The imaginary student

pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not

more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and

recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired

me and the fonder he was of me.

This is written of, I am sensible, as if it had lasted a year. It

lasted about five days. Expecting Herbert all the time, I dared not

go out, except when I took Provis for an airing after dark. At

length, one evening when dinner was over and I had dropped into a

slumber quite worn out - for my nights had been agitated and my

rest broken by fearful dreams - I was roused by the welcome

footstep on the staircase. Provis, who had been asleep too,

staggered up at the noise I made, and in an instant I saw his

jack-knife shining in his hand.

"Quiet! It's Herbert!" I said; and Herbert came bursting in, with

the airy freshness of six hundred miles of France upon him.

"Handel, my dear fellow, how are you, and again how are you, and

again how are you? I seem to have been gone a twelvemonth! Why, so I

must have been, for you have grown quite thin and pale! Handel, my -

Halloa! I beg your pardon."

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!"

Chapter 41

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.