Kabanata Kabanata 34 · As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly begun to

. As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly begun to

notice their effect upon myself and those around me. Their influence on

my own character I disguised from my recognition as much as possible,

but I knew very well that it was not all good. I lived in a state of

chronic uneasiness respecting my behaviour to Joe. My conscience was

not by any means comfortable about Biddy. When I woke up in the

night,—like Camilla,—I used to think, with a weariness on my spirits,

that I should have been happier and better if I had never seen Miss

Havisham’s face, and had risen to manhood content to be partners with

Joe in the honest old forge. Many a time of an evening, when I sat

alone looking at the fire, I thought, after all there was no fire like

the forge fire and the kitchen fire at home.

Yet Estella was so inseparable from all my restlessness and disquiet of

mind, that I really fell into confusion as to the limits of my own part

in its production. That is to say, supposing I had had no expectations,

and yet had had Estella to think of, I could not make out to my

satisfaction that I should have done much better. Now, concerning the

influence of my position on others, I was in no such difficulty, and so

I perceived—though dimly enough perhaps—that it was not beneficial to

anybody, and, above all, that it was not beneficial to Herbert. My

lavish habits led his easy nature into expenses that he could not

afford, corrupted the simplicity of his life, and disturbed his peace

with anxieties and regrets. I was not at all remorseful for having

unwittingly set those other branches of the Pocket family to the poor

arts they practised; because such littlenesses were their natural bent,

and would have been evoked by anybody else, if I had left them

slumbering. But Herbert’s was a very different case, and it often

caused me a twinge to think that I had done him evil service in

crowding his sparely furnished chambers with incongruous upholstery

work, and placing the Canary-breasted Avenger at his disposal.

So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I began

to contract a quantity of debt. I could hardly begin but Herbert must

begin too, so he soon followed. At Startop’s suggestion, we put

ourselves down for election into a club called The Finches of the

Grove: the object of which institution I have never divined, if it were

not that the members should dine expensively once a fortnight, to

quarrel among themselves as much as possible after dinner, and to cause

six waiters to get drunk on the stairs. I know that these gratifying

social ends were so invariably accomplished, that Herbert and I

understood nothing else to be referred to in the first standing toast

of the society: which ran “Gentlemen, may the present promotion of good

feeling ever reign predominant among the Finches of the Grove.”

The Finches spent their money foolishly (the Hotel we dined at was in

Covent Garden), and the first Finch I saw when I had the honour of

joining the Grove was Bentley Drummle, at that time floundering about

town in a cab of his own, and doing a great deal of damage to the posts

at the street corners. Occasionally, he shot himself out of his

equipage headforemost over the apron; and I saw him on one occasion

deliver himself at the door of the Grove in this unintentional way—like

coals. But here I anticipate a little, for I was not a Finch, and could

not be, according to the sacred laws of the society, until I came of

age.

In my confidence in my own resources, I would willingly have taken

Herbert’s expenses on myself; but Herbert was proud, and I could make

no such proposal to him. So he got into difficulties in every

direction, and continued to look about him. When we gradually fell into

keeping late hours and late company, I noticed that he looked about him

with a desponding eye at breakfast-time; that he began to look about

him more hopefully about midday; that he drooped when he came into

dinner; that he seemed to descry Capital in the distance, rather

clearly, after dinner; that he all but realised Capital towards

midnight; and that at about two o’clock in the morning, he became so

deeply despondent again as to talk of buying a rifle and going to

America, with a general purpose of compelling buffaloes to make his

fortune.

I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week, and when I was at

Hammersmith I haunted Richmond, whereof separately by and by. Herbert

would often come to Hammersmith when I was there, and I think at those

seasons his father would occasionally have some passing perception that

the opening he was looking for, had not appeared yet. But in the

general tumbling up of the family, his tumbling out in life somewhere,

was a thing to transact itself somehow. In the meantime Mr. Pocket grew

greyer, and tried oftener to lift himself out of his perplexities by

the hair. While Mrs. Pocket tripped up the family with her footstool,

read her book of dignities, lost her pocket-handkerchief, told us about

her grandpapa, and taught the young idea how to shoot, by shooting it

into bed whenever it attracted her notice.

As I am now generalising a period of my life with the object of

clearing my way before me, I can scarcely do so better than by at once

completing the description of our usual manners and customs at

Barnard’s Inn.

We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people

could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less

miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition.

There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying

ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my

belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.

Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went into the City to look

about him. I often paid him a visit in the dark back-room in which he

consorted with an ink-jar, a hat-peg, a coal-box, a string-box, an

almanac, a desk and stool, and a ruler; and I do not remember that I

ever saw him do anything else but look about him. If we all did what we

undertake to do, as faithfully as Herbert did, we might live in a

Republic of the Virtues. He had nothing else to do, poor fellow, except

at a certain hour of every afternoon to “go to Lloyd’s”—in observance

of a ceremony of seeing his principal, I think. He never did anything

else in connection with Lloyd’s that I could find out, except come back

again. When he felt his case unusually serious, and that he positively

must find an opening, he would go on ’Change at a busy time, and walk

in and out, in a kind of gloomy country dance figure, among the

assembled magnates. “For,” says Herbert to me, coming home to dinner on

one of those special occasions, “I find the truth to be, Handel, that

an opening won’t come to one, but one must go to it,—so I have been.”

If we had been less attached to one another, I think we must have hated

one another regularly every morning. I detested the chambers beyond

expression at that period of repentance, and could not endure the sight

of the Avenger’s livery; which had a more expensive and a less

remunerative appearance then than at any other time in the

four-and-twenty hours. As we got more and more into debt, breakfast

became a hollower and hollower form, and, being on one occasion at

breakfast-time threatened (by letter) with legal proceedings, “not

unwholly unconnected,” as my local paper might put it, “with jewelery,”

I went so far as to seize the Avenger by his blue collar and shake him

off his feet,—so that he was actually in the air, like a booted

Cupid,—for presuming to suppose that we wanted a roll.

At certain times—meaning at uncertain times, for they depended on our

humour—I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remarkable discovery,—

“My dear Herbert, we are getting on badly.”

“My dear Handel,” Herbert would say to me, in all sincerity, “if you

will believe me, those very words were on my lips, by a strange

coincidence.”

“Then, Herbert,” I would respond, “let us look into our affairs.”

We always derived profound satisfaction from making an appointment for

this purpose. I always thought this was business, this was the way to

confront the thing, this was the way to take the foe by the throat. And

I know Herbert thought so too.

We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a bottle of

something similarly out of the common way, in order that our minds

might be fortified for the occasion, and we might come well up to the

mark. Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of

ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was

something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.

I would then take a sheet of paper, and write across the top of it, in

a neat hand, the heading, “Memorandum of Pip’s debts”; with Barnard’s

Inn and the date very carefully added. Herbert would also take a sheet

of paper, and write across it with similar formalities, “Memorandum of

Herbert’s debts.”

Each of us would then refer to a confused heap of papers at his side,

which had been thrown into drawers, worn into holes in pockets, half

burnt in lighting candles, stuck for weeks into the looking-glass, and

otherwise damaged. The sound of our pens going refreshed us

exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it difficult to

distinguish between this edifying business proceeding and actually

paying the money. In point of meritorious character, the two things

seemed about equal.

When we had written a little while, I would ask Herbert how he got on?

Herbert probably would have been scratching his head in a most rueful

manner at the sight of his accumulating figures.

“They are mounting up, Handel,” Herbert would say; “upon my life, they

are mounting up.”

“Be firm, Herbert,” I would retort, plying my own pen with great

assiduity. “Look the thing in the face. Look into your affairs. Stare

them out of countenance.”

“So I would, Handel, only they are staring _me_ out of countenance.”

However, my determined manner would have its effect, and Herbert would

fall to work again. After a time he would give up once more, on the

plea that he had not got Cobbs’s bill, or Lobbs’s, or Nobbs’s, as the

case might be.

“Then, Herbert, estimate; estimate it in round numbers, and put it

down.”

“What a fellow of resource you are!” my friend would reply, with

admiration. “Really your business powers are very remarkable.”

I thought so too. I established with myself, on these occasions, the

reputation of a first-rate man of business,—prompt, decisive,

energetic, clear, cool-headed. When I had got all my responsibilities

down upon my list, I compared each with the bill, and ticked it off. My

self-approval when I ticked an entry was quite a luxurious sensation.

When I had no more ticks to make, I folded all my bills up uniformly,

docketed each on the back, and tied the whole into a symmetrical

bundle. Then I did the same for Herbert (who modestly said he had not

my administrative genius), and felt that I had brought his affairs into

a focus for him.

My business habits had one other bright feature, which I called

“leaving a Margin.” For example; supposing Herbert’s debts to be one

hundred and sixty-four pounds four-and-twopence, I would say, “Leave a

margin, and put them down at two hundred.” Or, supposing my own to be

four times as much, I would leave a margin, and put them down at seven

hundred. I had the highest opinion of the wisdom of this same Margin,

but I am bound to acknowledge that on looking back, I deem it to have

been an expensive device. For, we always ran into new debt immediately,

to the full extent of the margin, and sometimes, in the sense of

freedom and solvency it imparted, got pretty far on into another

margin.

But there was a calm, a rest, a virtuous hush, consequent on these

examinations of our affairs that gave me, for the time, an admirable

opinion of myself. Soothed by my exertions, my method, and Herbert’s

compliments, I would sit with his symmetrical bundle and my own on the

table before me among the stationery, and feel like a Bank of some

sort, rather than a private individual.

We shut our outer door on these solemn occasions, in order that we

might not be interrupted. I had fallen into my serene state one

evening, when we heard a letter dropped through the slit in the said

door, and fall on the ground. “It’s for you, Handel,” said Herbert,

going out and coming back with it, “and I hope there is nothing the

matter.” This was in allusion to its heavy black seal and border.

The letter was signed Trabb & Co., and its contents were simply, that I

was an honoured sir, and that they begged to inform me that Mrs. J.

Gargery had departed this life on Monday last at twenty minutes past

six in the evening, and that my attendance was requested at the

interment on Monday next at three o’clock in the afternoon.