Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖

Chapter XVI

With 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-laborer 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

neighborhood 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 down stairs, 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,