第 6 页

just the right height for me, nailed against the wall, and framed with

oyster-shells; a little bed, which there was just room enough to get

into; and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table. The walls

were whitewashed as white as milk, and the patchwork counterpane made my

eyes quite ache with its brightness. One thing I particularly noticed

in this delightful house, was the smell of fish; which was so searching,

that when I took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it

smelt exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster. On my imparting this

discovery in confidence to Peggotty, she informed me that her brother

dealt in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish; and I afterwards found that a

heap of these creatures, in a state of wonderful conglomeration with one

another, and never leaving off pinching whatever they laid hold of,

were usually to be found in a little wooden outhouse where the pots and

kettles were kept.

We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white apron, whom I had seen

curtseying at the door when I was on Ham’s back, about a quarter of a

mile off. Likewise by a most beautiful little girl (or I thought her so)

with a necklace of blue beads on, who wouldn’t let me kiss her when I

offered to, but ran away and hid herself. By and by, when we had dined

in a sumptuous manner off boiled dabs, melted butter, and potatoes, with

a chop for me, a hairy man with a very good-natured face came home. As

he called Peggotty ‘Lass’, and gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I

had no doubt, from the general propriety of her conduct, that he was her

brother; and so he turned out--being presently introduced to me as Mr.

Peggotty, the master of the house.

‘Glad to see you, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You’ll find us rough, sir,

but you’ll find us ready.’

I thanked him, and replied that I was sure I should be happy in such a

delightful place.

‘How’s your Ma, sir?’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Did you leave her pretty

jolly?’

I gave Mr. Peggotty to understand that she was as jolly as I could wish,

and that she desired her compliments--which was a polite fiction on my

part.

‘I’m much obleeged to her, I’m sure,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Well, sir,

if you can make out here, fur a fortnut, ‘long wi’ her,’ nodding at his

sister, ‘and Ham, and little Em’ly, we shall be proud of your company.’

Having done the honours of his house in this hospitable manner, Mr.

Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettleful of hot water, remarking

that ‘cold would never get his muck off’. He soon returned, greatly

improved in appearance; but so rubicund, that I couldn’t help

thinking his face had this in common with the lobsters, crabs, and

crawfish,--that it went into the hot water very black, and came out very

red.

After tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug (the nights

being cold and misty now), it seemed to me the most delicious retreat

that the imagination of man could conceive. To hear the wind getting

up out at sea, to know that the fog was creeping over the desolate flat

outside, and to look at the fire, and think that there was no house near

but this one, and this one a boat, was like enchantment. Little Em’ly

had overcome her shyness, and was sitting by my side upon the lowest and

least of the lockers, which was just large enough for us two, and just

fitted into the chimney corner. Mrs. Peggotty with the white apron, was

knitting on the opposite side of the fire. Peggotty at her needlework

was as much at home with St. Paul’s and the bit of wax-candle, as if

they had never known any other roof. Ham, who had been giving me my

first lesson in all-fours, was trying to recollect a scheme of telling

fortunes with the dirty cards, and was printing off fishy impressions of

his thumb on all the cards he turned. Mr. Peggotty was smoking his pipe.

I felt it was a time for conversation and confidence.

‘Mr. Peggotty!’ says I.

‘Sir,’ says he.

‘Did you give your son the name of Ham, because you lived in a sort of

ark?’

Mr. Peggotty seemed to think it a deep idea, but answered:

‘No, sir. I never giv him no name.’

‘Who gave him that name, then?’ said I, putting question number two of

the catechism to Mr. Peggotty.

‘Why, sir, his father giv it him,’ said Mr. Peggotty.

‘I thought you were his father!’

‘My brother Joe was his father,’ said Mr. Peggotty.

‘Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after a respectful pause.

‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.

I was very much surprised that Mr. Peggotty was not Ham’s father, and

began to wonder whether I was mistaken about his relationship to anybody

else there. I was so curious to know, that I made up my mind to have it

out with Mr. Peggotty.

‘Little Em’ly,’ I said, glancing at her. ‘She is your daughter, isn’t

she, Mr. Peggotty?’

‘No, sir. My brother-in-law, Tom, was her father.’

I couldn’t help it. ‘--Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after another

respectful silence.

‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.

I felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not got to the

bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom somehow. So I said:

‘Haven’t you ANY children, Mr. Peggotty?’

‘No, master,’ he answered with a short laugh. ‘I’m a bacheldore.’

‘A bachelor!’ I said, astonished. ‘Why, who’s that, Mr. Peggotty?’

pointing to the person in the apron who was knitting.

‘That’s Missis Gummidge,’ said Mr. Peggotty.

‘Gummidge, Mr. Peggotty?’

But at this point Peggotty--I mean my own peculiar Peggotty--made such

impressive motions to me not to ask any more questions, that I could

only sit and look at all the silent company, until it was time to go to

bed. Then, in the privacy of my own little cabin, she informed me that

Ham and Em’ly were an orphan nephew and niece, whom my host had

at different times adopted in their childhood, when they were left

destitute: and that Mrs. Gummidge was the widow of his partner in

a boat, who had died very poor. He was but a poor man himself, said

Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as steel--those were her

similes. The only subject, she informed me, on which he ever showed a

violent temper or swore an oath, was this generosity of his; and if it

were ever referred to, by any one of them, he struck the table a heavy

blow with his right hand (had split it on one such occasion), and swore

a dreadful oath that he would be ‘Gormed’ if he didn’t cut and run

for good, if it was ever mentioned again. It appeared, in answer to

my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this

terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as

constituting a most solemn imprecation.

I was very sensible of my entertainer’s goodness, and listened to the

women’s going to bed in another little crib like mine at the opposite

end of the boat, and to him and Ham hanging up two hammocks for

themselves on the hooks I had noticed in the roof, in a very luxurious

state of mind, enhanced by my being sleepy. As slumber gradually stole

upon me, I heard the wind howling out at sea and coming on across the

flat so fiercely, that I had a lazy apprehension of the great deep

rising in the night. But I bethought myself that I was in a boat, after

all; and that a man like Mr. Peggotty was not a bad person to have on

board if anything did happen.

Nothing happened, however, worse than morning. Almost as soon as it

shone upon the oyster-shell frame of my mirror I was out of bed, and out

with little Em’ly, picking up stones upon the beach.

‘You’re quite a sailor, I suppose?’ I said to Em’ly. I don’t know that I

supposed anything of the kind, but I felt it an act of gallantry to

say something; and a shining sail close to us made such a pretty little

image of itself, at the moment, in her bright eye, that it came into my

head to say this.

‘No,’ replied Em’ly, shaking her head, ‘I’m afraid of the sea.’

‘Afraid!’ I said, with a becoming air of boldness, and looking very big

at the mighty ocean. ‘I an’t!’

‘Ah! but it’s cruel,’ said Em’ly. ‘I have seen it very cruel to some of

our men. I have seen it tear a boat as big as our house, all to pieces.’

‘I hope it wasn’t the boat that--’

‘That father was drownded in?’ said Em’ly. ‘No. Not that one, I never

see that boat.’

‘Nor him?’ I asked her.

Little Em’ly shook her head. ‘Not to remember!’

Here was a coincidence! I immediately went into an explanation how I had

never seen my own father; and how my mother and I had always lived

by ourselves in the happiest state imaginable, and lived so then, and

always meant to live so; and how my father’s grave was in the churchyard

near our house, and shaded by a tree, beneath the boughs of which I had

walked and heard the birds sing many a pleasant morning. But there were

some differences between Em’ly’s orphanhood and mine, it appeared. She

had lost her mother before her father; and where her father’s grave was

no one knew, except that it was somewhere in the depths of the sea.

‘Besides,’ said Em’ly, as she looked about for shells and pebbles, ‘your

father was a gentleman and your mother is a lady; and my father was a

fisherman and my mother was a fisherman’s daughter, and my uncle Dan is

a fisherman.’

‘Dan is Mr. Peggotty, is he?’ said I.

‘Uncle Dan--yonder,’ answered Em’ly, nodding at the boat-house.

‘Yes. I mean him. He must be very good, I should think?’

‘Good?’ said Em’ly. ‘If I was ever to be a lady, I’d give him a sky-blue

coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a

cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money.’

I said I had no doubt that Mr. Peggotty well deserved these treasures.

I must acknowledge that I felt it difficult to picture him quite at his

ease in the raiment proposed for him by his grateful little niece, and

that I was particularly doubtful of the policy of the cocked hat; but I

kept these sentiments to myself.

Little Em’ly had stopped and looked up at the sky in her enumeration

of these articles, as if they were a glorious vision. We went on again,

picking up shells and pebbles.

‘You would like to be a lady?’ I said.

Emily looked at me, and laughed and nodded ‘yes’.

‘I should like it very much. We would all be gentlefolks together, then.

Me, and uncle, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge. We wouldn’t mind then, when

there comes stormy weather.---Not for our own sakes, I mean. We would

for the poor fishermen’s, to be sure, and we’d help ‘em with money when

they come to any hurt.’ This seemed to me to be a very satisfactory and

therefore not at all improbable picture. I expressed my pleasure in the

contemplation of it, and little Em’ly was emboldened to say, shyly,

‘Don’t you think you are afraid of the sea, now?’

It was quiet enough to reassure me, but I have no doubt if I had seen a

moderately large wave come tumbling in, I should have taken to my heels,

with an awful recollection of her drowned relations. However, I said

‘No,’ and I added, ‘You don’t seem to be either, though you say you

are,’--for she was walking much too near the brink of a sort of old

jetty or wooden causeway we had strolled upon, and I was afraid of her

falling over.

‘I’m not afraid in this way,’ said little Em’ly. ‘But I wake when it

blows, and tremble to think of Uncle Dan and Ham and believe I hear ‘em

crying out for help. That’s why I should like so much to be a lady. But

I’m not afraid in this way. Not a bit. Look here!’

She started from my side, and ran along a jagged timber which protruded

from the place we stood upon, and overhung the deep water at some

height, without the least defence. The incident is so impressed on my

remembrance, that if I were a draughtsman I could draw its form here,

I dare say, accurately as it was that day, and little Em’ly springing

forward to her destruction (as it appeared to me), with a look that I

have never forgotten, directed far out to sea.

The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came back safe

to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at the cry I had uttered;

fruitlessly in any case, for there was no one near. But there have been

times since, in my manhood, many times there have been, when I have

thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that

in the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, there

was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any tempting her towards

him permitted on the part of her dead father, that her life might have

a chance of ending that day? There has been a time since when I have

wondered whether, if the life before her could have been revealed to me

at a glance, and so revealed as that a child could fully comprehend it,

and if her preservation could have depended on a motion of my hand, I

ought to have held it up to save her. There has been a time since--I do

not say it lasted long, but it has been--when I have asked myself the

question, would it have been better for little Em’ly to have had the

waters close above her head that morning in my sight; and when I have

answered Yes, it would have been.

This may be premature. I have set it down too soon, perhaps. But let it

stand.

We strolled a long way, and loaded ourselves with things that we thought

curious, and put some stranded starfish carefully back into the water--I

hardly know enough of the race at this moment to be quite certain

whether they had reason to feel obliged to us for doing so, or the

reverse--and then made our way home to Mr. Peggotty’s dwelling. We

stopped under the lee of the lobster-outhouse to exchange an innocent

kiss, and went in to breakfast glowing with health and pleasure.

‘Like two young mavishes,’ Mr. Peggotty said. I knew this meant, in our

local dialect, like two young thrushes, and received it as a compliment.

Of course I was in love with little Em’ly. I am sure I loved that

baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity and more

disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a later time

of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy raised up

something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealized,

and made a very angel of her. If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread

a little pair of wings and flown away before my eyes, I don’t think I