第 5 页

Skylark, he said it meant the vessel.

I observed all day that Mr. Murdstone was graver and steadier than the

two gentlemen. They were very gay and careless. They joked freely with

one another, but seldom with him. It appeared to me that he was

more clever and cold than they were, and that they regarded him with

something of my own feeling. I remarked that, once or twice when Mr.

Quinion was talking, he looked at Mr. Murdstone sideways, as if to make

sure of his not being displeased; and that once when Mr. Passnidge (the

other gentleman) was in high spirits, he trod upon his foot, and gave

him a secret caution with his eyes, to observe Mr. Murdstone, who was

sitting stern and silent. Nor do I recollect that Mr. Murdstone laughed

at all that day, except at the Sheffield joke--and that, by the by, was

his own.

We went home early in the evening. It was a very fine evening, and my

mother and he had another stroll by the sweetbriar, while I was sent in

to get my tea. When he was gone, my mother asked me all about the day I

had had, and what they had said and done. I mentioned what they had said

about her, and she laughed, and told me they were impudent fellows who

talked nonsense--but I knew it pleased her. I knew it quite as well as

I know it now. I took the opportunity of asking if she was at all

acquainted with Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, but she answered No, only she

supposed he must be a manufacturer in the knife and fork way.

Can I say of her face--altered as I have reason to remember it, perished

as I know it is--that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this

instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look on in a

crowded street? Can I say of her innocent and girlish beauty, that it

faded, and was no more, when its breath falls on my cheek now, as it

fell that night? Can I say she ever changed, when my remembrance brings

her back to life, thus only; and, truer to its loving youth than I have

been, or man ever is, still holds fast what it cherished then?

I write of her just as she was when I had gone to bed after this talk,

and she came to bid me good night. She kneeled down playfully by the

side of the bed, and laying her chin upon her hands, and laughing, said:

‘What was it they said, Davy? Tell me again. I can’t believe it.’

‘“Bewitching--“’ I began.

My mother put her hands upon my lips to stop me.

‘It was never bewitching,’ she said, laughing. ‘It never could have been

bewitching, Davy. Now I know it wasn’t!’

‘Yes, it was. “Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield”,’ I repeated stoutly. ‘And,

“pretty.”’

‘No, no, it was never pretty. Not pretty,’ interposed my mother, laying

her fingers on my lips again.

‘Yes it was. “Pretty little widow.”’

‘What foolish, impudent creatures!’ cried my mother, laughing and

covering her face. ‘What ridiculous men! An’t they? Davy dear--’

‘Well, Ma.’

‘Don’t tell Peggotty; she might be angry with them. I am dreadfully

angry with them myself; but I would rather Peggotty didn’t know.’

I promised, of course; and we kissed one another over and over again,

and I soon fell fast asleep.

It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if it were the next day

when Peggotty broached the striking and adventurous proposition I am

about to mention; but it was probably about two months afterwards.

We were sitting as before, one evening (when my mother was out as

before), in company with the stocking and the yard-measure, and the bit

of wax, and the box with St. Paul’s on the lid, and the crocodile book,

when Peggotty, after looking at me several times, and opening her mouth

as if she were going to speak, without doing it--which I thought was

merely gaping, or I should have been rather alarmed--said coaxingly:

‘Master Davy, how should you like to go along with me and spend a

fortnight at my brother’s at Yarmouth? Wouldn’t that be a treat?’

‘Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?’ I inquired, provisionally.

‘Oh, what an agreeable man he is!’ cried Peggotty, holding up her hands.

‘Then there’s the sea; and the boats and ships; and the fishermen; and

the beach; and Am to play with--’

Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned in my first chapter; but she

spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar.

I was flushed by her summary of delights, and replied that it would

indeed be a treat, but what would my mother say?

‘Why then I’ll as good as bet a guinea,’ said Peggotty, intent upon my

face, ‘that she’ll let us go. I’ll ask her, if you like, as soon as ever

she comes home. There now!’

‘But what’s she to do while we’re away?’ said I, putting my small elbows

on the table to argue the point. ‘She can’t live by herself.’

If Peggotty were looking for a hole, all of a sudden, in the heel of

that stocking, it must have been a very little one indeed, and not worth

darning.

‘I say! Peggotty! She can’t live by herself, you know.’

‘Oh, bless you!’ said Peggotty, looking at me again at last. ‘Don’t

you know? She’s going to stay for a fortnight with Mrs. Grayper. Mrs.

Grayper’s going to have a lot of company.’

Oh! If that was it, I was quite ready to go. I waited, in the utmost

impatience, until my mother came home from Mrs. Grayper’s (for it was

that identical neighbour), to ascertain if we could get leave to carry

out this great idea. Without being nearly so much surprised as I had

expected, my mother entered into it readily; and it was all arranged

that night, and my board and lodging during the visit were to be paid

for.

The day soon came for our going. It was such an early day that it came

soon, even to me, who was in a fever of expectation, and half afraid

that an earthquake or a fiery mountain, or some other great convulsion

of nature, might interpose to stop the expedition. We were to go in a

carrier’s cart, which departed in the morning after breakfast. I would

have given any money to have been allowed to wrap myself up over-night,

and sleep in my hat and boots.

It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to recollect how

eager I was to leave my happy home; to think how little I suspected what

I did leave for ever.

I am glad to recollect that when the carrier’s cart was at the gate, and

my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for her and for

the old place I had never turned my back upon before, made me cry. I am

glad to know that my mother cried too, and that I felt her heart beat

against mine.

I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my mother

ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me

once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness and love with which

she lifted up her face to mine, and did so.

As we left her standing in the road, Mr. Murdstone came up to where

she was, and seemed to expostulate with her for being so moved. I was

looking back round the awning of the cart, and wondered what business

it was of his. Peggotty, who was also looking back on the other side,

seemed anything but satisfied; as the face she brought back in the cart

denoted.

I sat looking at Peggotty for some time, in a reverie on this

supposititious case: whether, if she were employed to lose me like the

boy in the fairy tale, I should be able to track my way home again by

the buttons she would shed.

CHAPTER 3. I HAVE A CHANGE

The carrier’s horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should hope,

and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to keep people

waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied, indeed, that he

sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said

he was only troubled with a cough. The carrier had a way of keeping his

head down, like his horse, and of drooping sleepily forward as he drove,

with one of his arms on each of his knees. I say ‘drove’, but it struck

me that the cart would have gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him,

for the horse did all that; and as to conversation, he had no idea of it

but whistling.

Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, which would have

lasted us out handsomely, if we had been going to London by the same

conveyance. We ate a good deal, and slept a good deal. Peggotty always

went to sleep with her chin upon the handle of the basket, her hold of

which never relaxed; and I could not have believed unless I had heard

her do it, that one defenceless woman could have snored so much.

We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and were such a long time

delivering a bedstead at a public-house, and calling at other places,

that I was quite tired, and very glad, when we saw Yarmouth. It looked

rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great

dull waste that lay across the river; and I could not help wondering, if

the world were really as round as my geography book said, how any

part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth might be

situated at one of the poles; which would account for it.

As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a

straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so

might have improved it; and also that if the land had been a little more

separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite

so much mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been nicer. But

Peggotty said, with greater emphasis than usual, that we must take

things as we found them, and that, for her part, she was proud to call

herself a Yarmouth Bloater.

When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me) and smelt

the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors walking

about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I

had done so busy a place an injustice; and said as much to Peggotty, who

heard my expressions of delight with great complacency, and told me it

was well known (I suppose to those who had the good fortune to be born

Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the

universe.

‘Here’s my Am!’ screamed Peggotty, ‘growed out of knowledge!’

He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house; and asked me how I

found myself, like an old acquaintance. I did not feel, at first, that

I knew him as well as he knew me, because he had never come to our house

since the night I was born, and naturally he had the advantage of me.

But our intimacy was much advanced by his taking me on his back to carry

me home. He was, now, a huge, strong fellow of six feet high, broad in

proportion, and round-shouldered; but with a simpering boy’s face and

curly light hair that gave him quite a sheepish look. He was dressed in

a canvas jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they

would have stood quite as well alone, without any legs in them. And you

couldn’t so properly have said he wore a hat, as that he was covered in

a-top, like an old building, with something pitchy.

Ham carrying me on his back and a small box of ours under his arm,

and Peggotty carrying another small box of ours, we turned down lanes

bestrewn with bits of chips and little hillocks of sand, and went

past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders’ yards, shipwrights’ yards,

ship-breakers’ yards, caulkers’ yards, riggers’ lofts, smiths’ forges,

and a great litter of such places, until we came out upon the dull waste

I had already seen at a distance; when Ham said,

‘Yon’s our house, Mas’r Davy!’

I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the wilderness,

and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no house could I make

out. There was a black barge, or some other kind of superannuated boat,

not far off, high and dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking

out of it for a chimney and smoking very cosily; but nothing else in the

way of a habitation that was visible to me.

‘That’s not it?’ said I. ‘That ship-looking thing?’

‘That’s it, Mas’r Davy,’ returned Ham.

If it had been Aladdin’s palace, roc’s egg and all, I suppose I could

not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it. There

was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there

were little windows in it; but the wonderful charm of it was, that

it was a real boat which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of

times, and which had never been intended to be lived in, on dry land.

That was the captivation of it to me. If it had ever been meant to be

lived in, I might have thought it small, or inconvenient, or lonely; but

never having been designed for any such use, it became a perfect abode.

It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. There was a

table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and on the chest of

drawers there was a tea-tray with a painting on it of a lady with a

parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child who was trundling a

hoop. The tray was kept from tumbling down, by a bible; and the tray, if

it had tumbled down, would have smashed a quantity of cups and saucers

and a teapot that were grouped around the book. On the walls there were

some common coloured pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects;

such as I have never seen since in the hands of pedlars, without seeing

the whole interior of Peggotty’s brother’s house again, at one view.

Abraham in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow

cast into a den of green lions, were the most prominent of these. Over

the little mantelshelf, was a picture of the ‘Sarah Jane’ lugger, built

at Sunderland, with a real little wooden stern stuck on to it; a work of

art, combining composition with carpentry, which I considered to be one

of the most enviable possessions that the world could afford. There

were some hooks in the beams of the ceiling, the use of which I did not

divine then; and some lockers and boxes and conveniences of that sort,

which served for seats and eked out the chairs.

All this I saw in the first glance after I crossed the

threshold--child-like, according to my theory--and then Peggotty opened

a little door and showed me my bedroom. It was the completest and most

desirable bedroom ever seen--in the stern of the vessel; with a little

window, where the rudder used to go through; a little looking-glass,