The World's Greatest Books_ Volume 3 Part 19

"How do you mean?" I said. "Caution?"

"I was sent for life. It's death to come back. There's been overmuch coming back of late years, and I should of a certainty be hanged if took."

As Herbert was away, I put the man in the spare room, and gave out that he was my uncle.

He told me something of his story next day, and when Herbert came back and we had found a bed-room for our visitor in Ess.e.x Street, he told us all of it. His name was Magwitch--Abel Magwitch--he called himself Provis now--and he had been left by a travelling tinker to grow up alone. "In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail--that's my life pretty much, down to such times as I got s.h.i.+pped off, arter Pip stood my friend." But there was a man who "set up fur a gentleman, named Compeyson," and this Compeyson's business was swindling, forging, and stolen banknote pa.s.sing. Magwitch became his servant, and when both men were arrested, Compeyson turned round on the man whom he had employed, and got off with seven years to Magwitch's fourteen. Compeyson was the second convict of my childhood.

On consideration of the case, and after consultation with Mr. Jaggers, who corroborated the statement that a colonist named Abel Magwitch, of New South Wales, was my benefactor, and admitted that a Mr. Provis had written to him on behalf of Magwitch, concerning my address, we decided that the best thing to be done was to take a lodging for Mr. Provis on the riverside below the Pool, at Mill Pond Bank. It was out of the way, and in case of danger it would be easy to get away by a packet steamer.

The only danger was from Compeyson--for he had gone in terror of his life, and feared the vengeance of the man he had betrayed.

_IV--My Fortune_

We were soon warned that Compeyson was aware of the return of his enemy, and that flight was necessary. Both Herbert and I noticed how quickly Provis had become softened, and on the night when we were to take him on board a Hamburg steamer he was very gentle.

We were out in mid-stream in a small rowing boat, moving quietly with the tide, when, just as the Hamburg steamer came in sight, a four-oared galley ran aboard of us, and the man who held the lines in it called out, "You have a returned transport there. That's the man wrapped in the cloak. His name is Abel Magwitch--otherwise Provis. I call upon him to surrender, and you to a.s.sist."

At once there was great confusion. The steamer was right upon us, and I heard the order given to stop the paddles. In the same moment I saw the steersman of the galley lay his hand on the prisoner's shoulder, and the prisoner start up, lean across his captor, and pull the cloak from the neck of a shrinking man in the galley. Still in the same moment I saw that the face disclosed was the face of the other convict of long ago, and white terror was on it. Then I heard a cry, and a loud splash in the water, and for an instant I seemed to struggle with a thousand mill weirs; the instant past, I was taken on board the galley. Herbert was there, but our boat was gone, and the two convicts were gone. Presently we saw a man swimming, but not swimming easily, and knew him to be Magwitch. He was taken on board, and instantly menacled at the wrists and ankles.

It was not till we had pulled up, and had landed at the riverside, that I could get some comforts for Magwitch, who had received injury in the chest, and a deep cut in the head. He told me that he believed himself to have gone under the keel of the steamer, and to have been struck on the head in rising. The injury to his chest he thought he had received against the side of the galley. He added that Compeyson, in the moment of his laying his hand on his cloak to identify him, had staggered up, and back, and they had both gone overboard together, locked in each other's arms. He had disengaged himself under water, and swam away.

He was taken to the police-court next day, and committed for trial at the, next session, which would come on in a month.

"Dear boy," he said. "Look 'ee, here. It's best as a gentleman should not be knowed to belong to me now."

"I will never stir from your side," said I, "when I am suffered to be near you. Please G.o.d, I will be as true to you as you have been to me!"

When the sessions came round, the trial was very short and very clear, and the capital sentence was p.r.o.nounced. But the prisoner was very ill.

Two of his ribs had been broken, and one of his lungs seriously injured, and ten days before the date fixed for his execution death set him free.

"Dear boy," he said, as I sat down by his bed on that last day. "I thought you was late. But I knowed you couldn't be that. You've never deserted me, dear boy."

I pressed his hand in silence.

"And what's the best of all," he said, "you've been more comfortable along of me since I was under a dark cloud than when the sun shone.

That's best of all."

He had spoken his last words, and, holding my hand in his, pa.s.sed away.

And with his death ended my expectations, for the pocket-book containing his wealth went to the Crown.

Herbert took me into his business, and I became a clerk, and afterwards went abroad to take charge of the eastern branch, and when many a year had gone round, became a partner.

It was eleven years later when I was down in the marshes again. I had been to see Joe Gargery, who was as friendly as ever, and had strolled on to where Satis House once stood. I had been told of Miss Havisham's death, and also of the death of Estella's husband.

Nothing was left of the old house but the garden wall, and as I stood looking along the desolate garden walk a solitary figure came up. I saw it stop, and half turn away, and then let me come up to it. It faltered as if much surprised, and uttered my name, and I cried out, "Estella!"

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

Hard Times

"Hard Times" is not one of the longest, but it is one of the most powerful of d.i.c.kens's works. John Ruskin went so far as to call it "in several respects the greatest" book d.i.c.kens had written. It is, of course, a fierce attack on the early Victorian school of political economists. The Bounderbys and Gradgrinds are typical of certain characters, and, though they change their form of speech, are still recognisable to-day. As a study of social and industrial life in England in the manufacturing districts fifty years ago, "Hard Times" will always be valuable, though allowance must be made here as elsewhere for the novelist's tendency to exaggeration--exaggeration of virtue no less than of vice or weakness. In Josiah Bounderby and Stephen Blackpool this characteristic is p.r.o.nounced. The first, according to John Ruskin, being a dramatic monster, and the second a dramatic perfection. The story first appeared serially in "Household Words" between April 1 and August 12, 1854.

_I.--Mr. Thomas Gradgrind_

"Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of facts and calculations. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to."

In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance or to the public in general. In such terms Thomas Gradgrind presented himself to the schoolmaster and children before him. It was his school, and he intended it to be a model.

"Now, what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon facts. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to facts, sir."

Mr. Gradgrind, having waited to hear a model lesson delivered by the school master, walked home in a considerable state of satisfaction.

There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They had been lectured at from their tenderest years; coursed, like little hares, almost as soon as they could run, they had been made to run to the lecture-room.

To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr. Gradgrind directed his steps. The house was situated on a moor, within a mile or two of a great town, called c.o.ketown.

On the outskirts of this town a travelling circus ("Sleary's Horse-riding") had pitched its tent, and, to his amazement, Mr.

Gradgrind observed his two eldest children trying to obtain a peep, at the back of the booth, of the hidden glories within.

Mr. Gradgrind laid his hand upon the shoulder of each erring child, and said, "Louisa! Thomas!"

"I wanted to see what it was like," said Louisa shortly. "I brought him, I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time."

"Tired? Of what?" asked the astonished father.

"I don't know of what--of everything, I think."

They walked on in silence for some half a mile before Mr. Gradgrind gravely broke out with, "What would your best friends say, Louisa? What would Mr. Bounderby say?"

All the way to Stone Lodge he repeated at intervals, "What would Mr.

Bounderby say?"

At the first mention of the name his daughter, a child of fifteen or sixteen now, but at no distant day to become a woman, all at once, stole a look at him, remarkable for its intense and searching character. He saw nothing of it, for before he looked at her, she had again cast down her eyes.

Mr. Bounderby was at Stone Lodge when they arrived. He stood before the fire on the hearth rug, delivering some observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the circ.u.mstance of its being his birthday. It was a commanding position from which to subdue Mrs. Gradgrind.

He stopped in his harangue, which was entirely concerned with the story of his early disadvantages, at the entrance of his eminently practical friend and the two young culprits.