第 49 页

‘Yes, father,’ replied Minnie. ‘Never say I detracted from her!’

‘Very good,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘That’s right. And so, young gentleman,’ he

added, after a few moments’ further rubbing of his chin, ‘that you may

not consider me long-winded as well as short-breathed, I believe that’s

all about it.’

As they had spoken in a subdued tone, while speaking of Em’ly, I had no

doubt that she was near. On my asking now, if that were not so, Mr.

Omer nodded yes, and nodded towards the door of the parlour. My hurried

inquiry if I might peep in, was answered with a free permission; and,

looking through the glass, I saw her sitting at her work. I saw her, a

most beautiful little creature, with the cloudless blue eyes, that had

looked into my childish heart, turned laughingly upon another child

of Minnie’s who was playing near her; with enough of wilfulness in her

bright face to justify what I had heard; with much of the old capricious

coyness lurking in it; but with nothing in her pretty looks, I am sure,

but what was meant for goodness and for happiness, and what was on a

good and happy course.

The tune across the yard that seemed as if it never had left off--alas!

it was the tune that never DOES leave off--was beating, softly, all the

while.

‘Wouldn’t you like to step in,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘and speak to her? Walk

in and speak to her, sir! Make yourself at home!’

I was too bashful to do so then--I was afraid of confusing her, and I

was no less afraid of confusing myself.--but I informed myself of the

hour at which she left of an evening, in order that our visit might

be timed accordingly; and taking leave of Mr. Omer, and his pretty

daughter, and her little children, went away to my dear old Peggotty’s.

Here she was, in the tiled kitchen, cooking dinner! The moment I knocked

at the door she opened it, and asked me what I pleased to want. I looked

at her with a smile, but she gave me no smile in return. I had never

ceased to write to her, but it must have been seven years since we had

met.

‘Is Mr. Barkis at home, ma’am?’ I said, feigning to speak roughly to

her.

‘He’s at home, sir,’ returned Peggotty, ‘but he’s bad abed with the

rheumatics.’

‘Don’t he go over to Blunderstone now?’ I asked.

‘When he’s well he do,’ she answered.

‘Do YOU ever go there, Mrs. Barkis?’

She looked at me more attentively, and I noticed a quick movement of her

hands towards each other.

‘Because I want to ask a question about a house there, that they call

the--what is it?--the Rookery,’ said I.

She took a step backward, and put out her hands in an undecided

frightened way, as if to keep me off.

‘Peggotty!’ I cried to her.

She cried, ‘My darling boy!’ and we both burst into tears, and were

locked in one another’s arms.

What extravagances she committed; what laughing and crying over me; what

pride she showed, what joy, what sorrow that she whose pride and joy I

might have been, could never hold me in a fond embrace; I have not the

heart to tell. I was troubled with no misgiving that it was young in

me to respond to her emotions. I had never laughed and cried in all my

life, I dare say--not even to her--more freely than I did that morning.

‘Barkis will be so glad,’ said Peggotty, wiping her eyes with her apron,

‘that it’ll do him more good than pints of liniment. May I go and tell

him you are here? Will you come up and see him, my dear?’

Of course I would. But Peggotty could not get out of the room as easily

as she meant to, for as often as she got to the door and looked round

at me, she came back again to have another laugh and another cry upon my

shoulder. At last, to make the matter easier, I went upstairs with

her; and having waited outside for a minute, while she said a word of

preparation to Mr. Barkis, presented myself before that invalid.

He received me with absolute enthusiasm. He was too rheumatic to be

shaken hands with, but he begged me to shake the tassel on the top of

his nightcap, which I did most cordially. When I sat down by the side

of the bed, he said that it did him a world of good to feel as if he

was driving me on the Blunderstone road again. As he lay in bed, face

upward, and so covered, with that exception, that he seemed to be

nothing but a face--like a conventional cherubim--he looked the queerest

object I ever beheld.

‘What name was it, as I wrote up in the cart, sir?’ said Mr. Barkis,

with a slow rheumatic smile.

‘Ah! Mr. Barkis, we had some grave talks about that matter, hadn’t we?’

‘I was willin’ a long time, sir?’ said Mr. Barkis.

‘A long time,’ said I.

‘And I don’t regret it,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Do you remember what you

told me once, about her making all the apple parsties and doing all the

cooking?’

‘Yes, very well,’ I returned.

‘It was as true,’ said Mr. Barkis, ‘as turnips is. It was as true,’ said

Mr. Barkis, nodding his nightcap, which was his only means of emphasis,

‘as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.’

Mr. Barkis turned his eyes upon me, as if for my assent to this result

of his reflections in bed; and I gave it.

‘Nothing’s truer than them,’ repeated Mr. Barkis; ‘a man as poor as I

am, finds that out in his mind when he’s laid up. I’m a very poor man,

sir!’

‘I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Barkis.’

‘A very poor man, indeed I am,’ said Mr. Barkis.

Here his right hand came slowly and feebly from under the bedclothes,

and with a purposeless uncertain grasp took hold of a stick which was

loosely tied to the side of the bed. After some poking about with

this instrument, in the course of which his face assumed a variety of

distracted expressions, Mr. Barkis poked it against a box, an end

of which had been visible to me all the time. Then his face became

composed.

‘Old clothes,’ said Mr. Barkis.

‘Oh!’ said I.

‘I wish it was Money, sir,’ said Mr. Barkis.

‘I wish it was, indeed,’ said I.

‘But it AIN’T,’ said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes as wide as he

possibly could.

I expressed myself quite sure of that, and Mr. Barkis, turning his eyes

more gently to his wife, said:

‘She’s the usefullest and best of women, C. P. Barkis. All the praise

that anyone can give to C. P. Barkis, she deserves, and more! My dear,

you’ll get a dinner today, for company; something good to eat and drink,

will you?’

I should have protested against this unnecessary demonstration in

my honour, but that I saw Peggotty, on the opposite side of the bed,

extremely anxious I should not. So I held my peace.

‘I have got a trifle of money somewhere about me, my dear,’ said Mr.

Barkis, ‘but I’m a little tired. If you and Mr. David will leave me for

a short nap, I’ll try and find it when I wake.’

We left the room, in compliance with this request. When we got outside

the door, Peggotty informed me that Mr. Barkis, being now ‘a little

nearer’ than he used to be, always resorted to this same device before

producing a single coin from his store; and that he endured unheard-of

agonies in crawling out of bed alone, and taking it from that unlucky

box. In effect, we presently heard him uttering suppressed groans of the

most dismal nature, as this magpie proceeding racked him in every joint;

but while Peggotty’s eyes were full of compassion for him, she said his

generous impulse would do him good, and it was better not to check it.

So he groaned on, until he had got into bed again, suffering, I have no

doubt, a martyrdom; and then called us in, pretending to have just

woke up from a refreshing sleep, and to produce a guinea from under his

pillow. His satisfaction in which happy imposition on us, and in

having preserved the impenetrable secret of the box, appeared to be a

sufficient compensation to him for all his tortures.

I prepared Peggotty for Steerforth’s arrival and it was not long before

he came. I am persuaded she knew no difference between his having been a

personal benefactor of hers, and a kind friend to me, and that she would

have received him with the utmost gratitude and devotion in any case.

But his easy, spirited good humour; his genial manner, his handsome

looks, his natural gift of adapting himself to whomsoever he pleased,

and making direct, when he cared to do it, to the main point of interest

in anybody’s heart; bound her to him wholly in five minutes. His

manner to me, alone, would have won her. But, through all these causes

combined, I sincerely believe she had a kind of adoration for him before

he left the house that night.

He stayed there with me to dinner--if I were to say willingly, I should

not half express how readily and gaily. He went into Mr. Barkis’s room

like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he were healthy

weather. There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything

he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming

impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which

was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even

now, in the remembrance.

We made merry in the little parlour, where the Book of Martyrs,

unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the desk as of old, and where

I now turned over its terrific pictures, remembering the old sensations

they had awakened, but not feeling them. When Peggotty spoke of what

she called my room, and of its being ready for me at night, and of her

hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much as look at Steerforth,

hesitating, he was possessed of the whole case.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You’ll sleep here, while we stay, and I shall

sleep at the hotel.’

‘But to bring you so far,’ I returned, ‘and to separate, seems bad

companionship, Steerforth.’

‘Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally belong?’ he said.

‘What is “seems”, compared to that?’ It was settled at once.

He maintained all his delightful qualities to the last, until we started

forth, at eight o’clock, for Mr. Peggotty’s boat. Indeed, they were more

and more brightly exhibited as the hours went on; for I thought even

then, and I have no doubt now, that the consciousness of success in his

determination to please, inspired him with a new delicacy of perception,

and made it, subtle as it was, more easy to him. If anyone had told me,

then, that all this was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of

the moment, for the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love

of superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was

worthless to him, and next minute thrown away--I say, if anyone had told

me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of receiving it my

indignation would have found a vent! Probably only in an increase, had

that been possible, of the romantic feelings of fidelity and friendship

with which I walked beside him, over the dark wintry sands towards the

old boat; the wind sighing around us even more mournfully, than it had

sighed and moaned upon the night when I first darkened Mr. Peggotty’s

door.

‘This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?’

‘Dismal enough in the dark,’ he said: ‘and the sea roars as if it were

hungry for us. Is that the boat, where I see a light yonder?’ ‘That’s

the boat,’ said I.

‘And it’s the same I saw this morning,’ he returned. ‘I came straight to

it, by instinct, I suppose.’

We said no more as we approached the light, but made softly for the

door. I laid my hand upon the latch; and whispering Steerforth to keep

close to me, went in.

A murmur of voices had been audible on the outside, and, at the

moment of our entrance, a clapping of hands: which latter noise, I

was surprised to see, proceeded from the generally disconsolate Mrs.

Gummidge. But Mrs. Gummidge was not the only person there who was

unusually excited. Mr. Peggotty, his face lighted up with uncommon

satisfaction, and laughing with all his might, held his rough arms

wide open, as if for little Em’ly to run into them; Ham, with a mixed

expression in his face of admiration, exultation, and a lumbering sort

of bashfulness that sat upon him very well, held little Em’ly by

the hand, as if he were presenting her to Mr. Peggotty; little Em’ly

herself, blushing and shy, but delighted with Mr. Peggotty’s delight, as

her joyous eyes expressed, was stopped by our entrance (for she saw us

first) in the very act of springing from Ham to nestle in Mr. Peggotty’s

embrace. In the first glimpse we had of them all, and at the moment of

our passing from the dark cold night into the warm light room, this

was the way in which they were all employed: Mrs. Gummidge in the

background, clapping her hands like a madwoman.

The little picture was so instantaneously dissolved by our going in,

that one might have doubted whether it had ever been. I was in the midst

of the astonished family, face to face with Mr. Peggotty, and holding

out my hand to him, when Ham shouted:

‘Mas’r Davy! It’s Mas’r Davy!’

In a moment we were all shaking hands with one another, and asking one

another how we did, and telling one another how glad we were to meet,

and all talking at once. Mr. Peggotty was so proud and overjoyed to see

us, that he did not know what to say or do, but kept over and over again

shaking hands with me, and then with Steerforth, and then with me, and

then ruffling his shaggy hair all over his head, and laughing with such

glee and triumph, that it was a treat to see him.

‘Why, that you two gent’lmen--gent’lmen growed--should come to this here

roof tonight, of all nights in my life,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘is such a

thing as never happened afore, I do rightly believe! Em’ly, my darling,

come here! Come here, my little witch! There’s Mas’r Davy’s friend, my

dear! There’s the gent’lman as you’ve heerd on, Em’ly. He comes to see

you, along with Mas’r Davy, on the brightest night of your uncle’s life

as ever was or will be, Gorm the t’other one, and horroar for it!’

After delivering this speech all in a breath, and with extraordinary

animation and pleasure, Mr. Peggotty put one of his large hands

rapturously on each side of his niece’s face, and kissing it a dozen

times, laid it with a gentle pride and love upon his broad chest, and

patted it as if his hand had been a lady’s. Then he let her go; and as