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Great Expectations

Page 401

"What is the debt?"

"Hundred and twenty-three pound, fifteen, six. Jeweller's account, I

think."

"What is to be done?"

"You had better come to my house," said the man. "I keep a very nice

house."

I made some attempt to get up and dress myself. When I next attended

to them, they were standing a little off from the bed, looking at me. I

still lay there.

"You see my state," said I. "I would come with you if I could; but

indeed I am quite unable. If you take me from here, I think I shall die

by the way."

Perhaps they replied, or argued the point, or tried to encourage me to

believe that I was better than I thought. Forasmuch as they hang in

my memory by only this one slender thread, I don't know what they did,

except that they forbore to remove me.

That I had a fever and was avoided, that I suffered greatly, that

I often lost my reason, that the time seemed interminable, that I

confounded impossible existences with my own identity; that I was a

brick in the house-wall, and yet entreating to be released from the

giddy place where the builders had set me; that I was a steel beam of a

vast engine, clashing and whirling over a gulf, and yet that I implored

in my own person to have the engine stopped, and my part in it hammered

off; that I passed through these phases of disease, I know of my own

remembrance, and did in some sort know at the time. That I sometimes

struggled with real people, in the belief that they were murderers, and

that I would all at once comprehend that they meant to do me good, and

would then sink exhausted in their arms, and suffer them to lay me

down, I also knew at the time. But, above all, I knew that there was a

constant tendency in all these people,--who, when I was very ill, would

present all kinds of extraordinary transformations of the human face,

and would be much dilated in size,--above all, I say, I knew that there

was an extraordinary tendency in all these people, sooner or later, to

settle down into the likeness of Joe.

After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I began to notice that

while all its other features changed, this one consistent feature did

not change. Whoever came about me, still settled down into Joe. I opened

my eyes in the night, and I saw, in the great chair at the bedside, Joe.

I opened my eyes in the day, and, sitting on the window-seat, smoking

his pipe in the shaded open window, still I saw Joe. I asked for cooling

drink, and the dear hand that gave it me was Joe's. I sank back on

my pillow after drinking, and the face that looked so hopefully and

tenderly upon me was the face of Joe.

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