He was stopped in his running on and in his shaking
hands with me, by seeing Provis. Provis, regarding
him with a fixed attention, was slowly putting up
his jack-knife, and groping in another pocket for
something else.
“Herbert, my dear friend,” said I, shutting
the double doors, while Herbert stood staring and
wondering, “something very strange has happened.
This is — a visitor of mine.”
“It’s all right, dear boy!” said
Provis coming forward, with his little clasped black
book, and then addressing himself to Herbert.
“Take it in your right hand. Lord strike
you dead on the spot, if ever you split in any way
sumever! Kiss it!”
“Do so, as he wishes it,” I said to Herbert.
So, Herbert, looking at me with a friendly uneasiness
and amazement, complied, and Provis immediately shaking
hands with him, said, “Now you’re on your
oath, you know. And never believe me on mine,
if Pip shan’t make a gentleman on you!”
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.
