บทที่ บทที่ 41 · In vain should I attempt to describe the astonishment and disquiet of

. 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 genteel 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 jackknife 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 appearances 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 realisation of his fixed idea. In the moment of

realisation, 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 recognised 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 rather have worked at the forge all 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 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 jackknife, 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 negro-head,

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.