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1As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around
2me. Their influence on my own character I disguised from my recognition as much as possible, but I knew very well that
3it was not all good. I lived in a state of chronic uneasiness respecting my behaviour to Joe. My conscience was not by
4any means comfortable about Biddy. When I woke up in the night,--like Camilla,--I used to think, with a weariness on my
5spirits, that I should have been happier and better if I had never seen Miss Havisham's face, and had risen to manhood
6content to be partners with Joe in the honest old forge. Many a time of an evening, when I sat alone looking at the
7fire, I thought, after all there was no fire like the forge fire and the kitchen fire at home. Yet Estella was so
8inseparable from all my restlessness and disquiet of mind, that I really fell into confusion as to the limits of my own
9part in its production. That is to say, supposing I had had no expectations, and yet had had Estella to think of, I
10could not make out to my satisfaction that I should have done much better. Now, concerning the influence of my position
11on others, I was in no such difficulty, and so I perceived--though dimly enough perhaps--that it was not beneficial to
12anybody, and, above all, that it was not beneficial to Herbert. My lavish habits led his easy nature into expenses that
13he could not afford, corrupted the simplicity of his life, and disturbed his peace with anxieties and regrets. I was not
14at all remorseful for having unwittingly set those other branches of the Pocket family to the poor arts they practised;
15because such littlenesses were their natural bent, and would have been evoked by anybody else, if I had left them
16slumbering. But Herbert's was a very different case, and it often caused me a twinge to think that I had done him evil
17service in crowding his sparely furnished chambers with incongruous upholstery work, and placing the Canary-breasted
18Avenger at his disposal. So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I began to contract a quantity
19of debt. I could hardly begin but Herbert must begin too, so he soon followed. At Startop's suggestion, we put ourselves
20down for election into a club called The Finches of the Grove: the object of which institution I have never divined, if
21it were not that the members should dine expensively once a fortnight, to quarrel among themselves as much as possible
22after dinner, and to cause six waiters to get drunk on the stairs. I know that these gratifying social ends were so
23invariably accomplished, that Herbert and I understood nothing else to be referred to in the first standing toast of the
24society: which ran "Gentlemen, may the present promotion of good feeling ever reign predominant among the Finches of the
25Grove." The Finches spent their money foolishly (the Hotel we dined at was in Covent Garden), and the first Finch I saw
26when I had the honour of joining the Grove was Bentley Drummle, at that time floundering about town in a cab of his own,
27and doing a great deal of damage to the posts at the street corners. Occasionally, he shot himself out of his equipage
28headforemost over the apron; and I saw him on one occasion deliver himself at the door of the Grove in this
29unintentional way--like coals. But here I anticipate a little, for I was not a Finch, and could not be, according to the
30sacred laws of the society, until I came of age. In my confidence in my own resources, I would willingly have taken
31Herbert's expenses on myself; but Herbert was proud, and I could make no such proposal to him. So he got into
32difficulties in every direction, and continued to look about him. When we gradually fell into keeping late hours and
33late company, I noticed that he looked about him with a desponding eye at breakfast-time; that he began to look about
34him more hopefully about midday; that he drooped when he came into dinner; that he seemed to descry Capital in the
35distance, rather clearly, after dinner; that he all but realised Capital towards midnight; and that at about two o'clock
36in the morning, he became so deeply despondent again as to talk of buying a rifle and going to America, with a general
37purpose of compelling buffaloes to make his fortune. I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week, and when I was at
38Hammersmith I haunted Richmond, whereof separately by and by. Herbert would often come to Hammersmith when I was there,
39and I think at those seasons his father would occasionally have some passing perception that the opening he was looking
40for, had not appeared yet. But in the general tumbling up of the family, his tumbling out in life somewhere, was a thing
41to transact itself somehow. In the meantime Mr. Pocket grew greyer, and tried oftener to lift himself out of his
42perplexities by the hair. While Mrs. Pocket tripped up the family with her footstool, read her book of dignities, lost
43her pocket-handkerchief, told us about her grandpapa, and taught the young idea how to shoot, by shooting it into bed
44whenever it attracted her notice. As I am now generalising a period of my life with the object of clearing my way before
45me, I can scarcely do so better than by at once completing the description of our usual manners and customs at Barnard's
46Inn. 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
47were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction
48among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief,
49our case was in the last aspect a rather common one. Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went into the City to
50look 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
51coal-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
52else but look about him. If we all did what we undertake to do, as faithfully as Herbert did, we might live in a
53Republic of the Virtues. He had nothing else to do, poor fellow, except at a certain hour of every afternoon to "go to
54Lloyd's"--in observance of a ceremony of seeing his principal, I think. He never did anything else in connection with
55Lloyd's that I could find out, except come back again. When he felt his case unusually serious, and that he positively
56must find an opening, he would go on 'Change at a busy time, and walk in and out, in a kind of gloomy country dance
57figure, among the assembled magnates. "For," says Herbert to me, coming home to dinner on one of those special
58occasions, "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."
59If we had been less attached to one another, I think we must have hated one another regularly every morning. I detested
60the chambers beyond expression at that period of repentance, and could not endure the sight of the Avenger's livery;
61which had a more expensive and a less remunerative appearance then than at any other time in the four-and-twenty hours.
62As we got more and more into debt, breakfast became a hollower and hollower form, and, being on one occasion at
63breakfast-time threatened (by letter) with legal proceedings, "not unwholly unconnected," as my local paper might put
64it, "with jewelery," I went so far as to seize the Avenger by his blue collar and shake him off his feet,--so that he
65was actually in the air, like a booted Cupid,--for presuming to suppose that we wanted a roll. At certain times--meaning
66at uncertain times, for they depended on our humour--I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remarkable discovery,-- "My
67dear Herbert, we are getting on badly." "My dear Handel," Herbert would say to me, in all sincerity, "if you will
68believe me, those very words were on my lips, by a strange coincidence." "Then, Herbert," I would respond, "let us look
69into our affairs."
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