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appears, in good work, and well to do, thanked me in a very manly sort

of manner for this (conducting himself altogether, I must say, in a way

that gives me a high opinion of him), and went and took as comfortable

a little house as you or I could wish to clap eyes on. That little

house is now furnished right through, as neat and complete as a doll’s

parlour; and but for Barkis’s illness having taken this bad turn, poor

fellow, they would have been man and wife--I dare say, by this time. As

it is, there’s a postponement.’

‘And Emily, Mr. Omer?’ I inquired. ‘Has she become more settled?’

‘Why that, you know,’ he returned, rubbing his double chin again, ‘can’t

naturally be expected. The prospect of the change and separation, and

all that, is, as one may say, close to her and far away from her, both

at once. Barkis’s death needn’t put it off much, but his lingering

might. Anyway, it’s an uncertain state of matters, you see.’

‘I see,’ said I.

‘Consequently,’ pursued Mr. Omer, ‘Em’ly’s still a little down, and a

little fluttered; perhaps, upon the whole, she’s more so than she was.

Every day she seems to get fonder and fonder of her uncle, and more loth

to part from all of us. A kind word from me brings the tears into her

eyes; and if you was to see her with my daughter Minnie’s little girl,

you’d never forget it. Bless my heart alive!’ said Mr. Omer, pondering,

‘how she loves that child!’

Having so favourable an opportunity, it occurred to me to ask Mr. Omer,

before our conversation should be interrupted by the return of his

daughter and her husband, whether he knew anything of Martha.

‘Ah!’ he rejoined, shaking his head, and looking very much dejected.

‘No good. A sad story, sir, however you come to know it. I never thought

there was harm in the girl. I wouldn’t wish to mention it before my

daughter Minnie--for she’d take me up directly--but I never did. None of

us ever did.’

Mr. Omer, hearing his daughter’s footstep before I heard it, touched me

with his pipe, and shut up one eye, as a caution. She and her husband

came in immediately afterwards.

Their report was, that Mr. Barkis was ‘as bad as bad could be’; that he

was quite unconscious; and that Mr. Chillip had mournfully said in the

kitchen, on going away just now, that the College of Physicians, the

College of Surgeons, and Apothecaries’ Hall, if they were all called

in together, couldn’t help him. He was past both Colleges, Mr. Chillip

said, and the Hall could only poison him.

Hearing this, and learning that Mr. Peggotty was there, I determined to

go to the house at once. I bade good night to Mr. Omer, and to Mr. and

Mrs. Joram; and directed my steps thither, with a solemn feeling, which

made Mr. Barkis quite a new and different creature.

My low tap at the door was answered by Mr. Peggotty. He was not so much

surprised to see me as I had expected. I remarked this in Peggotty,

too, when she came down; and I have seen it since; and I think, in the

expectation of that dread surprise, all other changes and surprises

dwindle into nothing.

I shook hands with Mr. Peggotty, and passed into the kitchen, while he

softly closed the door. Little Emily was sitting by the fire, with her

hands before her face. Ham was standing near her.

We spoke in whispers; listening, between whiles, for any sound in the

room above. I had not thought of it on the occasion of my last visit,

but how strange it was to me, now, to miss Mr. Barkis out of the

kitchen!

‘This is very kind of you, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty.

‘It’s oncommon kind,’ said Ham.

‘Em’ly, my dear,’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘See here! Here’s Mas’r Davy come!

What, cheer up, pretty! Not a wured to Mas’r Davy?’

There was a trembling upon her, that I can see now. The coldness of her

hand when I touched it, I can feel yet. Its only sign of animation was

to shrink from mine; and then she glided from the chair, and creeping

to the other side of her uncle, bowed herself, silently and trembling

still, upon his breast.

‘It’s such a loving art,’ said Mr. Peggotty, smoothing her rich hair

with his great hard hand, ‘that it can’t abear the sorrer of this.

It’s nat’ral in young folk, Mas’r Davy, when they’re new to these here

trials, and timid, like my little bird,--it’s nat’ral.’

She clung the closer to him, but neither lifted up her face, nor spoke a

word.

‘It’s getting late, my dear,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and here’s Ham come

fur to take you home. Theer! Go along with t’other loving art! What’

Em’ly? Eh, my pretty?’

The sound of her voice had not reached me, but he bent his head as if he

listened to her, and then said:

‘Let you stay with your uncle? Why, you doen’t mean to ask me that! Stay

with your uncle, Moppet? When your husband that’ll be so soon, is here

fur to take you home? Now a person wouldn’t think it, fur to see this

little thing alongside a rough-weather chap like me,’ said Mr. Peggotty,

looking round at both of us, with infinite pride; ‘but the sea ain’t

more salt in it than she has fondness in her for her uncle--a foolish

little Em’ly!’

‘Em’ly’s in the right in that, Mas’r Davy!’ said Ham. ‘Lookee here! As

Em’ly wishes of it, and as she’s hurried and frightened, like, besides,

I’ll leave her till morning. Let me stay too!’

‘No, no,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You doen’t ought--a married man like

you--or what’s as good--to take and hull away a day’s work. And you

doen’t ought to watch and work both. That won’t do. You go home and turn

in. You ain’t afeerd of Em’ly not being took good care on, I know.’

Ham yielded to this persuasion, and took his hat to go. Even when he

kissed her--and I never saw him approach her, but I felt that nature

had given him the soul of a gentleman--she seemed to cling closer to

her uncle, even to the avoidance of her chosen husband. I shut the

door after him, that it might cause no disturbance of the quiet that

prevailed; and when I turned back, I found Mr. Peggotty still talking to

her.

‘Now, I’m a going upstairs to tell your aunt as Mas’r Davy’s here, and

that’ll cheer her up a bit,’ he said. ‘Sit ye down by the fire, the

while, my dear, and warm those mortal cold hands. You doen’t need to be

so fearsome, and take on so much. What? You’ll go along with me?--Well!

come along with me--come! If her uncle was turned out of house and home,

and forced to lay down in a dyke, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with

no less pride than before, ‘it’s my belief she’d go along with him, now!

But there’ll be someone else, soon,--someone else, soon, Em’ly!’

Afterwards, when I went upstairs, as I passed the door of my little

chamber, which was dark, I had an indistinct impression of her being

within it, cast down upon the floor. But, whether it was really she, or

whether it was a confusion of the shadows in the room, I don’t know now.

I had leisure to think, before the kitchen fire, of pretty little

Emily’s dread of death--which, added to what Mr. Omer had told me, I

took to be the cause of her being so unlike herself--and I had leisure,

before Peggotty came down, even to think more leniently of the weakness

of it: as I sat counting the ticking of the clock, and deepening my

sense of the solemn hush around me. Peggotty took me in her arms, and

blessed and thanked me over and over again for being such a comfort to

her (that was what she said) in her distress. She then entreated me to

come upstairs, sobbing that Mr. Barkis had always liked me and admired

me; that he had often talked of me, before he fell into a stupor; and

that she believed, in case of his coming to himself again, he would

brighten up at sight of me, if he could brighten up at any earthly

thing.

The probability of his ever doing so, appeared to me, when I saw him, to

be very small. He was lying with his head and shoulders out of bed, in

an uncomfortable attitude, half resting on the box which had cost him so

much pain and trouble. I learned, that, when he was past creeping out of

bed to open it, and past assuring himself of its safety by means of the

divining rod I had seen him use, he had required to have it placed on

the chair at the bed-side, where he had ever since embraced it, night

and day. His arm lay on it now. Time and the world were slipping from

beneath him, but the box was there; and the last words he had uttered

were (in an explanatory tone) ‘Old clothes!’

‘Barkis, my dear!’ said Peggotty, almost cheerfully: bending over him,

while her brother and I stood at the bed’s foot. ‘Here’s my dear boy--my

dear boy, Master Davy, who brought us together, Barkis! That you sent

messages by, you know! Won’t you speak to Master Davy?’

He was as mute and senseless as the box, from which his form derived the

only expression it had.

‘He’s a going out with the tide,’ said Mr. Peggotty to me, behind his

hand.

My eyes were dim and so were Mr. Peggotty’s; but I repeated in a

whisper, ‘With the tide?’

‘People can’t die, along the coast,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘except when

the tide’s pretty nigh out. They can’t be born, unless it’s pretty nigh

in--not properly born, till flood. He’s a going out with the tide. It’s

ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it

turns, he’ll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next

tide.’

We remained there, watching him, a long time--hours. What mysterious

influence my presence had upon him in that state of his senses, I shall

not pretend to say; but when he at last began to wander feebly, it is

certain he was muttering about driving me to school.

‘He’s coming to himself,’ said Peggotty.

Mr. Peggotty touched me, and whispered with much awe and reverence.

‘They are both a-going out fast.’

‘Barkis, my dear!’ said Peggotty.

‘C. P. Barkis,’ he cried faintly. ‘No better woman anywhere!’

‘Look! Here’s Master Davy!’ said Peggotty. For he now opened his eyes.

I was on the point of asking him if he knew me, when he tried to stretch

out his arm, and said to me, distinctly, with a pleasant smile:

‘Barkis is willin’!’

And, it being low water, he went out with the tide.

CHAPTER 31. A GREATER LOSS

It was not difficult for me, on Peggotty’s solicitation, to resolve to

stay where I was, until after the remains of the poor carrier should

have made their last journey to Blunderstone. She had long ago bought,

out of her own savings, a little piece of ground in our old churchyard

near the grave of ‘her sweet girl’, as she always called my mother; and

there they were to rest.

In keeping Peggotty company, and doing all I could for her (little

enough at the utmost), I was as grateful, I rejoice to think, as even

now I could wish myself to have been. But I am afraid I had a supreme

satisfaction, of a personal and professional nature, in taking charge of

Mr. Barkis’s will, and expounding its contents.

I may claim the merit of having originated the suggestion that the will

should be looked for in the box. After some search, it was found in the

box, at the bottom of a horse’s nose-bag; wherein (besides hay) there

was discovered an old gold watch, with chain and seals, which Mr. Barkis

had worn on his wedding-day, and which had never been seen before or

since; a silver tobacco-stopper, in the form of a leg; an imitation

lemon, full of minute cups and saucers, which I have some idea Mr.

Barkis must have purchased to present to me when I was a child, and

afterwards found himself unable to part with; eighty-seven guineas and

a half, in guineas and half-guineas; two hundred and ten pounds, in

perfectly clean Bank notes; certain receipts for Bank of England

stock; an old horseshoe, a bad shilling, a piece of camphor, and an

oyster-shell. From the circumstance of the latter article having

been much polished, and displaying prismatic colours on the inside,

I conclude that Mr. Barkis had some general ideas about pearls, which

never resolved themselves into anything definite.

For years and years, Mr. Barkis had carried this box, on all his

journeys, every day. That it might the better escape notice, he had

invented a fiction that it belonged to ‘Mr. Blackboy’, and was ‘to be

left with Barkis till called for’; a fable he had elaborately written on

the lid, in characters now scarcely legible.

He had hoarded, all these years, I found, to good purpose. His property

in money amounted to nearly three thousand pounds. Of this he bequeathed

the interest of one thousand to Mr. Peggotty for his life; on his

decease, the principal to be equally divided between Peggotty, little

Emily, and me, or the survivor or survivors of us, share and share

alike. All the rest he died possessed of, he bequeathed to Peggotty;

whom he left residuary legatee, and sole executrix of that his last will

and testament.

I felt myself quite a proctor when I read this document aloud with all

possible ceremony, and set forth its provisions, any number of times,

to those whom they concerned. I began to think there was more in the

Commons than I had supposed. I examined the will with the deepest

attention, pronounced it perfectly formal in all respects, made a

pencil-mark or so in the margin, and thought it rather extraordinary

that I knew so much.

In this abstruse pursuit; in making an account for Peggotty, of all the

property into which she had come; in arranging all the affairs in an

orderly manner; and in being her referee and adviser on every point, to

our joint delight; I passed the week before the funeral. I did not see

little Emily in that interval, but they told me she was to be quietly

married in a fortnight.

I did not attend the funeral in character, if I may venture to say so.

I mean I was not dressed up in a black coat and a streamer, to frighten

the birds; but I walked over to Blunderstone early in the morning, and

was in the churchyard when it came, attended only by Peggotty and her

brother. The mad gentleman looked on, out of my little window; Mr.

Chillip’s baby wagged its heavy head, and rolled its goggle eyes, at

the clergyman, over its nurse’s shoulder; Mr. Omer breathed short in

the background; no one else was there; and it was very quiet. We walked

about the churchyard for an hour, after all was over; and pulled some