Great Expectations

s 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.