Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗

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!”