Whatever night-fancies and night-noises crowded on me, they never warded
off this DON'T GO HOME. It plaited itself into whatever I thought of,
as a bodily pain would have done. Not long before, I had read in the
newspapers, how a gentleman unknown had come to the Hummums in the
night, and had gone to bed, and had destroyed himself, and had been
found in the morning weltering in blood. It came into my head that he
must have occupied this very vault of mine, and I got out of bed to
assure myself that there were no red marks about; then opened the door
to look out into the passages, and cheer myself with the companionship
of a distant light, near which I knew the chamberlain to be dozing. But
all this time, why I was not to go home, and what had happened at home,
and when I should go home, and whether Provis was safe at home, were
questions occupying my mind so busily, that one might have supposed
there could be no more room in it for any other theme. Even when I
thought of Estella, and how we had parted that day forever, and when
I recalled all the circumstances of our parting, and all her looks and
tones, and the action of her fingers while she knitted,--even then I
was pursuing, here and there and everywhere, the caution, Don't go home.
When at last I dozed, in sheer exhaustion of mind and body, it became
a vast shadowy verb which I had to conjugate. Imperative mood, present
tense: Do not thou go home, let him not go home, let us not go home, do
not ye or you go home, let not them go home. Then potentially: I may not
and I cannot go home; and I might not, could not, would not, and should
not go home; until I felt that I was going distracted, and rolled over
on the pillow, and looked at the staring rounds upon the wall again.
I had left directions that I was to be called at seven; for it was plain
that I must see Wemmick before seeing any one else, and equally plain
that this was a case in which his Walworth sentiments only could be
taken. It was a relief to get out of the room where the night had been
so miserable, and I needed no second knocking at the door to startle me
from my uneasy bed.
The Castle battlements arose upon my view at eight o'clock. The little
servant happening to be entering the fortress with two hot rolls, I
passed through the postern and crossed the drawbridge in her company,
and so came without announcement into the presence of Wemmick as he was
making tea for himself and the Aged. An open door afforded a perspective
view of the Aged in bed.