me to connect these references with Provis. Ofcourse, I was perfectly sure and safe that Provis had not beenthere.

Title: Great Expectations
Author: Charles Dickens
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