Now that I was left wholly to myself, I gave notice of my intention
to quit the chambers in the Temple as soon as my tenancy could legally
determine, and in the meanwhile to underlet them. At once I put bills
up in the windows; for, I was in debt, and had scarcely any money, and
began to be seriously alarmed by the state of my affairs. I ought
rather to write that I should have been alarmed if I had had energy and
concentration enough to help me to the clear perception of any truth
beyond the fact that I was falling very ill. The late stress upon me had
enabled me to put off illness, but not to put it away; I knew that it
was coming on me now, and I knew very little else, and was even careless
as to that.
For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor,--anywhere,
according as I happened to sink down,--with a heavy head and aching
limbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came, one night which
appeared of great duration, and which teemed with anxiety and horror;
and when in the morning I tried to sit up in my bed and think of it, I
found I could not do so.
Whether I really had been down in Garden Court in the dead of the night,
groping about for the boat that I supposed to be there; whether I had
two or three times come to myself on the staircase with great terror,
not knowing how I had got out of bed; whether I had found myself
lighting the lamp, possessed by the idea that he was coming up
the stairs, and that the lights were blown out; whether I had been
inexpressibly harassed by the distracted talking, laughing, and groaning
of some one, and had half suspected those sounds to be of my own making;
whether there had been a closed iron furnace in a dark corner of
the room, and a voice had called out, over and over again, that Miss
Havisham was consuming within it,--these were things that I tried to
settle with myself and get into some order, as I lay that morning on
my bed. But the vapor of a limekiln would come between me and them,
disordering them all, and it was through the vapor at last that I saw
two men looking at me.
"What do you want?" I asked, starting; "I don't know you."
"Well, sir," returned one of them, bending down and touching me on the
shoulder, "this is a matter that you'll soon arrange, I dare say, but
you're arrested."