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.