第 128 页

drinking; some, already settled down into the possession of their few

feet of space, with their little households arranged, and tiny children

established on stools, or in dwarf elbow-chairs; others, despairing of

a resting-place, and wandering disconsolately. From babies who had but a

week or two of life behind them, to crooked old men and women who seemed

to have but a week or two of life before them; and from ploughmen bodily

carrying out soil of England on their boots, to smiths taking away

samples of its soot and smoke upon their skins; every age and occupation

appeared to be crammed into the narrow compass of the ‘tween decks.

As my eye glanced round this place, I thought I saw sitting, by an open

port, with one of the Micawber children near her, a figure like Emily’s;

it first attracted my attention, by another figure parting from it with

a kiss; and as it glided calmly away through the disorder, reminding

me of--Agnes! But in the rapid motion and confusion, and in the

unsettlement of my own thoughts, I lost it again; and only knew that

the time was come when all visitors were being warned to leave the ship;

that my nurse was crying on a chest beside me; and that Mrs. Gummidge,

assisted by some younger stooping woman in black, was busily arranging

Mr. Peggotty’s goods.

‘Is there any last wured, Mas’r Davy?’ said he. ‘Is there any one

forgotten thing afore we parts?’

‘One thing!’ said I. ‘Martha!’

He touched the younger woman I have mentioned on the shoulder, and

Martha stood before me.

‘Heaven bless you, you good man!’ cried I. ‘You take her with you!’

She answered for him, with a burst of tears. I could speak no more at

that time, but I wrung his hand; and if ever I have loved and honoured

any man, I loved and honoured that man in my soul.

The ship was clearing fast of strangers. The greatest trial that I had,

remained. I told him what the noble spirit that was gone, had given me

in charge to say at parting. It moved him deeply. But when he charged

me, in return, with many messages of affection and regret for those deaf

ears, he moved me more.

The time was come. I embraced him, took my weeping nurse upon my arm,

and hurried away. On deck, I took leave of poor Mrs. Micawber. She was

looking distractedly about for her family, even then; and her last words

to me were, that she never would desert Mr. Micawber.

We went over the side into our boat, and lay at a little distance, to

see the ship wafted on her course. It was then calm, radiant sunset.

She lay between us, and the red light; and every taper line and spar was

visible against the glow. A sight at once so beautiful, so mournful, and

so hopeful, as the glorious ship, lying, still, on the flushed water,

with all the life on board her crowded at the bulwarks, and there

clustering, for a moment, bare-headed and silent, I never saw.

Silent, only for a moment. As the sails rose to the wind, and the ship

began to move, there broke from all the boats three resounding cheers,

which those on board took up, and echoed back, and which were echoed

and re-echoed. My heart burst out when I heard the sound, and beheld the

waving of the hats and handkerchiefs--and then I saw her!

Then I saw her, at her uncle’s side, and trembling on his shoulder. He

pointed to us with an eager hand; and she saw us, and waved her last

good-bye to me. Aye, Emily, beautiful and drooping, cling to him with

the utmost trust of thy bruised heart; for he has clung to thee, with

all the might of his great love!

Surrounded by the rosy light, and standing high upon the deck, apart

together, she clinging to him, and he holding her, they solemnly passed

away. The night had fallen on the Kentish hills when we were rowed

ashore--and fallen darkly upon me.

CHAPTER 58. ABSENCE

It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the

ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many

unavailing sorrows and regrets.

I went away from England; not knowing, even then, how great the shock

was, that I had to bear. I left all who were dear to me, and went away;

and believed that I had borne it, and it was past. As a man upon a

field of battle will receive a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he is

struck, so I, when I was left alone with my undisciplined heart, had no

conception of the wound with which it had to strive.

The knowledge came upon me, not quickly, but little by little, and grain

by grain. The desolate feeling with which I went abroad, deepened

and widened hourly. At first it was a heavy sense of loss and sorrow,

wherein I could distinguish little else. By imperceptible degrees,

it became a hopeless consciousness of all that I had lost--love,

friendship, interest; of all that had been shattered--my first trust,

my first affection, the whole airy castle of my life; of all that

remained--a ruined blank and waste, lying wide around me, unbroken, to

the dark horizon.

If my grief were selfish, I did not know it to be so. I mourned for my

child-wife, taken from her blooming world, so young. I mourned for him

who might have won the love and admiration of thousands, as he had won

mine long ago. I mourned for the broken heart that had found rest in the

stormy sea; and for the wandering remnants of the simple home, where I

had heard the night-wind blowing, when I was a child.

From the accumulated sadness into which I fell, I had at length no hope

of ever issuing again. I roamed from place to place, carrying my burden

with me everywhere. I felt its whole weight now; and I drooped beneath

it, and I said in my heart that it could never be lightened.

When this despondency was at its worst, I believed that I should die.

Sometimes, I thought that I would like to die at home; and actually

turned back on my road, that I might get there soon. At other times, I

passed on farther away,--from city to city, seeking I know not what, and

trying to leave I know not what behind.

It is not in my power to retrace, one by one, all the weary phases of

distress of mind through which I passed. There are some dreams that can

only be imperfectly and vaguely described; and when I oblige myself to

look back on this time of my life, I seem to be recalling such a dream.

I see myself passing on among the novelties of foreign towns, palaces,

cathedrals, temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets--the

old abiding places of History and Fancy--as a dreamer might; bearing my

painful load through all, and hardly conscious of the objects as they

fade before me. Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was the

night that fell on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up from it--as

at last I did, thank Heaven!--and from its long, sad, wretched dream, to

dawn.

For many months I travelled with this ever-darkening cloud upon my

mind. Some blind reasons that I had for not returning home--reasons then

struggling within me, vainly, for more distinct expression--kept me

on my pilgrimage. Sometimes, I had proceeded restlessly from place to

place, stopping nowhere; sometimes, I had lingered long in one spot. I

had had no purpose, no sustaining soul within me, anywhere.

I was in Switzerland. I had come out of Italy, over one of the great

passes of the Alps, and had since wandered with a guide among the

by-ways of the mountains. If those awful solitudes had spoken to my

heart, I did not know it. I had found sublimity and wonder in the dread

heights and precipices, in the roaring torrents, and the wastes of ice

and snow; but as yet, they had taught me nothing else.

I came, one evening before sunset, down into a valley, where I was to

rest. In the course of my descent to it, by the winding track along

the mountain-side, from which I saw it shining far below, I think some

long-unwonted sense of beauty and tranquillity, some softening influence

awakened by its peace, moved faintly in my breast. I remember pausing

once, with a kind of sorrow that was not all oppressive, not quite

despairing. I remember almost hoping that some better change was

possible within me.

I came into the valley, as the evening sun was shining on the remote

heights of snow, that closed it in, like eternal clouds. The bases of

the mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay, were

richly green; and high above this gentler vegetation, grew forests of

dark fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the

avalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey

rock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually

blending with the crowning snow. Dotted here and there on the

mountain’s-side, each tiny dot a home, were lonely wooden cottages, so

dwarfed by the towering heights that they appeared too small for toys.

So did even the clustered village in the valley, with its wooden bridge

across the stream, where the stream tumbled over broken rocks, and

roared away among the trees. In the quiet air, there was a sound of

distant singing--shepherd voices; but, as one bright evening cloud

floated midway along the mountain’s-side, I could almost have believed

it came from there, and was not earthly music. All at once, in this

serenity, great Nature spoke to me; and soothed me to lay down my weary

head upon the grass, and weep as I had not wept yet, since Dora died!

I had found a packet of letters awaiting me but a few minutes before,

and had strolled out of the village to read them while my supper was

making ready. Other packets had missed me, and I had received none for a

long time. Beyond a line or two, to say that I was well, and had arrived

at such a place, I had not had fortitude or constancy to write a letter

since I left home.

The packet was in my hand. I opened it, and read the writing of Agnes.

She was happy and useful, was prospering as she had hoped. That was all

she told me of herself. The rest referred to me.

She gave me no advice; she urged no duty on me; she only told me, in her

own fervent manner, what her trust in me was. She knew (she said) how

such a nature as mine would turn affliction to good. She knew how trial

and emotion would exalt and strengthen it. She was sure that in my every

purpose I should gain a firmer and a higher tendency, through the grief

I had undergone. She, who so gloried in my fame, and so looked forward

to its augmentation, well knew that I would labour on. She knew that in

me, sorrow could not be weakness, but must be strength. As the endurance

of my childish days had done its part to make me what I was, so greater

calamities would nerve me on, to be yet better than I was; and so, as

they had taught me, would I teach others. She commended me to God, who

had taken my innocent darling to His rest; and in her sisterly affection

cherished me always, and was always at my side go where I would; proud

of what I had done, but infinitely prouder yet of what I was reserved to

do.

I put the letter in my breast, and thought what had I been an hour ago!

When I heard the voices die away, and saw the quiet evening cloud grow

dim, and all the colours in the valley fade, and the golden snow upon

the mountain-tops become a remote part of the pale night sky, yet felt

that the night was passing from my mind, and all its shadows clearing,

there was no name for the love I bore her, dearer to me, henceforward,

than ever until then.

I read her letter many times. I wrote to her before I slept. I told her

that I had been in sore need of her help; that without her I was not,

and I never had been, what she thought me; but that she inspired me to

be that, and I would try.

I did try. In three months more, a year would have passed since the

beginning of my sorrow. I determined to make no resolutions until the

expiration of those three months, but to try. I lived in that valley,

and its neighbourhood, all the time.

The three months gone, I resolved to remain away from home for some

time longer; to settle myself for the present in Switzerland, which was

growing dear to me in the remembrance of that evening; to resume my pen;

to work.

I resorted humbly whither Agnes had commended me; I sought out Nature,

never sought in vain; and I admitted to my breast the human interest

I had lately shrunk from. It was not long, before I had almost as many

friends in the valley as in Yarmouth: and when I left it, before the

winter set in, for Geneva, and came back in the spring, their cordial

greetings had a homely sound to me, although they were not conveyed in

English words.

I worked early and late, patiently and hard. I wrote a Story, with a

purpose growing, not remotely, out of my experience, and sent it to

Traddles, and he arranged for its publication very advantageously for

me; and the tidings of my growing reputation began to reach me from

travellers whom I encountered by chance. After some rest and change, I

fell to work, in my old ardent way, on a new fancy, which took strong

possession of me. As I advanced in the execution of this task, I felt it

more and more, and roused my utmost energies to do it well. This was my

third work of fiction. It was not half written, when, in an interval of

rest, I thought of returning home.

For a long time, though studying and working patiently, I had accustomed

myself to robust exercise. My health, severely impaired when I left

England, was quite restored. I had seen much. I had been in many

countries, and I hope I had improved my store of knowledge.

I have now recalled all that I think it needful to recall here, of this

term of absence--with one reservation. I have made it, thus far, with

no purpose of suppressing any of my thoughts; for, as I have elsewhere

said, this narrative is my written memory. I have desired to keep the

most secret current of my mind apart, and to the last. I enter on it

now. I cannot so completely penetrate the mystery of my own heart, as

to know when I began to think that I might have set its earliest and

brightest hopes on Agnes. I cannot say at what stage of my grief

it first became associated with the reflection, that, in my wayward

boyhood, I had thrown away the treasure of her love. I believe I may

have heard some whisper of that distant thought, in the old unhappy loss