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she ran into the little chamber where I used to sleep, looked round upon

us, quite hot and out of breath with his uncommon satisfaction.

‘If you two gent’lmen--gent’lmen growed now, and such gent’lmen--’ said

Mr. Peggotty.

‘So th’ are, so th’ are!’ cried Ham. ‘Well said! So th’ are. Mas’r Davy

bor’--gent’lmen growed--so th’ are!’

‘If you two gent’lmen, gent’lmen growed,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘don’t

ex-cuse me for being in a state of mind, when you understand matters,

I’ll arks your pardon. Em’ly, my dear!--She knows I’m a going to tell,’

here his delight broke out again, ‘and has made off. Would you be so

good as look arter her, Mawther, for a minute?’

Mrs. Gummidge nodded and disappeared.

‘If this ain’t,’ said Mr. Peggotty, sitting down among us by the fire,

‘the brightest night o’ my life, I’m a shellfish--biled too--and more I

can’t say. This here little Em’ly, sir,’ in a low voice to Steerforth,

‘--her as you see a blushing here just now--’

Steerforth only nodded; but with such a pleased expression of interest,

and of participation in Mr. Peggotty’s feelings, that the latter

answered him as if he had spoken.

‘To be sure,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘That’s her, and so she is. Thankee,

sir.’

Ham nodded to me several times, as if he would have said so too.

‘This here little Em’ly of ours,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘has been, in our

house, what I suppose (I’m a ignorant man, but that’s my belief) no one

but a little bright-eyed creetur can be in a house. She ain’t my

child; I never had one; but I couldn’t love her more. You understand! I

couldn’t do it!’

‘I quite understand,’ said Steerforth.

‘I know you do, sir,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘and thankee again. Mas’r

Davy, he can remember what she was; you may judge for your own self what

she is; but neither of you can’t fully know what she has been, is, and

will be, to my loving art. I am rough, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I am as

rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one, unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can

know, I think, what our little Em’ly is to me. And betwixt ourselves,’

sinking his voice lower yet, ‘that woman’s name ain’t Missis Gummidge

neither, though she has a world of merits.’ Mr. Peggotty ruffled his

hair again, with both hands, as a further preparation for what he was

going to say, and went on, with a hand upon each of his knees:

‘There was a certain person as had know’d our Em’ly, from the time when

her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a babby, when

a young gal, when a woman. Not much of a person to look at, he warn’t,’

said Mr. Peggotty, ‘something o’ my own build--rough--a good deal o’

the sou’-wester in him--wery salt--but, on the whole, a honest sort of a

chap, with his art in the right place.’

I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to which

he sat grinning at us now.

‘What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,’ said Mr. Peggotty,

with his face one high noon of enjoyment, ‘but he loses that there art

of his to our little Em’ly. He follers her about, he makes hisself a

sort o’ servant to her, he loses in a great measure his relish for his

wittles, and in the long-run he makes it clear to me wot’s amiss. Now I

could wish myself, you see, that our little Em’ly was in a fair way of

being married. I could wish to see her, at all ewents, under articles to

a honest man as had a right to defend her. I don’t know how long I may

live, or how soon I may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any

night, in a gale of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the

town-lights shining for the last time over the rollers as I couldn’t

make no head against, I could go down quieter for thinking “There’s a

man ashore there, iron-true to my little Em’ly, God bless her, and no

wrong can touch my Em’ly while so be as that man lives.”’

Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right arm, as if he were

waving it at the town-lights for the last time, and then, exchanging a

nod with Ham, whose eye he caught, proceeded as before.

‘Well! I counsels him to speak to Em’ly. He’s big enough, but he’s

bashfuller than a little un, and he don’t like. So I speak. “What! Him!”

says Em’ly. “Him that I’ve know’d so intimate so many years, and like so

much. Oh, Uncle! I never can have him. He’s such a good fellow!” I gives

her a kiss, and I says no more to her than, “My dear, you’re right to

speak out, you’re to choose for yourself, you’re as free as a little

bird.” Then I aways to him, and I says, “I wish it could have been so,

but it can’t. But you can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is,

Be as you was with her, like a man.” He says to me, a-shaking of my

hand, “I will!” he says. And he was--honourable and manful--for two year

going on, and we was just the same at home here as afore.’

Mr. Peggotty’s face, which had varied in its expression with the various

stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former triumphant delight,

as he laid a hand upon my knee and a hand upon Steerforth’s (previously

wetting them both, for the greater emphasis of the action), and divided

the following speech between us:

‘All of a sudden, one evening--as it might be tonight--comes little

Em’ly from her work, and him with her! There ain’t so much in that,

you’ll say. No, because he takes care on her, like a brother, arter

dark, and indeed afore dark, and at all times. But this tarpaulin chap,

he takes hold of her hand, and he cries out to me, joyful, “Look here!

This is to be my little wife!” And she says, half bold and half shy, and

half a laughing and half a crying, “Yes, Uncle! If you please.”--If I

please!’ cried Mr. Peggotty, rolling his head in an ecstasy at the idea;

‘Lord, as if I should do anythink else!--“If you please, I am steadier

now, and I have thought better of it, and I’ll be as good a little wife

as I can to him, for he’s a dear, good fellow!” Then Missis Gummidge,

she claps her hands like a play, and you come in. Theer! the murder’s

out!’ said Mr. Peggotty--‘You come in! It took place this here present

hour; and here’s the man that’ll marry her, the minute she’s out of her

time.’

Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty dealt

him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and friendship; but

feeling called upon to say something to us, he said, with much faltering

and great difficulty:

‘She warn’t no higher than you was, Mas’r Davy--when you first

come--when I thought what she’d grow up to be. I see her grown

up--gent’lmen--like a flower. I’d lay down my life for

her--Mas’r Davy--Oh! most content and cheerful! She’s more to

me--gent’lmen--than--she’s all to me that ever I can want, and more

than ever I--than ever I could say. I--I love her true. There ain’t a

gent’lman in all the land--nor yet sailing upon all the sea--that

can love his lady more than I love her, though there’s many a common

man--would say better--what he meant.’

I thought it affecting to see such a sturdy fellow as Ham was now,

trembling in the strength of what he felt for the pretty little creature

who had won his heart. I thought the simple confidence reposed in us by

Mr. Peggotty and by himself, was, in itself, affecting. I was affected

by the story altogether. How far my emotions were influenced by the

recollections of my childhood, I don’t know. Whether I had come there

with any lingering fancy that I was still to love little Em’ly, I don’t

know. I know that I was filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first,

with an indescribably sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have

changed to pain.

Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the prevailing chord

among them with any skill, I should have made a poor hand of it. But it

depended upon Steerforth; and he did it with such address, that in a few

minutes we were all as easy and as happy as it was possible to be.

‘Mr. Peggotty,’ he said, ‘you are a thoroughly good fellow, and deserve

to be as happy as you are tonight. My hand upon it! Ham, I give you

joy, my boy. My hand upon that, too! Daisy, stir the fire, and make it a

brisk one! and Mr. Peggotty, unless you can induce your gentle niece to

come back (for whom I vacate this seat in the corner), I shall go.

Any gap at your fireside on such a night--such a gap least of all--I

wouldn’t make, for the wealth of the Indies!’

So Mr. Peggotty went into my old room to fetch little Em’ly. At first

little Em’ly didn’t like to come, and then Ham went. Presently they

brought her to the fireside, very much confused, and very shy,--but

she soon became more assured when she found how gently and respectfully

Steerforth spoke to her; how skilfully he avoided anything that would

embarrass her; how he talked to Mr. Peggotty of boats, and ships, and

tides, and fish; how he referred to me about the time when he had seen

Mr. Peggotty at Salem House; how delighted he was with the boat and all

belonging to it; how lightly and easily he carried on, until he brought

us, by degrees, into a charmed circle, and we were all talking away

without any reserve.

Em’ly, indeed, said little all the evening; but she looked, and

listened, and her face got animated, and she was charming. Steerforth

told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which arose out of his talk with Mr.

Peggotty), as if he saw it all before him--and little Em’ly’s eyes were

fastened on him all the time, as if she saw it too. He told us a merry

adventure of his own, as a relief to that, with as much gaiety as if the

narrative were as fresh to him as it was to us--and little Em’ly

laughed until the boat rang with the musical sounds, and we all laughed

(Steerforth too), in irresistible sympathy with what was so pleasant and

light-hearted. He got Mr. Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, ‘When

the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow’; and he sang a sailor’s

song himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have almost

fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round the house, and

murmuring low through our unbroken silence, was there to listen.

As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success

never attained by anyone else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me), since

the decease of the old one. He left her so little leisure for being

miserable, that she said next day she thought she must have been

bewitched.

But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the conversation.

When little Em’ly grew more courageous, and talked (but still bashfully)

across the fire to me, of our old wanderings upon the beach, to pick up

shells and pebbles; and when I asked her if she recollected how I used

to be devoted to her; and when we both laughed and reddened, casting

these looks back on the pleasant old times, so unreal to look at now; he

was silent and attentive, and observed us thoughtfully. She sat, at this

time, and all the evening, on the old locker in her old little corner

by the fire--Ham beside her, where I used to sit. I could not satisfy

myself whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or in a maidenly

reserve before us, that she kept quite close to the wall, and away from

him; but I observed that she did so, all the evening.

As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took our leave. We had had

some biscuit and dried fish for supper, and Steerforth had produced from

his pocket a full flask of Hollands, which we men (I may say we men,

now, without a blush) had emptied. We parted merrily; and as they all

stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they could upon our

road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em’ly peeping after us, from

behind Ham, and heard her soft voice calling to us to be careful how we

went.

‘A most engaging little Beauty!’ said Steerforth, taking my arm. ‘Well!

It’s a quaint place, and they are quaint company, and it’s quite a new

sensation to mix with them.’

‘How fortunate we are, too,’ I returned, ‘to have arrived to witness

their happiness in that intended marriage! I never saw people so happy.

How delightful to see it, and to be made the sharers in their honest

joy, as we have been!’

‘That’s rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn’t he?’ said

Steerforth.

He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that I felt a shock

in this unexpected and cold reply. But turning quickly upon him, and

seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved:

‘Ah, Steerforth! It’s well for you to joke about the poor! You may

skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from

me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how

exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman’s,

or humour a love like my old nurse’s, I know that there is not a joy or

sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you.

And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!’

He stopped, and, looking in my face, said, ‘Daisy, I believe you are

in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!’ Next moment he was

gaily singing Mr. Peggotty’s song, as we walked at a round pace back to

Yarmouth.

CHAPTER 22. SOME OLD SCENES, AND SOME NEW PEOPLE

Steerforth and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of the

country. We were very much together, I need not say; but occasionally we

were asunder for some hours at a time. He was a good sailor, and I was

but an indifferent one; and when he went out boating with Mr. Peggotty,

which was a favourite amusement of his, I generally remained ashore. My

occupation of Peggotty’s spare-room put a constraint upon me, from which

he was free: for, knowing how assiduously she attended on Mr. Barkis

all day, I did not like to remain out late at night; whereas Steerforth,

lying at the Inn, had nothing to consult but his own humour. Thus it

came about, that I heard of his making little treats for the fishermen

at Mr. Peggotty’s house of call, ‘The Willing Mind’, after I was in bed,

and of his being afloat, wrapped in fishermen’s clothes, whole moonlight

nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at flood. By this

time, however, I knew that his restless nature and bold spirits

delighted to find a vent in rough toil and hard weather, as in any other