It was directed to

Philip Pip, Esquire, and on the top of the superscription were the

words, "PLEASE READ THIS, HERE." I opened it, the watchman holding

up his light, and read inside, in Wemmick's writing:

"DON'T GO HOME."

Chapter 45

Turning from the Temple gate as soon as I had read the warning, I

made the best of my way to Fleet-street, and there got a late

hackney chariot and drove to the Hummums in Covent Garden. In those

times a bed was always to be got there at any hour of the night,

and the chamberlain, letting me in at his ready wicket, lighted the

candle next in order on his shelf, and showed me straight into the

bedroom next in order on his list. It was a sort of vault on the

ground floor at the back, with a despotic monster of a four-post

bedstead in it, straddling over the whole place, putting one of his

arbitrary legs into the fire-place and another into the doorway,

and squeezing the wretched little washing-stand in quite a Divinely

Righteous manner.

As I had asked for a night-light, the chamberlain had brought me

in, before he left me, the good old constitutional rush-light of

those virtuous days - an object like the ghost of a walking-cane,

which instantly broke its back if it were touched, which nothing

could ever be lighted at, and which was placed in solitary

confinement at the bottom of a high tin tower, perforated with

round holes that made a staringly wide-awake pattern on the walls.

When I had got into bed, and lay there footsore, weary, and

wretched, I found that I could no more close my own eyes than I

could close the eyes of this foolish Argus. And thus, in the gloom

and death of the night, we stared at one another.

What a doleful night! How anxious, how dismal, how long! There was

an inhospitable smell in the room, of cold soot and hot dust; and,

as I looked up into the corners of the tester over my head, I

thought what a number of blue-bottle flies from the butchers', and

earwigs from the market, and grubs from the country, must be

holding on up there, lying by for next summer. This led me to

speculate whether any of them ever tumbled down, and then I fancied

that I felt light falls on my face - a disagreeable turn of thought,

suggesting other and more objectionable approaches up my back. When

I had lain awake a little while, those extraordinary voices with

which silence teems, began to make themselves audible. The closet

whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washing-stand ticked,

and one guitar-string played occasionally in the chest of drawers.

At about the same time, the eyes on the wall acquired a new

expression, and in every one of those staring rounds I saw

written, DON'T GO HOME.

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 for ever, 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.