Chapter 56

Chapter LVI

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 colors 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!"