Chương Chương 56 · He lay in prison very ill, during the whole interval between his

. He lay in prison very ill, during the whole interval between his

committal for trial and the coming round of the Sessions. He had broken

two ribs, they had wounded one of his lungs, and he breathed with great

pain and difficulty, which increased daily. It was a consequence of his

hurt that he spoke so low as to be scarcely audible; therefore he spoke

very little. But he was ever ready to listen to me; and it became the

first duty of my life to say to him, and read to him, what I knew he

ought to hear.

Being far too ill to remain in the common prison, he was removed, after

the first day or so, into the infirmary. This gave me opportunities of

being with him that I could not otherwise have had. And but for his

illness he would have been put in irons, for he was regarded as a

determined prison-breaker, and I know not what else.

Although I saw him every day, it was for only a short time; hence, the

regularly recurring spaces of our separation were long enough to record

on his face any slight changes that occurred in his physical state. I

do not recollect that I once saw any change in it for the better; he

wasted, and became slowly weaker and worse, day by day, from the day

when the prison door closed upon him.

The kind of submission or resignation that he showed was that of a man

who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression, from his manner

or from a whispered word or two which escaped him, that he pondered

over the question whether he might have been a better man under better

circumstances. But he never justified himself by a hint tending that

way, or tried to bend the past out of its eternal shape.

It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, that his

desperate reputation was alluded to by one or other of the people in

attendance on him. A smile crossed his face then, and he turned his

eyes on me with a trustful look, as if he were confident that I had

seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as when I was

a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and contrite, and I

never knew him complain.

When the Sessions came round, Mr. Jaggers caused an application to be

made for the postponement of his trial until the following Sessions. It

was obviously made with the assurance that he could not live so long,

and was refused. The trial came on at once, and, when he was put to the

bar, he was seated in a chair. No objection was made to my getting

close to the dock, on the outside of it, and holding the hand that he

stretched forth to me.

The trial was very short and very clear. Such things as could be said

for him were said,—how he had taken to industrious habits, and had

thriven lawfully and reputably. But nothing could unsay the fact that

he had returned, and was there in presence of the Judge and Jury. It

was impossible to try him for that, and do otherwise than find him

guilty.

At that time, it was the custom (as I learnt from my terrible

experience of that Sessions) to devote a concluding day to the passing

of Sentences, and to make a finishing effect with the Sentence of

Death. But for the indelible picture that my remembrance now holds

before me, I could scarcely believe, even as I write these words, that

I saw two-and-thirty men and women put before the Judge to receive that

sentence together. Foremost among the two-and-thirty was he; seated,

that he might get breath enough to keep life in him.

The whole scene starts out again in the vivid colours of the moment,

down to the drops of April rain on the windows of the court, glittering

in the rays of April sun. Penned in the dock, as I again stood outside

it at the corner with his hand in mine, were the two-and-thirty men and

women; some defiant, some stricken with terror, some sobbing and

weeping, some covering their faces, some staring gloomily about. There

had been shrieks from among the women convicts; but they had been

stilled, and a hush had succeeded. The sheriffs with their great chains

and nosegays, other civic gewgaws and monsters, criers, ushers, a great

gallery full of people,—a large theatrical audience,—looked on, as the

two-and-thirty and the Judge were solemnly confronted. Then the Judge

addressed them. Among the wretched creatures before him whom he must

single out for special address was one who almost from his infancy had

been an offender against the laws; who, after repeated imprisonments

and punishments, had been at length sentenced to exile for a term of

years; and who, under circumstances of great violence and daring, had

made his escape and been re-sentenced to exile for life. That miserable

man would seem for a time to have become convinced of his errors, when

far removed from the scenes of his old offences, and to have lived a

peaceable and honest life. But in a fatal moment, yielding to those

propensities and passions, the indulgence of which had so long rendered

him a scourge to society, he had quitted his haven of rest and

repentance, and had come back to the country where he was proscribed.

Being here presently denounced, he had for a time succeeded in evading

the officers of Justice, but being at length seized while in the act of

flight, he had resisted them, and had—he best knew whether by express

design, or in the blindness of his hardihood—caused the death of his

denouncer, to whom his whole career was known. The appointed punishment

for his return to the land that had cast him out, being Death, and his

case being this aggravated case, he must prepare himself to Die.

The sun was striking in at the great windows of the court, through the

glittering drops of rain upon the glass, and it made a broad shaft of

light between the two-and-thirty and the Judge, linking both together,

and perhaps reminding some among the audience how both were passing on,

with absolute equality, to the greater Judgment that knoweth all

things, and cannot err. Rising for a moment, a distinct speck of face

in this way of light, the prisoner said, “My Lord, I have received my

sentence of Death from the Almighty, but I bow to yours,” and sat down

again. There was some hushing, and the Judge went on with what he had

to say to the rest. Then they were all formally doomed, and some of

them were supported out, and some of them sauntered out with a haggard

look of bravery, and a few nodded to the gallery, and two or three

shook hands, and others went out chewing the fragments of herb they had

taken from the sweet herbs lying about. He went last of all, because of

having to be helped from his chair, and to go very slowly; and he held

my hand while all the others were removed, and while the audience got

up (putting their dresses right, as they might at church or elsewhere),

and pointed down at this criminal or at that, and most of all at him

and me.

I earnestly hoped and prayed that he might die before the Recorder’s

Report was made; but, in the dread of his lingering on, I began that

night to write out a petition to the Home Secretary of State, setting

forth my knowledge of him, and how it was that he had come back for my

sake. I wrote it as fervently and pathetically as I could; and when I

had finished it and sent it in, I wrote out other petitions to such men

in authority as I hoped were the most merciful, and drew up one to the

Crown itself. For several days and nights after he was sentenced I took

no rest except when I fell asleep in my chair, but was wholly absorbed

in these appeals. And after I had sent them in, I could not keep away

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 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 brightened 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.”

“Thank’ee dear boy, thank’ee. God bless you! You’ve never 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 understood 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, looking 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 understand what I

say?”

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!”