The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought
about it in silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited
uncle of the evening’s tragedy, fell to meditating
aloud in his garden at Camberwell. Orlick, with
his hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side.
It was very dark, very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed
along. Now and then, the sound of the signal
cannon broke upon us again, and again rolled sulkily
along the course of the river. I kept myself
to myself and my thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died amiably
at Camberwell, and exceedingly game on Bosworth Field,
and in the greatest agonies at Glastonbury.
Orlick sometimes growled, “Beat it out, beat
it out — Old Clem! With a clink for the
stout — Old Clem!” I thought he had been
drinking, but he was not drunk.
Thus, we came to the village. The way by which
we approached it, took us past the Three Jolly Bargemen,
which we were surprised to find — it being eleven
o’clock — in a state of commotion, with
the door wide open, and unwonted lights that had been
hastily caught up and put down, scattered about.
Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what was the matter
(surmising that a convict had been taken), but came
running out in a great hurry.
“There’s something wrong,” said
he, without stopping, “up at your place, Pip.
Run all!”
“What is it?” I asked, keeping up with
him. So did Orlick, at my side.
“I can’t quite understand. The house
seems to have been violently entered when Joe Gargery
was out. Supposed by convicts. Somebody
has been attacked and hurt.”
We were running too fast to admit of more being said,
and we made no stop until we got into our kitchen.
It was full of people; the whole village was there,
or in the yard; and there was a surgeon, and there
was Joe, and there was a group of women, all on the
floor in the midst of the kitchen. The unemployed
bystanders drew back when they saw me, and so I became
aware of my sister — lying without sense or
movement on the bare boards where she had been knocked
down by a tremendous blow on the back of the head,
dealt by some unknown hand when her face was turned
towards the fire — destined never to be on the
Rampage again, while she was the wife of Joe.
Chapter 16
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.
