Chapter 53

Chapter LIII

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
vapor 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.

"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 favored, 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 vapor 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 vapor
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 Ropewalk, 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
vapor 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 gray, 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!"