As 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 behavior 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."