Chapter 56

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

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 colours 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, 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!"