Great Expectations

These precautions well understood by both of us, I went home.

On opening the outer door of our chambers with my key, I found a letter

in the box, directed to me; a very dirty letter, though not ill-written.

It had been delivered by hand (of course, since I left home), and its

contents were these:-"If you are not afraid to come to the old marshes to-night or tomorrow

night at nine, and to come to the little sluice-house by the limekiln,

you had better come. If you want information regarding your uncle

Provis, you had much better come and tell no one, and lose no time. You

must come alone. Bring this with you."

I had had load enough upon my mind before the receipt of this strange

letter. What to do now, I could not tell. And the worst was, that I must

decide quickly, or I should miss the afternoon coach, which would take

me down in time for to-night. To-morrow night I could not think of

going, for it would be too close upon the time of the flight. And again,

for anything I knew, the proffered information might have some important

bearing on the flight itself.

If I had had ample time for consideration, I believe I should still have

gone. Having hardly any time for consideration,--my watch showing me

that the coach started within half an hour,--I resolved to go. I should

certainly not have gone, but for the reference to my Uncle Provis. That,

coming on Wemmick's letter and the morning's busy preparation, turned

the scale.

It is so difficult to become clearly possessed of the contents of almost

any letter, in a violent hurry, that I had to read this mysterious

epistle again twice, before its injunction to me to be secret got

mechanically into my mind. Yielding to it in the same mechanical kind of

way, I left a note in pencil for Herbert, telling him that as I should

be so soon going away, I knew not for how long, I had decided to hurry

down and back, to ascertain for myself how Miss Havisham was faring.

I had then barely time to get my great-coat, lock up the chambers,

and make for the coach-office by the short by-ways. If I had taken a

hackney-chariot and gone by the streets, I should have missed my aim;

going as I did, I caught the coach just as it came out of the yard. I

was the only inside passenger, jolting away knee-deep in straw, when I

came to myself.

For I really had not been myself since the receipt of the letter; it had

so bewildered me, ensuing on the hurry of the morning. The morning hurry

and flutter had been great; for, long and anxiously as I had waited for

Wemmick, his hint had come like a surprise at last. And now I began

to wonder at myself for being in the coach, and to doubt whether I had

sufficient reason for being there, and to consider whether I should

get out presently and go back, and to argue against ever heeding an

anonymous communication, and, in short, to pass through all those phases

of contradiction and indecision to which I suppose very few hurried

people are strangers. Still, the reference to Provis by name mastered

everything. I reasoned as I had reasoned already without knowing it,--if

that be reasoning,--in case any harm should befall him through my not

going, how could I ever forgive myself!