Cool, he does his jumping again :)
And I realized the tutorial NPC, I only read his first batch of dialogue, talking a second time had the good stuff, which I had missed.
Somehow I am still 6.4 hours into the game with zero souls recovered, but I have found a lot of collectables and checkpoints and secrets and whatnot... is fun to explore but I still feel like I'm missing some early linchpin that is maybe supposed to be obvious - there are so many things I could do if I could hold two items :)