الفصل الفصل 53 · It was a dark night, though the full moon rose as I left the enclosed

. It was a dark night, though the full moon rose as I left the enclosed

lands, and passed out upon the marshes. Beyond their dark line there

was a ribbon of clear sky, hardly broad enough to hold the red large

moon. In a few minutes she had ascended out of that clear field, in

among the piled mountains of cloud.

There was a melancholy wind, and the marshes were very dismal. A

stranger would have found them insupportable, and even to me they were

so oppressive that I hesitated, half inclined to go back. But I knew

them well, and could have found my way on a far darker night, and had

no excuse for returning, being there. So, having come there against my

inclination, I went on against it.

The direction that I took was not that in which my old home lay, nor

that in which we had pursued the convicts. My back was turned towards

the distant Hulks as I walked on, and, though I could see the old

lights away on the spits of sand, I saw them over my shoulder. I knew

the limekiln as well as I knew the old Battery, but they were miles

apart; so that, if a light had been burning at each point that night,

there would have been a long strip of the blank horizon between the two

bright specks.

At first, I had to shut some gates after me, and now and then to stand

still while the cattle that were lying in the banked-up pathway arose

and blundered down among the grass and reeds. But after a little while

I seemed to have the whole flats to myself.

It was another half-hour before I drew near to the kiln. The lime was

burning with a sluggish stifling smell, but the fires were made up and

left, and no workmen were visible. Hard by was a small stone-quarry. It

lay directly in my way, and had been worked that day, as I saw by the

tools and barrows that were lying about.

Coming up again to the marsh level out of this excavation,—for the rude

path lay through it,—I saw a light in the old sluice-house. I quickened

my pace, and knocked at the door with my hand. Waiting for some reply,

I looked about me, noticing how the sluice was abandoned and broken,

and how the house—of wood with a tiled roof—would not be proof against

the weather much longer, if it were so even now, and how the mud and

ooze were coated with lime, and how the choking vapour of the kiln

crept in a ghostly way towards me. Still there was no answer, and I

knocked again. No answer still, and I tried the latch.

It rose under my hand, and the door yielded. Looking in, I saw a

lighted candle on a table, a bench, and a mattress on a truckle

bedstead. As there was a loft above, I called, “Is there any one here?”

but no voice answered. Then I looked at my watch, and, finding that it

was past nine, called again, “Is there any one here?” There being still

no answer, I went out at the door, irresolute what to do.

It was beginning to rain fast. Seeing nothing save what I had seen

already, I turned back into the house, and stood just within the

shelter of the doorway, looking out into the night. While I was

considering that some one must have been there lately and must soon be

coming back, or the candle would not be burning, it came into my head

to look if the wick were long. I turned round to do so, and had taken

up the candle in my hand, when it was extinguished by some violent

shock; and the next thing I comprehended was, that I had been caught in

a strong running noose, thrown over my head from behind.

“Now,” said a suppressed voice with an oath, “I’ve got you!”

“What is this?” I cried, struggling. “Who is it? Help, help, help!”

Not only were my arms pulled close to my sides, but the pressure on my

bad arm caused me exquisite pain. Sometimes, a strong man’s hand,

sometimes a strong man’s breast, was set against my mouth to deaden my

cries, and with a hot breath always close to me, I struggled

ineffectually in the dark, while I was fastened tight to the wall. “And

now,” said the suppressed voice with another oath, “call out again, and

I’ll make short work of you!”

Faint and sick with the pain of my injured arm, bewildered by the

surprise, and yet conscious how easily this threat could be put in

execution, I desisted, and tried to ease my arm were it ever so little.

But, it was bound too tight for that. I felt as if, having been burnt

before, it were now being boiled.

The sudden exclusion of the night, and the substitution of black

darkness in its place, warned me that the man had closed a shutter.

After groping about for a little, he found the flint and steel he

wanted, and began to strike a light. I strained my sight upon the

sparks that fell among the tinder, and upon which he breathed and

breathed, match in hand, but I could only see his lips, and the blue

point of the match; even those but fitfully. The tinder was damp,—no

wonder there,—and one after another the sparks died out.

The man was in no hurry, and struck again with the flint and steel. As

the sparks fell thick and bright about him, I could see his hands, and

touches of his face, and could make out that he was seated and bending

over the table; but nothing more. Presently I saw his blue lips again,

breathing on the tinder, and then a flare of light flashed up, and

showed me Orlick.

Whom I had looked for, I don’t know. I had not looked for him. Seeing

him, I felt that I was in a dangerous strait indeed, and I kept my eyes

upon him.

He lighted the candle from the flaring match with great deliberation,

and dropped the match, and trod it out. Then he put the candle away

from him on the table, so that he could see me, and sat with his arms

folded on the table and looked at me. I made out that I was fastened to

a stout perpendicular ladder a few inches from the wall,—a fixture

there,—the means of ascent to the loft above.

“Now,” said he, when we had surveyed one another for some time, “I’ve

got you.”

“Unbind me. Let me go!”

“Ah!” he returned, “_I_’ll let you go. I’ll let you go to the moon,

I’ll let you go to the stars. All in good time.”

“Why have you lured me here?”

“Don’t you know?” said he, with a deadly look.

“Why have you set upon me in the dark?”

“Because I mean to do it all myself. One keeps a secret better than

two. O you enemy, you enemy!”

His enjoyment of the spectacle I furnished, as he sat with his arms

folded on the table, shaking his head at me and hugging himself, had a

malignity in it that made me tremble. As I watched him in silence, he

put his hand into the corner at his side, and took up a gun with a

brass-bound stock.

“Do you know this?” said he, making as if he would take aim at me. “Do

you know where you saw it afore? Speak, wolf!”

“Yes,” I answered.

[Illustration]

“You cost me that place. You did. Speak!”

“What else could I do?”

“You did that, and that would be enough, without more. How dared you to

come betwixt me and a young woman I liked?”

“When did I?”

“When didn’t you? It was you as always give Old Orlick a bad name to

her.”

“You gave it to yourself; you gained it for yourself. I could have done

you no harm, if you had done yourself none.”

“You’re a liar. And you’ll take any pains, and spend any money, to

drive me out of this country, will you?” said he, repeating my words to

Biddy in the last interview I had with her. “Now, I’ll tell you a piece

of information. It was never so well worth your while to get me out of

this country as it is to-night. Ah! If it was all your money twenty

times told, to the last brass farden!” As he shook his heavy hand at

me, with his mouth snarling like a tiger’s, I felt that it was true.

“What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m a-going,” said he, bringing his fist down upon the table with a

heavy blow, and rising as the blow fell to give it greater force,—“I’m

a-going to have your life!”

He leaned forward staring at me, slowly unclenched his hand and drew it

across his mouth as if his mouth watered for me, and sat down again.

“You was always in Old Orlick’s way since ever you was a child. You

goes out of his way this present night. He’ll have no more on you.

You’re dead.”

I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a moment I looked

wildly round my trap for any chance of escape; but there was none.

“More than that,” said he, folding his arms on the table again, “I

won’t have a rag of you, I won’t have a bone of you, left on earth.

I’ll put your body in the kiln,—I’d carry two such to it, on my

shoulders—and, let people suppose what they may of you, they shall

never know nothing.”

My mind, with inconceivable rapidity followed out all the consequences

of such a death. Estella’s father would believe I had deserted him,

would be taken, would die accusing me; even Herbert would doubt me,

when he compared the letter I had left for him with the fact that I had

called at Miss Havisham’s gate for only a moment; Joe and Biddy would

never know how sorry I had been that night, none would ever know what I

had suffered, how true I had meant to be, what an agony I had passed

through. The death close before me was terrible, but far more terrible

than death was the dread of being misremembered after death. And so

quick were my thoughts, that I saw myself despised by unborn

generations,—Estella’s children, and their children,—while the wretch’s

words were yet on his lips.

“Now, wolf,” said he, “afore I kill you like any other beast,—which is

wot I mean to do and wot I have tied you up for,—I’ll have a good look

at you and a good goad at you. O you enemy!”

It had passed through my thoughts to cry out for help again; though few

could know better than I, the solitary nature of the spot, and the

hopelessness of aid. But as he sat gloating over me, I was supported by

a scornful detestation of him that sealed my lips. Above all things, I

resolved that I would not entreat him, and that I would die making some

last poor resistance to him. Softened as my thoughts of all the rest of

men were in that dire extremity; humbly beseeching pardon, as I did, of

Heaven; melted at heart, as I was, by the thought that I had taken no

farewell, and never now could take farewell of those who were dear to

me, or could explain myself to them, or ask for their compassion on my

miserable errors,—still, if I could have killed him, even in dying, I

would have done it.

He had been drinking, and his eyes were red and bloodshot. Around his

neck was slung a tin bottle, as I had often seen his meat and drink

slung about him in other days. He brought the bottle to his lips, and

took a fiery drink from it; and I smelt the strong spirits that I saw

flash into his face.

“Wolf!” said he, folding his arms again, “Old Orlick’s a-going to tell

you somethink. It was you as did for your shrew sister.”

Again my mind, with its former inconceivable rapidity, had exhausted

the whole subject of the attack upon my sister, her illness, and her

death, before his slow and hesitating speech had formed these words.

“It was you, villain,” said I.

“I tell you it was your doing,—I tell you it was done through you,” he

retorted, catching up the gun, and making a blow with the stock at the

vacant air between us. “I come upon her from behind, as I come upon you

to-night. _I_ giv’ it her! I left her for dead, and if there had been a

limekiln as nigh her as there is now nigh you, she shouldn’t have come

to life again. But it warn’t Old Orlick as did it; it was you. You was

favoured, and he was bullied and beat. Old Orlick bullied and beat, eh?

Now you pays for it. You done it; now you pays for it.”

He drank again, and became more ferocious. I saw by his tilting of the

bottle that there was no great quantity left in it. I distinctly

understood that he was working himself up with its contents to make an

end of me. I knew that every drop it held was a drop of my life. I knew

that when I was changed into a part of the vapour that had crept

towards me but a little while before, like my own warning ghost, he

would do as he had done in my sister’s case,—make all haste to the

town, and be seen slouching about there drinking at the alehouses. My

rapid mind pursued him to the town, made a picture of the street with

him in it, and contrasted its lights and life with the lonely marsh and

the white vapour creeping over it, into which I should have dissolved.

It was not only that I could have summed up years and years and years

while he said a dozen words, but that what he did say presented

pictures to me, and not mere words. In the excited and exalted state of

my brain, I could not think of a place without seeing it, or of persons

without seeing them. It is impossible to overstate the vividness of

these images, and yet I was so intent, all the time, upon him

himself,—who would not be intent on the tiger crouching to spring!—that

I knew of the slightest action of his fingers.

When he had drunk this second time, he rose from the bench on which he

sat, and pushed the table aside. Then, he took up the candle, and,

shading it with his murderous hand so as to throw its light on me,

stood before me, looking at me and enjoying the sight.

“Wolf, I’ll tell you something more. It was Old Orlick as you tumbled

over on your stairs that night.”

I saw the staircase with its extinguished lamps. I saw the shadows of

the heavy stair-rails, thrown by the watchman’s lantern on the wall. I

saw the rooms that I was never to see again; here, a door half open;

there, a door closed; all the articles of furniture around.

“And why was Old Orlick there? I’ll tell you something more, wolf. You

and her _have_ pretty well hunted me out of this country, so far as

getting a easy living in it goes, and I’ve took up with new companions,

and new masters. Some of ’em writes my letters when I wants ’em

wrote,—do you mind?—writes my letters, wolf! They writes fifty hands;

they’re not like sneaking you, as writes but one. I’ve had a firm mind

and a firm will to have your life, since you was down here at your

sister’s burying. I han’t seen a way to get you safe, and I’ve looked

arter you to know your ins and outs. For, says Old Orlick to himself,

‘Somehow or another I’ll have him!’ What! When I looks for you, I finds

your uncle Provis, eh?”

Mill Pond Bank, and Chinks’s Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,

all so clear and plain! Provis in his rooms, the signal whose use was

over, pretty Clara, the good motherly woman, old Bill Barley on his

back, all drifting by, as on the swift stream of my life fast running

out to sea!

“_You_ with a uncle too! Why, I know’d you at Gargery’s when you was so

small a wolf that I could have took your weazen betwixt this finger and

thumb and chucked you away dead (as I’d thoughts o’ doing, odd times,

when I see you loitering amongst the pollards on a Sunday), and you

hadn’t found no uncles then. No, not you! But when Old Orlick come for

to hear that your uncle Provis had most like wore the leg-iron wot Old

Orlick had picked up, filed asunder, on these meshes ever so many year

ago, and wot he kep by him till he dropped your sister with it, like a

bullock, as he means to drop you—hey?—when he come for to hear

that—hey?”

In his savage taunting, he flared the candle so close at me that I

turned my face aside to save it from the flame.

“Ah!” he cried, laughing, after doing it again, “the burnt child dreads

the fire! Old Orlick knowed you was burnt, Old Orlick knowed you was

smuggling your uncle Provis away, Old Orlick’s a match for you and

know’d you’d come to-night! Now I’ll tell you something more, wolf, and

this ends it. There’s them that’s as good a match for your uncle Provis

as Old Orlick has been for you. Let him ’ware them, when he’s lost his

nevvy! Let him ’ware them, when no man can’t find a rag of his dear

relation’s clothes, nor yet a bone of his body. There’s them that can’t

and that won’t have Magwitch,—yes, _I_ know the name!—alive in the same

land with them, and that’s had such sure information of him when he was

alive in another land, as that he couldn’t and shouldn’t leave it

unbeknown and put them in danger. P’raps it’s them that writes fifty

hands, and that’s not like sneaking you as writes but one. ’Ware

Compeyson, Magwitch, and the gallows!”

He flared the candle at me again, smoking my face and hair, and for an

instant blinding me, and turned his powerful back as he replaced the

light on the table. I had thought a prayer, and had been with Joe and

Biddy and Herbert, before he turned towards me again.

There was a clear space of a few feet between the table and the

opposite wall. Within this space, he now slouched backwards and

forwards. His great strength seemed to sit stronger upon him than ever

before, as he did this with his hands hanging loose and heavy at his

sides, and with his eyes scowling at me. I had no grain of hope left.

Wild as my inward hurry was, and wonderful the force of the pictures

that rushed by me instead of thoughts, I could yet clearly understand

that, unless he had resolved that I was within a few moments of surely

perishing out of all human knowledge, he would never have told me what

he had told.

Of a sudden, he stopped, took the cork out of his bottle, and tossed it

away. Light as it was, I heard it fall like a plummet. He swallowed

slowly, tilting up the bottle by little and little, and now he looked

at me no more. The last few drops of liquor he poured into the palm of

his hand, and licked up. Then, with a sudden hurry of violence and

swearing horribly, he threw the bottle from him, and stooped; and I saw

in his hand a stone-hammer with a long heavy handle.

The resolution I had made did not desert me, for, without uttering one

vain word of appeal to him, I shouted out with all my might, and

struggled with all my might. It was only my head and my legs that I

could move, but to that extent I struggled with all the force, until

then unknown, that was within me. In the same instant I heard

responsive shouts, saw figures and a gleam of light dash in at the

door, heard voices and tumult, and saw Orlick emerge from a struggle of

men, as if it were tumbling water, clear the table at a leap, and fly

out into the night.

After a blank, I found that I was lying unbound, on the floor, in the

same place, with my head on some one’s knee. My eyes were fixed on the

ladder against the wall, when I came to myself,—had opened on it before

my mind saw it,—and thus as I recovered consciousness, I knew that I

was in the place where I had lost it.

Too indifferent at first, even to look round and ascertain who

supported me, I was lying looking at the ladder, when there came

between me and it a face. The face of Trabb’s boy!

“I think he’s all right!” said Trabb’s boy, in a sober voice; “but

ain’t he just pale though!”

At these words, the face of him who supported me looked over into mine,

and I saw my supporter to be—

“Herbert! Great Heaven!”

“Softly,” said Herbert. “Gently, Handel. Don’t be too eager.”

“And our old comrade, Startop!” I cried, as he too bent over me.

“Remember what he is going to assist us in,” said Herbert, “and be

calm.”

The allusion made me spring up; though I dropped again from the pain in

my arm. “The time has not gone by, Herbert, has it? What night is

to-night? How long have I been here?” For, I had a strange and strong

misgiving that I had been lying there a long time—a day and a

night,—two days and nights,—more.

“The time has not gone by. It is still Monday night.”

“Thank God!”

“And you have all to-morrow, Tuesday, to rest in,” said Herbert. “But

you can’t help groaning, my dear Handel. What hurt have you got? Can

you stand?”

“Yes, yes,” said I, “I can walk. I have no hurt but in this throbbing

arm.”

They laid it bare, and did what they could. It was violently swollen

and inflamed, and I could scarcely endure to have it touched. But, they

tore up their handkerchiefs to make fresh bandages, and carefully

replaced it in the sling, until we could get to the town and obtain

some cooling lotion to put upon it. In a little while we had shut the

door of the dark and empty sluice-house, and were passing through the

quarry on our way back. Trabb’s boy—Trabb’s overgrown young man

now—went before us with a lantern, which was the light I had seen come

in at the door. But, the moon was a good two hours higher than when I

had last seen the sky, and the night, though rainy, was much lighter.

The white vapour of the kiln was passing from us as we went by, and as

I had thought a prayer before, I thought a thanksgiving now.

Entreating Herbert to tell me how he had come to my rescue,—which at

first he had flatly refused to do, but had insisted on my remaining

quiet,—I learnt that I had in my hurry dropped the letter, open, in our

chambers, where he, coming home to bring with him Startop whom he had

met in the street on his way to me, found it, very soon after I was

gone. Its tone made him uneasy, and the more so because of the

inconsistency between it and the hasty letter I had left for him. His

uneasiness increasing instead of subsiding, after a quarter of an

hour’s consideration, he set off for the coach-office with Startop, who

volunteered his company, to make inquiry when the next coach went down.

Finding that the afternoon coach was gone, and finding that his

uneasiness grew into positive alarm, as obstacles came in his way, he

resolved to follow in a post-chaise. So he and Startop arrived at the

Blue Boar, fully expecting there to find me, or tidings of me; but,

finding neither, went on to Miss Havisham’s, where they lost me.

Hereupon they went back to the hotel (doubtless at about the time when

I was hearing the popular local version of my own story) to refresh

themselves and to get some one to guide them out upon the marshes.

Among the loungers under the Boar’s archway happened to be Trabb’s

Boy,—true to his ancient habit of happening to be everywhere where he

had no business,—and Trabb’s boy had seen me passing from Miss

Havisham’s in the direction of my dining-place. Thus Trabb’s boy became

their guide, and with him they went out to the sluice-house, though by

the town way to the marshes, which I had avoided. Now, as they went

along, Herbert reflected, that I might, after all, have been brought

there on some genuine and serviceable errand tending to Provis’s

safety, and, bethinking himself that in that case interruption must be

mischievous, left his guide and Startop on the edge of the quarry, and

went on by himself, and stole round the house two or three times,

endeavouring to ascertain whether all was right within. As he could

hear nothing but indistinct sounds of one deep rough voice (this was

while my mind was so busy), he even at last began to doubt whether I

was there, when suddenly I cried out loudly, and he answered the cries,

and rushed in, closely followed by the other two.

When I told Herbert what had passed within the house, he was for our

immediately going before a magistrate in the town, late at night as it

was, and getting out a warrant. But, I had already considered that such

a course, by detaining us there, or binding us to come back, might be

fatal to Provis. There was no gainsaying this difficulty, and we

relinquished all thoughts of pursuing Orlick at that time. For the

present, under the circumstances, we deemed it prudent to make rather

light of the matter to Trabb’s boy; who, I am convinced, would have

been much affected by disappointment, if he had known that his

intervention saved me from the limekiln. Not that Trabb’s boy was of a

malignant nature, but that he had too much spare vivacity, and that it

was in his constitution to want variety and excitement at anybody’s

expense. When we parted, I presented him with two guineas (which seemed

to meet his views), and told him that I was sorry ever to have had an

ill opinion of him (which made no impression on him at all).

Wednesday being so close upon us, we determined to go back to London

that night, three in the post-chaise; the rather, as we should then be

clear away before the night’s adventure began to be talked of. Herbert

got a large bottle of stuff for my arm; and by dint of having this

stuff dropped over it all the night through, I was just able to bear

its pain on the journey. It was daylight when we reached the Temple,

and I went at once to bed, and lay in bed all day.

My terror, as I lay there, of falling ill, and being unfitted for

to-morrow, was so besetting, that I wonder it did not disable me of

itself. It would have done so, pretty surely, in conjunction with the

mental wear and tear I had suffered, but for the unnatural strain upon

me that to-morrow was. So anxiously looked forward to, charged with

such consequences, its results so impenetrably hidden, though so near.

No precaution could have been more obvious than our refraining from

communication with him that day; yet this again increased my

restlessness. I started at every footstep and every sound, believing

that he was discovered and taken, and this was the messenger to tell me

so. I persuaded myself that I knew he was taken; that there was

something more upon my mind than a fear or a presentiment; that the

fact had occurred, and I had a mysterious knowledge of it. As the days

wore on, and no ill news came, as the day closed in and darkness fell,

my overshadowing dread of being disabled by illness before to-morrow

morning altogether mastered me. My burning arm throbbed, and my burning

head throbbed, and I fancied I was beginning to wander. I counted up to

high numbers, to make sure of myself, and repeated passages that I knew

in prose and verse. It happened sometimes that in the mere escape of a

fatigued mind, I dozed for some moments or forgot; then I would say to

myself with a start, “Now it has come, and I am turning delirious!”

They kept me very quiet all day, and kept my arm constantly dressed,

and gave me cooling drinks. Whenever I fell asleep, I awoke with the

notion I had had in the sluice-house, that a long time had elapsed and

the opportunity to save him was gone. About midnight I got out of bed

and went to Herbert, with the conviction that I had been asleep for

four-and-twenty hours, and that Wednesday was past. It was the last

self-exhausting effort of my fretfulness, for after that I slept

soundly.

Wednesday morning was dawning when I looked out of window. The winking

lights upon the bridges were already pale, the coming sun was like a

marsh of fire on the horizon. The river, still dark and mysterious, was

spanned by bridges that were turning coldly grey, with here and there

at top a warm touch from the burning in the sky. As I looked along the

clustered roofs, with church-towers and spires shooting into the

unusually clear air, the sun rose up, and a veil seemed to be drawn

from the river, and millions of sparkles burst out upon its waters.

From me too, a veil seemed to be drawn, and I felt strong and well.

Herbert lay asleep in his bed, and our old fellow-student lay asleep on

the sofa. I could not dress myself without help; but I made up the

fire, which was still burning, and got some coffee ready for them. In

good time they too started up strong and well, and we admitted the

sharp morning air at the windows, and looked at the tide that was still

flowing towards us.

“When it turns at nine o’clock,” said Herbert, cheerfully, “look out

for us, and stand ready, you over there at Mill Pond Bank!”