"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 understood his touchto mean that he wished to lift my hand, and lay it on his breast. Ilaid it there, and he smiled again, and put both his hands upon it.

The allotted time ran out, while we were thus; but, looking round,I found the governor of the prison standing near me, and hewhispered, "You needn't go yet." I thanked him gratefully, andasked, "Might I speak to him, if he can hear me?"

The governor stepped aside, and beckoned the officer away. Thechange, though it was made without noise, drew back the film fromthe placid look at the white ceiling, and he looked mostaffectionately at me.

"Dear Magwitch, I must tell you, now at last. You understand what Isay?"

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 alady and very beautiful. And I love her!"

With a last faint effort, which would have been powerless but formy 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 ownhands 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 twomen who went up into the Temple to pray, and I knew there were nobetter words that I could say beside his bed, than "O Lord, bemerciful to him, a sinner!"

Chapter 57

Now that I was left wholly to myself, I gave notice of my intentionto quit the chambers in the Temple as soon as my tenancy couldlegally determine, and in the meanwhile to underlet them. At once Iput bills up in the windows; for, I was in debt, and had scarcelyany money, and began to be seriously alarmed by the state of myaffairs. I ought rather to write that I should have been alarmed ifI had had energy and concentration enough to help me to the clearperception of any truth beyond the fact that I was falling veryill. The late stress upon me had enabled me to put off illness, butnot to put it away; I knew that it was coming on me now, and I knewvery little else, and was even careless as to that.

For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor - anywhere,according as I happened to sink down - with a heavy head and achinglimbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came one nightwhich appeared of great duration, and which teemed with anxiety andhorror; and when in the morning I tried to sit up in my bed andthink of it, I found I could not do so.

Whether I really had been down in Garden Court in the dead of thenight, groping about for the boat that I supposed to be there;whether I had two or three times come to myself on the staircasewith great terror, not knowing how I had got out of bed; whether Ihad found myself lighting the lamp, possessed by the idea that hewas coming up the stairs, and that the lights were blown out;whether I had been inexpressibly harassed by the distractedtalking, laughing, and groaning, of some one, and had halfsuspected those sounds to be of my own making; whether there hadbeen a closed iron furnace in a dark corner of the room, and avoice had called out over and over again that Miss Havisham wasconsuming within it; these were things that I tried to settle withmyself 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 Isaw 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 onthe shoulder, "this is a matter that you'll soon arrange, I daresay, 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 verynice house."

I made some attempt to get up and dress myself. When I nextattended 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; butindeed I am quite unable. If you take me from here, I think I shalldie by the way."

Perhaps they replied, or argued the point, or tried to encourage meto believe that I was better than I thought. Forasmuch as they hangin my memory by only this one slender thread, I don't know whatthey did, except that they forbore to remove me.

That I had a fever and was avoided, that I suffered greatly, that Ioften lost my reason, that the time seemed interminable, that Iconfounded impossible existences with my own identity; that I was abrick in the house wall, and yet entreating to be released from thegiddy place where the builders had set me; that I was a steel beamof a vast engine, clashing and whirling over a gulf, and yet that Iimplored in my own person to have the engine stopped, and my partin it hammered off; that I passed through these phases of disease,I know of my own remembrance, and did in some sort know at thetime. That I sometimes struggled with real people, in the beliefthat they were murderers, and that I would all at once comprehendthat they meant to do me good, and would then sink exhausted intheir arms, and suffer them to lay me down, I also knew at thetime. But, above all, I knew that there was a constant tendency inall these people - who, when I was very ill, would present allkinds of extraordinary transformations of the human face, and wouldbe much dilated in size - above all, I say, I knew that there wasan extraordinary tendency in all these people, sooner or later tosettle down into the likeness of Joe.

After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I began to noticethat while all its other features changed, this one consistentfeature did not change. Whoever came about me, still settled downinto Joe. I opened my eyes in the night, and I saw in the greatchair at the bedside, Joe. I opened my eyes in the day, and,sitting on the window-seat, smoking his pipe in the shaded openwindow, still I saw Joe. I asked for cooling drink, and the dearhand that gave it me was Joe's. I sank back on my pillow afterdrinking, and the face that looked so hopefully and tenderly uponme 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 sideand 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 everfriends. And when you're well enough to go out for a ride - whatlarks!"

After which, Joe withdrew to the window, and stood with his backtowards me, wiping his eyes. And as my extreme weakness preventedme from getting up and going to him, I lay there, penitentlywhispering, "O God bless him! O God bless this gentle Christianman!"

Joe's eyes were red when I next found him beside me; but, I washolding his hand, and we both felt happy.

"How long, dear Joe?"

"Which you meantersay, Pip, how long have your illness lasted, dearold chap?"

"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 ofyour being ill were brought by letter, which it were brought by thepost and being formerly single he is now married though underpaidfor a deal of walking and shoe-leather, but wealth were not aobject 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 whatyou said to Biddy."

"Which it were," said Joe, "that how you might be amongststrangers, and that how you and me having been ever friends, awisit at such a moment might not prove unacceptabobble. 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 tohim,' Biddy say, 'without loss of time.' In short, I shouldn'tgreatly deceive you," Joe added, after a little grave reflection,"if I represented to you that the word of that young woman were,'without a minute's loss of time.'"

There Joe cut himself short, and informed me that I was to betalked to in great moderation, and that I was to take a littlenourishment at stated frequent times, whether I felt inclined forit or not, and that I was to submit myself to all his orders. So, Ikissed his hand, and lay quiet, while he proceeded to indite a noteto Biddy, with my love in it.

Evidently, Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in bed lookingat him, it made me, in my weak state, cry again with pleasure tosee the pride with which he set about his letter. My bedstead,divested of its curtains, had been removed, with me upon it, intothe sittingroom, as the airiest and largest, and the carpet hadbeen taken away, and the room kept always fresh and wholesome nightand day. At my own writing-table, pushed into a corner and cumberedwith little bottles, Joe now sat down to his great work, firstchoosing a pen from the pen-tray as if it were a chest of largetools, and tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to wield acrowbar or sledgehammer. It was necessary for Joe to hold onheavily to the table with his left elbow, and to get his right legwell out behind him, before he could begin, and when he did begin,he made every down-stroke so slowly that it might have been sixfeet long, while at every up-stroke I could hear his penspluttering extensively. He had a curious idea that the inkstandwas on the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped hispen into space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result.Occasionally, he was tripped up by some orthographicalstumbling-block, but on the whole he got on very well indeed, andwhen he had signed his name, and had removed a finishing blot fromthe paper to the crown of his head with his two forefingers, he gotup and hovered about the table, trying the effect of hisperformance from various points of view as it lay there, withunbounded satisfaction.

Not to make Joe uneasy by talking too much, even if I had been ableto talk much, I deferred asking him about Miss Havisham until nextday. He shook his head when I then asked him if she had recovered.

"Is she dead, Joe?"

"Why you see, old chap," said Joe, in a tone of remonstrance, andby way of getting at it by degrees, "I wouldn't go so far as to saythat, 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 (ifyou was put to it) a week," said Joe; still determined, on myaccount, to come at everything by degrees.

"Dear Joe, have you heard what becomes of her property?"

"Well, old chap," said Joe, "it do appear that she had settled themost of it, which I meantersay tied it up, on Miss Estella. But shehad wrote out a little coddleshell in her own hand a day or twoafore the accident, leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. MatthewPocket. And why, do you suppose, above all things, Pip, she leftthat cool four thousand unto him? 'Because of Pip's account of himthe said Matthew.' I am told by Biddy, that air the writing," saidJoe, 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 conventionaltemperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to makethe sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish ininsisting on its being cool.

This account gave me great joy, as it perfected the only good thingI had done. I asked Joe whether he had heard if any of the otherrelations had any legacies?

"Miss Sarah," said Joe, "she have twenty-five pound perannium furto buy pills, on account of being bilious. Miss Georgiana, she havetwenty pound down. Mrs. - what's the name of them wild beasts withhumps, old chap?"

"Camels?" said I, wondering why he could possibly want to know.

Joe nodded. "Mrs. Camels," by which I presently understood he meantCamilla, "she have five pound fur to buy rushlights to put her inspirits when she wake up in the night."

The accuracy of these recitals was sufficiently obvious to me, togive 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 norone additional shovel-full to-day. Old Orlick he's been abustin'open a dwelling-ouse."

"Whose?" said I.

"Not, I grant, you, but what his manners is given to blusterous,"said Joe, apologetically; "still, a Englishman's ouse is hisCastle, and castles must not be busted 'cept when done in war time.And wotsume'er the failings on his part, he were a corn andseedsman 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 tookhis cash-box, and they drinked his wine, and they partook of hiswittles, and they slapped his face, and they pulled his nose, andthey tied him up to his bedpust, and they giv' him a dozen, andthey stuffed his mouth full of flowering annuals to prewent hiscrying out. But he knowed Orlick, and Orlick's in the countyjail."

Title: Great Expectations
Author: Charles Dickens
Viewed 221130 times

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