"How?"
"Ah!"
He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire, with
his heavy brown hand on the mantel-shelf. He put a foot up to the bars,
to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam; but, he neither
looked at it, nor at the fire, but steadily looked at me. It was only
now that I began to tremble.
When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were
without sound, I forced myself to tell him (though I could not do it
distinctly), that I had been chosen to succeed to some property.
"Might a mere warmint ask what property?" said he.
I faltered, "I don't know."
"Might a mere warmint ask whose property?" said he.
I faltered again, "I don't know."
"Could I make a guess, I wonder," said the Convict, "at your income
since you come of age! As to the first figure now. Five?"
With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I rose
out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the back of it, looking
wildly at him.
"Concerning a guardian," he went on. "There ought to have been some
guardian, or such-like, whiles you was a minor. Some lawyer, maybe. As
to the first letter of that lawyer's name now. Would it be J?"
All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its
disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed
in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle
for every breath I drew.
"Put it," he resumed, "as the employer of that lawyer whose name begun
with a J, and might be Jaggers,--put it as he had come over sea to
Portsmouth, and had landed there, and had wanted to come on to you.
'However, you have found me out,' you says just now. Well! However, did
I find you out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a person in London, for
particulars of your address. That person's name? Why, Wemmick."
I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save my life.
I stood, with a hand on the chair-back and a hand on my breast, where
I seemed to be suffocating,--I stood so, looking wildly at him, until I
grasped at the chair, when the room began to surge and turn. He caught
me, drew me to the sofa, put me up against the cushions, and bent on one
knee before me, bringing the face that I now well remembered, and that I
shuddered at, very near to mine.