Words cannot tell what a sense I had, at the same time, of thedreadful mystery that he was to me. When he fell asleep of anevening, with his knotted hands clenching the sides of theeasy-chair, and his bald head tattooed with deep wrinkles fallingforward on his breast, I would sit and look at him, wondering whathe had done, and loading him with all the crimes in the Calendar,until the impulse was powerful on me to start up and fly from him.Every hour so increased my abhorrence of him, that I even think Imight have yielded to this impulse in the first agonies of being sohaunted, notwithstanding all he had done for me, and the risk heran, but for the knowledge that Herbert must soon come back. Once,I actually did start out of bed in the night, and begin to dressmyself in my worst clothes, hurriedly intending to leave him therewith everything else I possessed, and enlist for India as a privatesoldier.

I doubt if a ghost could have been more terrible to me, up in thoselonely rooms in the long evenings and long nights, with the windand the rain always rushing by. A ghost could not have been takenand hanged on my account, and the consideration that he could be,and the dread that he would be, were no small addition to myhorrors. When he was not asleep, or playing a complicated kind ofpatience with a ragged pack of cards of his own - a game that Inever saw before or since, and in which he recorded his winnings bysticking his jack-knife into the table - when he was not engaged ineither of these pursuits, he would ask me to read to him - "Foreignlanguage, dear boy!" While I complied, he, not comprehending asingle word, would stand before the fire surveying me with the airof an Exhibitor, and I would see him, between the fingers of thehand with which I shaded my face, appealing in dumb show to thefurniture to take notice of my proficiency. The imaginary studentpursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was notmore wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, andrecoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admiredme and the fonder he was of me.

This is written of, I am sensible, as if it had lasted a year. Itlasted about five days. Expecting Herbert all the time, I dared notgo out, except when I took Provis for an airing after dark. Atlength, one evening when dinner was over and I had dropped into aslumber quite worn out - for my nights had been agitated and myrest broken by fearful dreams - I was roused by the welcomefootstep on the staircase. Provis, who had been asleep too,staggered up at the noise I made, and in an instant I saw hisjack-knife shining in his hand.

"Quiet! It's Herbert!" I said; and Herbert came bursting in, withthe airy freshness of six hundred miles of France upon him.

"Handel, my dear fellow, how are you, and again how are you, andagain how are you? I seem to have been gone a twelvemonth! Why, so Imust have been, for you have grown quite thin and pale! Handel, my -Halloa! I beg your pardon."

He was stopped in his running on and in his shaking hands with me,by seeing Provis. Provis, regarding him with a fixed attention, wasslowly putting up his jack-knife, and groping in another pocket forsomething else.

"Herbert, my dear friend," said I, shutting the double doors, whileHerbert stood staring and wondering, "something very strange hashappened. This is - a visitor of mine."

"It's all right, dear boy!" said Provis coming forward, with hislittle clasped black book, and then addressing himself to Herbert."Take it in your right hand. Lord strike you dead on the spot, ifever you split in any way sumever! Kiss it!"

"Do so, as he wishes it," I said to Herbert. So, Herbert, lookingat me with a friendly uneasiness and amazement, complied, andProvis immediately shaking hands with him, said, "Now you're onyour oath, you know. And never believe me on mine, if Pip shan'tmake a gentleman on you!"

Chapter 41

In vain should I attempt to describe the astonishment and disquietof Herbert, when he and I and Provis sat down before the fire, andI recounted the whole of the secret. Enough, that I saw my ownfeelings reflected in Herbert's face, and, not least among them, myrepugnance towards the man who had done so much for me.

What would alone have set a division between that man and us, ifthere had been no other dividing circumstance, was his triumph inmy story. Saving his troublesome sense of having been "low' on oneoccasion since his return - on which point he began to hold forthto Herbert, the moment my revelation was finished - he had noperception of the possibility of my finding any fault with my goodfortune. His boast that he had made me a gentleman, and that he hadcome to see me support the character on his ample resources, wasmade for me quite as much as for himself; and that it was a highlyagreeable boast to both of us, and that we must both be very proudof it, was a conclusion quite established in his own mind.

"Though, look'ee here, Pip's comrade," he said to Herbert, afterhaving discoursed for some time, "I know very well that once sinceI come back - for half a minute - I've been low. I said to Pip, Iknowed as I had been low. But don't you fret yourself on thatscore. I ain't made Pip a gentleman, and Pip ain't a-going to makeyou a gentleman, not fur me not to know what's due to ye both. Dearboy, and Pip's comrade, you two may count upon me always having agen-teel muzzle on. Muzzled I have been since that half a minutewhen I was betrayed into lowness, muzzled I am at the present time,muzzled I ever will be."

Herbert said, "Certainly," but looked as if there were no specificconsolation in this, and remained perplexed and dismayed. We wereanxious for the time when he would go to his lodging, and leave ustogether, but he was evidently jealous of leaving us together, andsat late. It was midnight before I took him round to Essex-street,and saw him safely in at his own dark door. When it closed uponhim, I experienced the first moment of relief I had known since thenight of his arrival.

Never quite free from an uneasy remembrance of the man on thestairs, I had always looked about me in taking my guest out afterdark, and in bringing him back; and I looked about me now.Difficult as it is in a large city to avoid the suspicion of beingwatched, when the mind is conscious of danger in that regard, Icould not persuade myself that any of the people within sight caredabout my movements. The few who were passing, passed on theirseveral ways, and the street was empty when I turned back into theTemple. Nobody had come out at the gate with us, nobody went in atthe gate with me. As I crossed by the fountain, I saw his lightedback windows looking bright and quiet, and, when I stood for a fewmoments in the doorway of the building where I lived, before goingup the stairs, Garden-court was as still and lifeless as thestaircase was when I ascended it.

Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never felt before, soblessedly, what it is to have a friend. When he had spoken somesound words of sympathy and encouragement, we sat down to considerthe question, What was to be done?

The chair that Provis had occupied still remaining where it hadstood - for he had a barrack way with him of hanging about onespot, in one unsettled manner, and going through one round ofobservances with his pipe and his negro-head and his jack-knife andhis pack of cards, and what not, as if it were all put down for himon a slate - I say, his chair remaining where it had stood, Herbertunconsciously took it, but next moment started out of it, pushed itaway, and took another. He had no occasion to say, after that, thathe had conceived an aversion for my patron, neither had I occasionto confess my own. We interchanged that confidence without shapinga syllable.

"What," said I to Herbert, when he was safe in another chair, "whatis to be done?"

"My poor dear Handel," he replied, holding his head, "I am toostunned to think."

"So was I, Herbert, when the blow first fell. Still, something mustbe done. He is intent upon various new expenses - horses, andcarriages, and lavish appearances of all kinds. He must be stoppedsomehow."

"You mean that you can't accept--"

"How can I?" I interposed, as Herbert paused. "Think of him! Look athim!"

An involuntary shudder passed over both of us.

"Yet I am afraid the dreadful truth is, Herbert, that he isattached to me, strongly attached to me. Was there ever such afate!"

"My poor dear Handel," Herbert repeated.

"Then," said I, "after all, stopping short here, never takinganother penny from him, think what I owe him already! Then again: Iam heavily in debt - very heavily for me, who have now noexpectations - and I have been bred to no calling, and I am fit fornothing."

"Well, well, well!" Herbert remonstrated. "Don't say fit fornothing."

"What am I fit for? I know only one thing that I am fit for, andthat is, to go for a soldier. And I might have gone, my dearHerbert, but for the prospect of taking counsel with yourfriendship and affection."

Of course I broke down there: and of course Herbert, beyond seizinga warm grip of my hand, pretended not to know it.

"Anyhow, my dear Handel," said he presently, "soldiering won't do.If you were to renounce this patronage and these favours, I supposeyou would do so with some faint hope of one day repaying what youhave already had. Not very strong, that hope, if you wentsoldiering! Besides, it's absurd. You would be infinitely better inClarriker's house, small as it is. I am working up towards apartnership, you know."

Poor fellow! He little suspected with whose money.

"But there is another question," said Herbert. "This is an ignorantdetermined man, who has long had one fixed idea. More than that, heseems to me (I may misjudge him) to be a man of a desperate andfierce character."

"I know he is," I returned. "Let me tell you what evidence I haveseen of it." And I told him what I had not mentioned in mynarrative; of that encounter with the other convict.

"See, then," said Herbert; "think of this! He comes here at theperil of his life, for the realization of his fixed idea. In themoment of realization, after all his toil and waiting, you cut theground from under his feet, destroy his idea, and make his gainsworthless to him. Do you see nothing that he might do, under thedisappointment?"

"I have seen it, Herbert, and dreamed of it, ever since the fatalnight of his arrival. Nothing has been in my thoughts sodistinctly, as his putting himself in the way of being taken."

"Then you may rely upon it," said Herbert, "that there would begreat danger of his doing it. That is his power over you as long ashe remains in England, and that would be his reckless course if youforsook him."

I was so struck by the horror of this idea, which had weighed uponme from the first, and the working out of which would make meregard myself, in some sort, as his murderer, that I could not restin my chair but began pacing to and fro. I said to Herbert,meanwhile, that even if Provis were recognized and taken, in spiteof himself, I should be wretched as the cause, however innocently.Yes; even though I was so wretched in having him at large and nearme, and even though I would far far rather have worked at the forgeall the days of my life than I would ever have come to this!

But there was no staving off the question, What was to be done?

"The first and the main thing to be done," said Herbert, "is to gethim out of England. You will have to go with him, and then he maybe induced to go."

"But get him where I will, could I prevent his coming back?"

"My good Handel, is it not obvious that with Newgate in the nextstreet, there must be far greater hazard in your breaking your mindto him and making him reckless, here, than elsewhere. If a pretextto get him away could be made out of that other convict, or out ofanything else in his life, now."

"There, again!" said I, stopping before Herbert, with my open handsheld out, as if they contained the desperation of the case. "I knownothing of his life. It has almost made me mad to sit here of anight and see him before me, so bound up with my fortunes andmisfortunes, and yet so unknown to me, except as the miserablewretch who terrified me two days in my childhood!"

Herbert got up, and linked his arm in mine, and we slowly walked toand fro together, studying the carpet.

"Handel," said Herbert, stopping, "you feel convinced that you cantake no further benefits from him; do you?"

"Fully. Surely you would, too, if you were in my place?"

"And you feel convinced that you must break with him?"

"Herbert, can you ask me?"

"And you have, and are bound to have, that tenderness for the lifehe has risked on your account, that you must save him, if possible,from throwing it away. Then you must get him out of England beforeyou stir a finger to extricate yourself. That done, extricateyourself, in Heaven's name, and we'll see it out together, dear oldboy."

It was a comfort to shake hands upon it, and walk up and downagain, with only that done.

"Now, Herbert," said I, "with reference to gaining some knowledgeof his history. There is but one way that I know of. I must ask himpoint-blank."

"Yes. Ask him," said Herbert, "when we sit at breakfast in themorning." For, he had said, on taking leave of Herbert, that hewould come to breakfast with us.

With this project formed, we went to bed. I had the wildest dreamsconcerning him, and woke unrefreshed; I woke, too, to recover thefear which I had lost in the night, of his being found out as areturned transport. Waking, I never lost that fear.

He came round at the appointed time, took out his jack-knife, andsat down to his meal. He was full of plans "for his gentleman'scoming out strong, and like a gentleman," and urged me to beginspeedily upon the pocket-book, which he had left in my possession.He considered the chambers and his own lodging as temporaryresidences, and advised me to look out at once for a "fashionablecrib' near Hyde Park, in which he could have "a shake-down'. Whenhe had made an end of his breakfast, and was wiping his knife onhis leg, I said to him, without a word of preface:

Title: Great Expectations
Author: Charles Dickens
Viewed 221112 times

...																																										...
...	30	31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40	41	42	43	44	45	46	47	48	49	50	51	52	53	54	55	56	57	58	59	60	61	62	63	64	65	66	67	68	69	70	...