Great Expectations

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.