Great Expectations

ith my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to
believe that I must have had some hand in the attack upon my sister,
or at all events that as her near relation, popularly known to be under
obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object of suspicion than
any one else. But when, in the clearer light of next morning, I began
to reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed around me on all
sides, I took another view of the case, which was more reasonable.

Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, from a
quarter after eight o’clock to a quarter before ten. While he was
there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and had
exchanged Good Night with a farm-labourer going home. The man could not
be more particular as to the time at which he saw her (he got into
dense confusion when he tried to be), than that it must have been
before nine. When Joe went home at five minutes before ten, he found
her struck down on the floor, and promptly called in assistance. The
fire had not then burnt unusually low, nor was the snuff of the candle
very long; the candle, however, had been blown out.

Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house. Neither, beyond
the blowing out of the candle,—which stood on a table between the door
and my sister, and was behind her when she stood facing the fire and
was struck,—was there any disarrangement of the kitchen, excepting such
as she herself had made, in falling and bleeding. But, there was one
remarkable piece of evidence on the spot. She had been struck with
something blunt and heavy, on the head and spine; after the blows were
dealt, something heavy had been thrown down at her with considerable
violence, as she lay on her face. And on the ground beside her, when
Joe picked her up, was a convict’s leg-iron which had been filed
asunder.

Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith’s eye, declared it to have
been filed asunder some time ago. The hue and cry going off to the
Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, Joe’s opinion was
corroborated. They did not undertake to say when it had left the
prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once belonged; but they
claimed to know for certain that that particular manacle had not been
worn by either of the two convicts who had escaped last night. Further,
one of those two was already retaken, and had not freed himself of his
iron.

Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here. I believed
the iron to be my convict’s iron,—the iron I had seen and heard him
filing at, on the marshes,—but my mind did not accuse him of having put
it to its latest use. For I believed one of two other persons to have
become possessed of it, and to have turned it to this cruel account.
Either Orlick, or the strange man who had shown me the file.

Now, as to Orlick; he had gone to town exactly as he told us when we
picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen about town all the
evening, he had been in divers companies in several public-houses, and
he had come back with myself and Mr. Wopsle. There was nothing against
him, save the quarrel; and my sister had quarrelled with him, and with
everybody else about her, ten thousand times. As to the strange man; if
he had come back for his two bank-notes there could have been no
dispute about them, because my sister was fully prepared to restore
them. Besides, there had been no altercation; the assailant had come in
so silently and suddenly, that she had been felled before she could
look round.

It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon, however
undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise. I suffered
unspeakable trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether I
should at last dissolve that spell of my childhood and tell Joe all the
story. For months afterwards, I every day settled the question finally
in the negative, and reopened and reargued it next morning. The
contention came, after all, to this;—the secret was such an old one
now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not
tear it away. In addition to the dread that, having led up to so much
mischief, it would be now more likely than ever to alienate Joe from me
if he believed it, I had a further restraining dread that he would not
believe it, but would assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets
as a monstrous invention. However, I temporized with myself, of
course—for, was I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing
is always done?—and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see
any such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of
the assailant.

The Constables and the Bow Street men from London—for, this happened in
the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police—were about the house for
a week or two, and did pretty much what I have heard and read of like
authorities doing in other such cases. They took up several obviously
wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas,
and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead
of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances. Also, they stood
about the door of the Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks
that filled the whole neighbourhood with admiration; and they had a
mysterious manner of taking their drink, that was almost as good as
taking the culprit. But not quite, for they never did it.

Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister lay
very ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw objects
multiplied, and grasped at visionary teacups and wineglasses instead of
the realities; her hearing was greatly impaired; her memory also; and
her speech was unintelligible. When, at last, she came round so far as
to be helped downstairs, it was still necessary to keep my slate always
by her, that she might indicate in writing what she could not indicate
in speech. As she was (very bad handwriting apart) a more than
indifferent speller, and as Joe was a more than indifferent reader,
extraordinary complications arose between them which I was always
called in to solve. The administration of mutton instead of medicine,
the substitution of Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among
the mildest of my own mistakes.

However, her temper was greatly improved, and she was patient. A
tremulous uncertainty of the action of all her limbs soon became a part
of her regular state, and afterwards, at intervals of two or three
months, she would often put her hands to her head, and would then
remain for about a week at a time in some gloomy aberration of mind. We
were at a loss to find a suitable attendant for her, until a
circumstance happened conveniently to relieve us. Mr. Wopsle’s
great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living into which she had
fallen, and Biddy became a part of our establishment.

It may have been about a month after my sister’s reappearance in the
kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box containing the
whole of her worldly effects, and became a blessing to the household.
Above all, she was a blessing to Joe, for the dear old fellow was sadly
cut up by the constant contemplation of the wreck of his wife, and had
been accustomed, while attending on her of an evening, to turn to me
every now and then and say, with his blue eyes moistened, “Such a fine
figure of a woman as she once were, Pip!” Biddy instantly taking the
cleverest charge of her as though she had studied her from infancy; Joe
became able in some sort to appreciate the greater quiet of his life,
and to get down to the Jolly Bargemen now and then for a change that
did him good. It was characteristic of the police people that they had
all more or less suspected poor Joe (though he never knew it), and that
they had to a man concurred in regarding him as one of the deepest
spirits they had ever encountered.

Biddy’s first triumph in her new office, was to solve a difficulty that
had completely vanquished me. I had tried hard at it, but had made
nothing of it. Thus it was:—

Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon the slate, a
character that looked like a curious T, and then with the utmost
eagerness had called our attention to it as something she particularly
wanted. I had in vain tried everything producible that began with a T,
from tar to toast and tub. At length it had come into my head that the
sign looked like a hammer, and on my lustily calling that word in my
sister’s ear, she had begun to hammer on the table and had expressed a
qualified assent. Thereupon, I had brought in all our hammers, one
after another, but without avail. Then I bethought me of a crutch, the
shape being much the same, and I borrowed one in the village, and
displayed it to my sister with considerable confidence. But she shook
her head to that extent when she was shown it, that we were terrified
lest in her weak and shattered state she should dislocate her neck.

When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to understand her, this
mysterious sign reappeared on the slate. Biddy looked thoughtfully at
it, heard my explanation, looked thoughtfully at my sister, looked
thoughtfully at Joe (who was always represented on the slate by his
initial letter), and ran into the forge, followed by Joe and me.

“Why, of course!” cried Biddy, with an exultant face. “Don’t you see?
It’s him!”

Orlick, without a doubt! She had lost his name, and could only signify
him by his hammer. We told him why we wanted him to come into the
kitchen, and he slowly laid down his hammer, wiped his brow with his
arm, took another wipe at it with his apron, and came slouching out,
with a curious loose vagabond bend in the knees that strongly
distinguished him.

I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, and that I was
disappointed by the different result. She manifested the greatest
anxiety to be on good terms with him, was evidently much pleased by his
being at length produced, and motioned that she would have him given
something to drink. She watched his countenance as if she were
particularly wishful to be assured that he took kindly to his
reception, she showed every possible desire to conciliate him, and
there was an air of humble propitiation in all she did, such as I have
seen pervade the bearing of a child towards a hard master. After that
day, a day rarely passed without her drawing the hammer on her slate,
and without Orlick’s slouching in and standing doggedly before her, as
if he knew no more than I did what to make of it.