Chapter 52

Chapter LII

From Little Britain I went, with my check in my pocket, to Miss
Skiffins’s brother, the accountant; and Miss Skiffins’s brother, the accountant,
going straight to Clarriker’s and bringing Clarriker to me, I had the great
satisfaction of concluding that arrangement. It was the only good thing I had
done, and the only completed thing I had done, since I was first apprised of my
great expectations.

Clarriker informing me on that occasion that the affairs of the House were
steadily progressing, that he would now be able to establish a small
branch-house in the East which was much wanted for the extension of the
business, and that Herbert in his new partnership capacity would go out and take
charge of it, I found that I must have prepared for a separation from my friend,
even though my own affairs had been more settled. And now, indeed, I felt as if
my last anchor were loosening its hold, and I should soon be driving with the
winds and waves.

But there was recompense in the joy with which Herbert would come home of a
night and tell me of these changes, little imagining that he told me no news,
and would sketch airy pictures of himself conducting Clara Barley to the land of
the Arabian Nights, and of me going out to join them (with a caravan of camels,
I believe), and of our all going up the Nile and seeing wonders. Without being
sanguine as to my own part in those bright plans, I felt that Herbert’s way was
clearing fast, and that old Bill Barley had but to stick to his pepper and rum,
and his daughter would soon be happily provided for.

We had now got into the month of March. My left arm, though it presented no bad
symptoms, took, in the natural course, so long to heal that I was still unable
to get a coat on. My right arm was tolerably restored; disfigured, but fairly
serviceable.

On a Monday morning, when Herbert and I were at breakfast, I received the
following letter from Wemmick by the post.

"Walworth. Burn this as soon as read. Early in the week, or say Wednesday, you
might do what you know of, if you felt disposed to try it. Now burn."

When I had shown this to Herbert and had put it in the fire—but not before we
had both got it by heart—we considered what to do. For, of course my being
disabled could now be no longer kept out of view.

"I have thought it over again and again," said Herbert, "and I think I know a
better course than taking a Thames waterman. Take Startop. A good fellow, a
skilled hand, fond of us, and enthusiastic and honorable."

I had thought of him more than once.

"But how much would you tell him, Herbert?"

"It is necessary to tell him very little. Let him suppose it a mere freak, but a
secret one, until the morning comes: then let him know that there is urgent
reason for your getting Provis aboard and away. You go with him?"

"No doubt."

"Where?"

It had seemed to me, in the many anxious considerations I had given the point,
almost indifferent what port we made for,—Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp,—the place
signified little, so that he was out of England. Any foreign steamer that fell
in our way and would take us up would do. I had always proposed to myself to get
him well down the river in the boat; certainly well beyond Gravesend, which was
a critical place for search or inquiry if suspicion were afoot. As foreign
steamers would leave London at about the time of high-water, our plan would be
to get down the river by a previous ebb-tide, and lie by in some quiet spot
until we could pull off to one. The time when one would be due where we lay,
wherever that might be, could be calculated pretty nearly, if we made inquiries
beforehand.

Herbert assented to all this, and we went out immediately after breakfast to
pursue our investigations. We found that a steamer for Hamburg was likely to
suit our purpose best, and we directed our thoughts chiefly to that vessel. But
we noted down what other foreign steamers would leave London with the same tide,
and we satisfied ourselves that we knew the build and color of each. We then
separated for a few hours: I, to get at once such passports as were necessary;
Herbert, to see Startop at his lodgings. We both did what we had to do without
any hindrance, and when we met again at one o’clock reported it done. I, for my
part, was prepared with passports; Herbert had seen Startop, and he was more
than ready to join.

Those two should pull a pair of oars, we settled, and I would steer; our charge
would be sitter, and keep quiet; as speed was not our object, we should make way
enough. We arranged that Herbert should not come home to dinner before going to
Mill Pond Bank that evening; that he should not go there at all to-morrow
evening, Tuesday; that he should prepare Provis to come down to some stairs hard
by the house, on Wednesday, when he saw us approach, and not sooner; that all
the arrangements with him should be concluded that Monday night; and that he
should be communicated with no more in any way, until we took him on board.

These precautions well understood by both of us, I went home.

On opening the outer door of our chambers with my key, I found a letter in the
box, directed to me; a very dirty letter, though not ill-written. It had been
delivered by hand (of course, since I left home), and its contents were these:—

"If you are not afraid to come to the old marshes to-night or to-morrow night at
nine, and to come to the little sluice-house by the limekiln, you had better
come. If you want information regarding your
uncle Provis, you had much better come and tell no one, and lose no time. You
must come alone. Bring this with you."

I had had load enough upon my mind before the receipt of this strange letter.
What to do now, I could not tell. And the worst was, that I must decide quickly,
or I should miss the afternoon coach, which would take me down in time for
to-night. To-morrow night I could not think of going, for it would be too close
upon the time of the flight. And again, for anything I knew, the proffered
information might have some important bearing on the flight itself.

If I had had ample time for consideration, I believe I should still have gone.
Having hardly any time for consideration,—my watch showing me that the coach
started within half an hour,—I resolved to go. I should certainly not have gone,
but for the reference to my Uncle Provis. That, coming on Wemmick’s letter and
the morning’s busy preparation, turned the scale.

It is so difficult to become clearly possessed of the contents of almost any
letter, in a violent hurry, that I had to read this mysterious epistle again
twice, before its injunction to me to be secret got mechanically into my mind.
Yielding to it in the same mechanical kind of way, I left a note in pencil for
Herbert, telling him that as I should be so soon going away, I knew not for how
long, I had decided to hurry down and back, to ascertain for myself how Miss
Havisham was faring. I had then barely time to get my great-coat, lock up the
chambers, and make for the coach-office by the short by-ways. If I had taken a
hackney-chariot and gone by the streets, I should have missed my aim; going as I
did, I caught the coach just as it came out of the yard. I was the only inside
passenger, jolting away knee-deep in straw, when I came to myself.

For I really had not been myself since the receipt of the letter; it had so
bewildered me, ensuing on the hurry of the morning. The morning hurry and
flutter had been great; for, long and anxiously as I had waited for Wemmick, his
hint had come like a surprise at last. And now I began to wonder at myself for
being in the coach, and to doubt whether I had sufficient reason for being
there, and to consider whether I should get out presently and go back, and to
argue against ever heeding an anonymous communication, and, in short, to pass
through all those phases of contradiction and indecision to which I suppose very
few hurried people are strangers. Still, the reference to Provis by name
mastered everything. I reasoned as I had reasoned already without knowing it,—if
that be reasoning,—in case any harm should befall him through my not going, how
could I ever forgive myself!

It was dark before we got down, and the journey seemed long and dreary to me,
who could see little of it inside, and who could not go outside in my disabled
state. Avoiding the Blue Boar, I put up at an inn of minor reputation down the
town, and ordered some dinner. While it was preparing, I went to Satis House and
inquired for Miss Havisham; she was still very ill, though considered something
better.

My inn had once been a part of an ancient ecclesiastical house, and I dined in a
little octagonal common-room, like a font. As I was not able to cut my dinner,
the old landlord with a shining bald head did it for me. This bringing us into
conversation, he was so good as to entertain me with my own story,—of course
with the popular feature that Pumblechook was my earliest benefactor and the
founder of my fortunes.

"Do you know the young man?" said I.

"Know him!" repeated the landlord. "Ever since he was—no height at all."

"Does he ever come back to this neighborhood?"

"Ay, he comes back," said the landlord, "to his great friends, now and again,
and gives the cold shoulder to the man that made him."

"What man is that?"

"Him that I speak of," said the landlord. "Mr. Pumblechook."

"Is he ungrateful to no one else?"

"No doubt he would be, if he could," returned the landlord, "but he can’t. And
why? Because Pumblechook done everything for him."

"Does Pumblechook say so?"

"Say so!" replied the landlord. "He han’t no call to say so."

"But does he say so?"

"It would turn a man’s blood to white wine winegar to hear him tell of it, sir,"
said the landlord.

I thought, "Yet Joe, dear Joe, you never
tell of it. Long-suffering and loving Joe, you never
complain. Nor you, sweet-tempered Biddy!"

"Your appetite’s been touched like by your accident," said the landlord,
glancing at the bandaged arm under my coat. "Try a tenderer bit."

"No, thank you," I replied, turning from the table to brood over the fire. "I
can eat no more. Please take it away."

I had never been struck at so keenly, for my thanklessness to Joe, as through
the brazen impostor Pumblechook. The falser he, the truer Joe; the meaner he,
the nobler Joe.

My heart was deeply and most deservedly humbled as I mused over the fire for an
hour or more. The striking of the clock aroused me, but not from my dejection or
remorse, and I got up and had my coat fastened round my neck, and went out. I
had previously sought in my pockets for the letter, that I might refer to it
again; but I could not find it, and was uneasy to think that it must have been
dropped in the straw of the coach. I knew very well, however, that the appointed
place was the little sluice-house by the limekiln on the marshes, and the hour
nine. Towards the marshes I now went straight, having no time to spare.