I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling
a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning,
we saw the blind towards the east come down.
Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three
times in a week, and he never brought me a single word
of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still,
I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could
not get rid of the notion of being watched.
Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning
persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard
to calculate.
In short, I was always full of fears for the rash
man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes
said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one
of our windows after dark, when the tide was running
down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything
it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread
that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any
black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going
swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him.
Some weeks passed without bringing any change.
We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign.
If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and
had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar
footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not
so for a moment, knowing him as I did.
My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance,
and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor.
Even I myself began to know the want of money (I
mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve
it by converting some easily spared articles of jewellery
into cash. But I had quite determined that it
would be a heartless fraud to take more money from
my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts
and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened
pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping,
and I felt a kind of satisfaction — whether it
was a false kind or a true, I hardly know —
in not having profited by his generosity since his
revelation of himself.
As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily
upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of
having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction,
I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom
I had confided the circumstances of our last interview)
never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up
this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope
that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know!
Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar
inconsistency of your own, last year, last month, last
week?
It was an unhappy life that I lived, and its one dominant
anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties like
a high mountain above a range of mountains, never
disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause
for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I
would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered;
let me sit listening as I would, with dread, for Herbert’s
returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter
than ordinary, and winged with evil news; for all
that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things
went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of
constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about
in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best
could.
