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.
|