IN vain should I attempt to describe the astonishment and
disquiet of Herbert, when he and I and Provis sat down before the fire, and I
recounted the whole of the secret. Enough, that I saw my own feelings reflected
in Herbert's face, and, not least among them, my repugnance towards the man who
had done so much for me.
What would alone have set a division between that man and us, if there had
been no other dividing circumstance, was his triumph in my story. Saving his
troublesome sense of having been `low' on one occasion since his return - on
which point he began to hold forth to Herbert, the moment my revelation was
finished - he had no perception of the possibility of my finding any fault with
my good fortune. His boast that he had made me a gentleman, and that he had come
to see me support the character on his ample resources, was made for me quite as
much as for himself; and that it was a highly agreeable boast to both of us, and
that we must both be very proud of it, was a conclusion quite established in his
own mind.
`Though, look'ee here, Pip's comrade,' he said to Herbert, after having
discoursed for some time, `I know very well that once since I come back - for
half a minute - I've been low. I said to Pip, I knowed as I had been low. But
don't you fret yourself on that score. I ain't made Pip a gentleman, and Pip
ain't a going to make you a gentleman, not fur me not to know what's due to ye
both. Dear boy, and Pip's comrade, you two may count upon me always having a
gen-teel muzzle on. Muzzled I have been since that half a minute when 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 specific
consolation in this, and remained perplexed and dismayed. We were anxious for
the time when he would go to his lodging, and leave us together, but he was
evidently jealous of leaving us together, and sat 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 upon him, I experienced the first moment of relief I had known since
the night of his arrival.
Never quite free from an uneasy remembrance of the man on the stairs, I had
always looked about me in taking my guest out after dark, and in bringing him
back; and I looked about me now. Difficult as it is in a large city to avoid the
suspicion of being watched, when the mind is conscious of danger in that regard,
I could not persuade myself that any of the people within sight cared about my
movements. The few who were passing, passed on their several ways, and the
street was empty when I turned back into the Temple. Nobody had come out at the
gate with us, nobody went in at the gate with me. As I crossed by the fountain,
I saw his lighted back windows looking bright and quiet, and, when I stood for a
few moments in the doorway of the building where I lived, before going up the
stairs, Garden-court was as still and lifeless as the staircase was when I
ascended it.
Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never felt before, so
blessedly, what it is to have a friend. When he had spoken some sound words of
sympathy and encouragement, we sat down to consider the question, What was to be
done?
The chair that Provis had occupied still remaining where it had stood - for
he had a barrack way with him of hanging about one spot, in one unsettled
manner, and going through one round of observances with his pipe and his
negro-head and his jack-knife and his pack of cards, and what not, as if it were
all put down for him on a slate - I say, his chair remaining where it had stood,
Herbert unconsciously took it, but next moment started out of it, pushed it
away, and took another. He had no occasion to say, after that, that he had
conceived an aversion for my patron, neither had I occasion to confess my own.
We interchanged that confidence without shaping a syllable.
`What,' said I to Herbert, when he was safe in another chair, `what is to be
done?'
`My poor dear Handel,' he replied, holding his head, `I am too stunned to
think.'
`So was I, Herbert, when the blow first fell. Still, something must be done.
He is intent upon various new expenses - horses, and carriages, and lavish
appearance of all kinds. He must be stopped somehow.'
`You mean that you can't accept--'
`How can I?' I interposed, as Herbert paused. `Think of him!Look at him!'
An involuntary shudder passed over both of us.
`Yet I am afraid the dreadful truth is, Herbert, that he is attached to me,
strongly attached to me. Was there ever such a fate!'
`My poor dear Handel,' Herbert repeated.
`Then,' said I, `after all, stopping short here, never taking another penny
from him, think what I owe him already! Then again: I am heavily in debt - very
heavily for me, who have now no expectations - and I have been bred to no
calling, and I am fit for nothing.'
`Well, well, well!' Herbert remonstrated. `Don't say fit for nothing.'
`What am I fit for? I know only one thing that I am fit for, and that is, to
go for a soldier. And I might have gone, my dear Herbert, but for the prospect
of taking counsel with your friendship and affection.'
Of course I broke down there: and of course Herbert, beyond seizing a 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 suppose you would do so
with some faint hope of one day repaying what you have already had. Not very
strong, that hope, if you went soldiering! Besides, it's absurd. You would be
infinitely better in Clarriker's house, small as it is. I am working up towards
a partnership, you know.'
Poor fellow! He little suspected with whose money.
`But there is another question,' said Herbert. `This is an ignorant
determined man, who has long had one fixed idea. More than that, he seems to me
(I may misjudge him) to be a man of a desperate and fierce character.'
`I know he is,' I returned. `Let me tell you what evidence I have seen of
it.' And I told him what I had not mentioned in my narrative; of that encounter
with the other convict.
`See, then,' said Herbert; `think of this! He comes here at the peril of his
life, for the realization of his fixed idea. In the moment of realization, after
all his toil and waiting, you cut the ground from under his feet, destroy his
idea, and make his gains worthless to him. Do you see nothing that he might do,
under the disappointment?'
`I have seen it, Herbert, and dreamed of it, ever since the fatal night of
his arrival. Nothing has been in my thoughts so distinctly, as his putting
himself in the way of being taken.'
`Then you may rely upon it,' said Herbert, `that there would be great danger
of his doing it. That is his power over you as long as he remains in England,
and that would be his reckless course if you forsook him.'
I was so struck by the horror of this idea, which had weighed upon me from
the first, and the working out of which would make me regard myself, in some
sort, as his murderer, that I could not rest in my chair but began pacing to and
fro. I said to Herbert, meanwhile, that even if Provis were recognized and
taken, in spite of himself, I should be wretched as the cause, however
innocently. Yes; even though I was so wretched in having him at large and near
me, and even though I would far far rather have worked at the forge all the days
of my life than I would ever have come to this!
But there was no raving off the question, What was to be done?
`The first and the main thing to be done,' said Herbert, `is to get him out
of England. You will have to go with him, and then he may be 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 next street,
there must be far greater hazard in your breaking your mind to him and making
him reckless, here, than elsewhere. If a pretext to get him away could be made
out of that other convict, or out of anything else in his life, now.'
`There, again!' said I, stopping before Herbert, with my open hands held out,
as if they contained the desperation of the case. `I know nothing of his life.
It has almost made me mad to sit here of a night and see him before me, so bound
up with my fortunes and misfortunes, and yet so unknown to me, except as the
miserable wretch who terrified me two days in my childhood!'
Herbert got up, and linked his arm in mine, and we slowly walked to and fro
together, studying the carpet.
`Handel,' said Herbert, stopping, `you feel convinced that you can take 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 life he has
risked on your account, that you must save him, if possible, from throwing it
away. Then you must get him out of England before you stir a finger to extricate
yourself. That done, extricate yourself, in Heaven's name, and we'll see it out
together, dear old boy.'
It was a comfort to shake hands upon it, and walk up and down again, with
only that done.
`Now, Herbert,' said I, `with reference to gaining some knowledge of his
history. There is but one way that I know of. I must ask him point-blank.'
`Yes. Ask him,' said Herbert, `when we sit at breakfast in the morning.' For,
he had said, on taking leave of Herbert, that he would come to breakfast with
us.
With this project formed, we went to bed. I had the wildest dreams concerning
him, and woke unrefreshed; I woke, too, to recover the fear which I had lost in
the night, of his being found out as a returned transport. Waking, I never lost
that fear.
He came round at the appointed time, took out his jack-knife, and sat down to
his meal. He was full of plans `for his gentleman's coming out strong, and like
a gentleman,' and urged me to begin speedily upon the pocket-book, which he had
left in my possession. He considered the chambers and his own lodging as
temporary residences, and advised me to look out at once for a `fashionable
crib' near Hyde Park, in which he could have `a shake-down'. When he had made an
end of his breakfast, and was wiping his knife on his leg, I said to him,
without a word of preface:
`After you were gone last night, I told my friend of the struggle that the
soldiers found you engaged in on the marshes, when we came up. You remember?'
`Remember!' said he. `I think so!'
`We want to know something about that man - and about you. It is strange to
know no more about either, and particularly you, than I was able to tell last
night. Is not this as good a time as another for our knowing more?'
`Well!' he said, after consideration. `You're on your oath, you know, Pip's
comrade?'
`Assuredly,' replied Herbert.
`As to anything I say, you know,' he insisted. `The oath applies to all.'
`I understand it to do so.'
`And look'ee here! Wotever I done, is worked out and paid for,' he insisted
again.
`So be it.'
He took out his black pipe and was going to fill it with negrohead, when,
looking at the tangle of tobacco in his hand, he seemed to think it might
perplex the thread of his narrative. He put it back again, stuck his pipe in a
button-hole of his coat, spread a hand on each knee, and, after turning an angry
eye on the fire for a few silent moments, looked round at us and said what
follows.
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