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-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 two convicts who had escaped last night. Further,
one of those two was already re-taken, 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 wine-glasses 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, 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.
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