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‘I am unhappily a widower,’ said I.

‘You are very young to know so great a loss,’ she returned. ‘I am

grieved to hear it. I am grieved to hear it. I hope Time will be good to

you.’

‘I hope Time,’ said I, looking at her, ‘will be good to all of us.

Dear Mrs. Steerforth, we must all trust to that, in our heaviest

misfortunes.’

The earnestness of my manner, and the tears in my eyes, alarmed her. The

whole course of her thoughts appeared to stop, and change.

I tried to command my voice in gently saying his name, but it trembled.

She repeated it to herself, two or three times, in a low tone. Then,

addressing me, she said, with enforced calmness:

‘My son is ill.’

‘Very ill.’

‘You have seen him?’

‘I have.’

‘Are you reconciled?’

I could not say Yes, I could not say No. She slightly turned her head

towards the spot where Rosa Dartle had been standing at her elbow, and

in that moment I said, by the motion of my lips, to Rosa, ‘Dead!’

That Mrs. Steerforth might not be induced to look behind her, and read,

plainly written, what she was not yet prepared to know, I met her look

quickly; but I had seen Rosa Dartle throw her hands up in the air with

vehemence of despair and horror, and then clasp them on her face.

The handsome lady--so like, oh so like!--regarded me with a fixed look,

and put her hand to her forehead. I besought her to be calm, and prepare

herself to bear what I had to tell; but I should rather have entreated

her to weep, for she sat like a stone figure.

‘When I was last here,’ I faltered, ‘Miss Dartle told me he was sailing

here and there. The night before last was a dreadful one at sea. If he

were at sea that night, and near a dangerous coast, as it is said he

was; and if the vessel that was seen should really be the ship which--’

‘Rosa!’ said Mrs. Steerforth, ‘come to me!’

She came, but with no sympathy or gentleness. Her eyes gleamed like fire

as she confronted his mother, and broke into a frightful laugh.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘is your pride appeased, you madwoman? Now has he made

atonement to you--with his life! Do you hear?---His life!’

Mrs. Steerforth, fallen back stiffly in her chair, and making no sound

but a moan, cast her eyes upon her with a wide stare.

‘Aye!’ cried Rosa, smiting herself passionately on the breast, ‘look at

me! Moan, and groan, and look at me! Look here!’ striking the scar, ‘at

your dead child’s handiwork!’

The moan the mother uttered, from time to time, went to My heart. Always

the same. Always inarticulate and stifled. Always accompanied with

an incapable motion of the head, but with no change of face. Always

proceeding from a rigid mouth and closed teeth, as if the jaw were

locked and the face frozen up in pain.

‘Do you remember when he did this?’ she proceeded. ‘Do you remember

when, in his inheritance of your nature, and in your pampering of his

pride and passion, he did this, and disfigured me for life? Look at me,

marked until I die with his high displeasure; and moan and groan for

what you made him!’

‘Miss Dartle,’ I entreated her. ‘For Heaven’s sake--’

‘I WILL speak!’ she said, turning on me with her lightning eyes. ‘Be

silent, you! Look at me, I say, proud mother of a proud, false son! Moan

for your nurture of him, moan for your corruption of him, moan for your

loss of him, moan for mine!’

She clenched her hand, and trembled through her spare, worn figure, as

if her passion were killing her by inches.

‘You, resent his self-will!’ she exclaimed. ‘You, injured by his haughty

temper! You, who opposed to both, when your hair was grey, the qualities

which made both when you gave him birth! YOU, who from his cradle reared

him to be what he was, and stunted what he should have been! Are you

rewarded, now, for your years of trouble?’

‘Oh, Miss Dartle, shame! Oh cruel!’

‘I tell you,’ she returned, ‘I WILL speak to her. No power on earth

should stop me, while I was standing here! Have I been silent all these

years, and shall I not speak now? I loved him better than you ever loved

him!’ turning on her fiercely. ‘I could have loved him, and asked no

return. If I had been his wife, I could have been the slave of his

caprices for a word of love a year. I should have been. Who knows it

better than I? You were exacting, proud, punctilious, selfish. My love

would have been devoted--would have trod your paltry whimpering under

foot!’

With flashing eyes, she stamped upon the ground as if she actually did

it.

‘Look here!’ she said, striking the scar again, with a relentless hand.

‘When he grew into the better understanding of what he had done, he saw

it, and repented of it! I could sing to him, and talk to him, and show

the ardour that I felt in all he did, and attain with labour to such

knowledge as most interested him; and I attracted him. When he was

freshest and truest, he loved me. Yes, he did! Many a time, when you

were put off with a slight word, he has taken Me to his heart!’

She said it with a taunting pride in the midst of her frenzy--for it

was little less--yet with an eager remembrance of it, in which the

smouldering embers of a gentler feeling kindled for the moment.

‘I descended--as I might have known I should, but that he fascinated me

with his boyish courtship--into a doll, a trifle for the occupation

of an idle hour, to be dropped, and taken up, and trifled with, as the

inconstant humour took him. When he grew weary, I grew weary. As his

fancy died out, I would no more have tried to strengthen any power I

had, than I would have married him on his being forced to take me for

his wife. We fell away from one another without a word. Perhaps you saw

it, and were not sorry. Since then, I have been a mere disfigured piece

of furniture between you both; having no eyes, no ears, no feelings,

no remembrances. Moan? Moan for what you made him; not for your love. I

tell you that the time was, when I loved him better than you ever did!’

She stood with her bright angry eyes confronting the wide stare, and the

set face; and softened no more, when the moaning was repeated, than if

the face had been a picture.

‘Miss Dartle,’ said I, ‘if you can be so obdurate as not to feel for

this afflicted mother--’

‘Who feels for me?’ she sharply retorted. ‘She has sown this. Let her

moan for the harvest that she reaps today!’

‘And if his faults--’ I began.

‘Faults!’ she cried, bursting into passionate tears. ‘Who dares malign

him? He had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he stooped!’

‘No one can have loved him better, no one can hold him in dearer

remembrance than I,’ I replied. ‘I meant to say, if you have no

compassion for his mother; or if his faults--you have been bitter on

them--’

‘It’s false,’ she cried, tearing her black hair; ‘I loved him!’

‘--if his faults cannot,’ I went on, ‘be banished from your remembrance,

in such an hour; look at that figure, even as one you have never seen

before, and render it some help!’

All this time, the figure was unchanged, and looked unchangeable.

Motionless, rigid, staring; moaning in the same dumb way from time to

time, with the same helpless motion of the head; but giving no other

sign of life. Miss Dartle suddenly kneeled down before it, and began to

loosen the dress.

‘A curse upon you!’ she said, looking round at me, with a mingled

expression of rage and grief. ‘It was in an evil hour that you ever came

here! A curse upon you! Go!’

After passing out of the room, I hurried back to ring the bell, the

sooner to alarm the servants. She had then taken the impassive figure

in her arms, and, still upon her knees, was weeping over it, kissing it,

calling to it, rocking it to and fro upon her bosom like a child, and

trying every tender means to rouse the dormant senses. No longer afraid

of leaving her, I noiselessly turned back again; and alarmed the house

as I went out.

Later in the day, I returned, and we laid him in his mother’s room. She

was just the same, they told me; Miss Dartle never left her; doctors

were in attendance, many things had been tried; but she lay like a

statue, except for the low sound now and then.

I went through the dreary house, and darkened the windows. The windows

of the chamber where he lay, I darkened last. I lifted up the leaden

hand, and held it to my heart; and all the world seemed death and

silence, broken only by his mother’s moaning.

CHAPTER 57. THE EMIGRANTS

One thing more, I had to do, before yielding myself to the shock of

these emotions. It was, to conceal what had occurred, from those who

were going away; and to dismiss them on their voyage in happy ignorance.

In this, no time was to be lost.

I took Mr. Micawber aside that same night, and confided to him the

task of standing between Mr. Peggotty and intelligence of the late

catastrophe. He zealously undertook to do so, and to intercept any

newspaper through which it might, without such precautions, reach him.

‘If it penetrates to him, sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, striking himself on

the breast, ‘it shall first pass through this body!’

Mr. Micawber, I must observe, in his adaptation of himself to a new

state of society, had acquired a bold buccaneering air, not absolutely

lawless, but defensive and prompt. One might have supposed him a child

of the wilderness, long accustomed to live out of the confines of

civilization, and about to return to his native wilds.

He had provided himself, among other things, with a complete suit of

oilskin, and a straw hat with a very low crown, pitched or caulked on

the outside. In this rough clothing, with a common mariner’s telescope

under his arm, and a shrewd trick of casting up his eye at the sky

as looking out for dirty weather, he was far more nautical, after his

manner, than Mr. Peggotty. His whole family, if I may so express it,

were cleared for action. I found Mrs. Micawber in the closest and most

uncompromising of bonnets, made fast under the chin; and in a shawl

which tied her up (as I had been tied up, when my aunt first received

me) like a bundle, and was secured behind at the waist, in a strong

knot. Miss Micawber I found made snug for stormy weather, in the same

manner; with nothing superfluous about her. Master Micawber was hardly

visible in a Guernsey shirt, and the shaggiest suit of slops I ever

saw; and the children were done up, like preserved meats, in impervious

cases. Both Mr. Micawber and his eldest son wore their sleeves loosely

turned back at the wrists, as being ready to lend a hand in any

direction, and to ‘tumble up’, or sing out, ‘Yeo--Heave--Yeo!’ on the

shortest notice.

Thus Traddles and I found them at nightfall, assembled on the wooden

steps, at that time known as Hungerford Stairs, watching the departure

of a boat with some of their property on board. I had told Traddles of

the terrible event, and it had greatly shocked him; but there could be

no doubt of the kindness of keeping it a secret, and he had come to help

me in this last service. It was here that I took Mr. Micawber aside, and

received his promise.

The Micawber family were lodged in a little, dirty, tumble-down

public-house, which in those days was close to the stairs, and whose

protruding wooden rooms overhung the river. The family, as emigrants,

being objects of some interest in and about Hungerford, attracted so

many beholders, that we were glad to take refuge in their room. It was

one of the wooden chambers upstairs, with the tide flowing underneath.

My aunt and Agnes were there, busily making some little extra comforts,

in the way of dress, for the children. Peggotty was quietly assisting,

with the old insensible work-box, yard-measure, and bit of wax-candle

before her, that had now outlived so much.

It was not easy to answer her inquiries; still less to whisper Mr.

Peggotty, when Mr. Micawber brought him in, that I had given the letter,

and all was well. But I did both, and made them happy. If I showed any

trace of what I felt, my own sorrows were sufficient to account for it.

‘And when does the ship sail, Mr. Micawber?’ asked my aunt.

Mr. Micawber considered it necessary to prepare either my aunt or his

wife, by degrees, and said, sooner than he had expected yesterday.

‘The boat brought you word, I suppose?’ said my aunt.

‘It did, ma’am,’ he returned.

‘Well?’ said my aunt. ‘And she sails--’

‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘I am informed that we must positively be on board

before seven tomorrow morning.’

‘Heyday!’ said my aunt, ‘that’s soon. Is it a sea-going fact, Mr.

Peggotty?’ ‘’Tis so, ma’am. She’ll drop down the river with that theer

tide. If Mas’r Davy and my sister comes aboard at Gravesen’, arternoon

o’ next day, they’ll see the last on us.’

‘And that we shall do,’ said I, ‘be sure!’

‘Until then, and until we are at sea,’ observed Mr. Micawber, with a

glance of intelligence at me, ‘Mr. Peggotty and myself will constantly

keep a double look-out together, on our goods and chattels. Emma, my

love,’ said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat in his magnificent way,

‘my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles is so obliging as to solicit, in my ear,

that he should have the privilege of ordering the ingredients necessary

to the composition of a moderate portion of that Beverage which is

peculiarly associated, in our minds, with the Roast Beef of Old England.

I allude to--in short, Punch. Under ordinary circumstances, I should

scruple to entreat the indulgence of Miss Trotwood and Miss Wickfield,

but-’

‘I can only say for myself,’ said my aunt, ‘that I will drink all

happiness and success to you, Mr. Micawber, with the utmost pleasure.’

‘And I too!’ said Agnes, with a smile.

Mr. Micawber immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to be

quite at home; and in due time returned with a steaming jug. I could

not but observe that he had been peeling the lemons with his own

clasp-knife, which, as became the knife of a practical settler, was

about a foot long; and which he wiped, not wholly without ostentation,

on the sleeve of his coat. Mrs. Micawber and the two elder members

of the family I now found to be provided with similar formidable

instruments, while every child had its own wooden spoon attached to its