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have drownded him, as I’m a living soul, if I had had one thought of

what was in him! As he sat afore me,’ he said, wildly, holding out his

clenched right hand, ‘as he sat afore me, face to face, strike me down

dead, but I’d have drownded him, and thought it right!--I’m a going to

seek my niece.’

‘Where?’ cried Ham, interposing himself before the door.

‘Anywhere! I’m a going to seek my niece through the wureld. I’m a going

to find my poor niece in her shame, and bring her back. No one stop me!

I tell you I’m a going to seek my niece!’

‘No, no!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, coming between them, in a fit of crying.

‘No, no, Dan’l, not as you are now. Seek her in a little while, my lone

lorn Dan’l, and that’ll be but right! but not as you are now. Sit ye

down, and give me your forgiveness for having ever been a worrit to you,

Dan’l--what have my contraries ever been to this!--and let us speak a

word about them times when she was first an orphan, and when Ham was

too, and when I was a poor widder woman, and you took me in. It’ll

soften your poor heart, Dan’l,’ laying her head upon his shoulder, ‘and

you’ll bear your sorrow better; for you know the promise, Dan’l, “As

you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto

me”,--and that can never fail under this roof, that’s been our shelter

for so many, many year!’

He was quite passive now; and when I heard him crying, the impulse that

had been upon me to go down upon my knees, and ask their pardon for the

desolation I had caused, and curse Steerforth, yielded to a better

feeling. My overcharged heart found the same relief, and I cried too.

CHAPTER 32. THE BEGINNING OF A LONG JOURNEY

What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so

I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than

when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress

of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was

brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I

did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a

noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of

my devotion to him. Deeply as I felt my own unconscious part in his

pollution of an honest home, I believed that if I had been brought face

to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach. I should have

loved him so well still--though he fascinated me no longer--I should

have held in so much tenderness the memory of my affection for him, that

I think I should have been as weak as a spirit-wounded child, in all

but the entertainment of a thought that we could ever be re-united.

That thought I never had. I felt, as he had felt, that all was at an end

between us. What his remembrances of me were, I have never known--they

were light enough, perhaps, and easily dismissed--but mine of him were

as the remembrances of a cherished friend, who was dead.

Yes, Steerforth, long removed from the scenes of this poor history! My

sorrow may bear involuntary witness against you at the judgement Throne;

but my angry thoughts or my reproaches never will, I know!

The news of what had happened soon spread through the town; insomuch

that as I passed along the streets next morning, I overheard the people

speaking of it at their doors. Many were hard upon her, some few were

hard upon him, but towards her second father and her lover there was

but one sentiment. Among all kinds of people a respect for them in

their distress prevailed, which was full of gentleness and delicacy. The

seafaring men kept apart, when those two were seen early, walking with

slow steps on the beach; and stood in knots, talking compassionately

among themselves.

It was on the beach, close down by the sea, that I found them. It would

have been easy to perceive that they had not slept all last night, even

if Peggotty had failed to tell me of their still sitting just as I

left them, when it was broad day. They looked worn; and I thought Mr.

Peggotty’s head was bowed in one night more than in all the years I had

known him. But they were both as grave and steady as the sea itself,

then lying beneath a dark sky, waveless--yet with a heavy roll upon it,

as if it breathed in its rest--and touched, on the horizon, with a strip

of silvery light from the unseen sun.

‘We have had a mort of talk, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty to me, when we had

all three walked a little while in silence, ‘of what we ought and doen’t

ought to do. But we see our course now.’

I happened to glance at Ham, then looking out to sea upon the distant

light, and a frightful thought came into my mind--not that his face

was angry, for it was not; I recall nothing but an expression of stern

determination in it--that if ever he encountered Steerforth, he would

kill him.

‘My dooty here, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘is done. I’m a going to seek

my--’ he stopped, and went on in a firmer voice: ‘I’m a going to seek

her. That’s my dooty evermore.’

He shook his head when I asked him where he would seek her, and inquired

if I were going to London tomorrow? I told him I had not gone today,

fearing to lose the chance of being of any service to him; but that I

was ready to go when he would.

‘I’ll go along with you, sir,’ he rejoined, ‘if you’re agreeable,

tomorrow.’

We walked again, for a while, in silence.

‘Ham,’ he presently resumed, ‘he’ll hold to his present work, and go and

live along with my sister. The old boat yonder--’

‘Will you desert the old boat, Mr. Peggotty?’ I gently interposed.

‘My station, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned, ‘ain’t there no longer; and if

ever a boat foundered, since there was darkness on the face of the deep,

that one’s gone down. But no, sir, no; I doen’t mean as it should be

deserted. Fur from that.’

We walked again for a while, as before, until he explained:

‘My wishes is, sir, as it shall look, day and night, winter and summer,

as it has always looked, since she fust know’d it. If ever she should

come a wandering back, I wouldn’t have the old place seem to cast her

off, you understand, but seem to tempt her to draw nigher to ‘t, and to

peep in, maybe, like a ghost, out of the wind and rain, through the old

winder, at the old seat by the fire. Then, maybe, Mas’r Davy, seein’

none but Missis Gummidge there, she might take heart to creep in,

trembling; and might come to be laid down in her old bed, and rest her

weary head where it was once so gay.’

I could not speak to him in reply, though I tried.

‘Every night,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘as reg’lar as the night comes, the

candle must be stood in its old pane of glass, that if ever she should

see it, it may seem to say “Come back, my child, come back!” If ever

there’s a knock, Ham (partic’ler a soft knock), arter dark, at your

aunt’s door, doen’t you go nigh it. Let it be her--not you--that sees my

fallen child!’

He walked a little in front of us, and kept before us for some minutes.

During this interval, I glanced at Ham again, and observing the same

expression on his face, and his eyes still directed to the distant

light, I touched his arm.

Twice I called him by his name, in the tone in which I might have tried

to rouse a sleeper, before he heeded me. When I at last inquired on what

his thoughts were so bent, he replied:

‘On what’s afore me, Mas’r Davy; and over yon.’ ‘On the life before you,

do you mean?’ He had pointed confusedly out to sea.

‘Ay, Mas’r Davy. I doen’t rightly know how ‘tis, but from over yon there

seemed to me to come--the end of it like,’ looking at me as if he were

waking, but with the same determined face.

‘What end?’ I asked, possessed by my former fear.

‘I doen’t know,’ he said, thoughtfully; ‘I was calling to mind that the

beginning of it all did take place here--and then the end come. But it’s

gone! Mas’r Davy,’ he added; answering, as I think, my look; ‘you han’t

no call to be afeerd of me: but I’m kiender muddled; I don’t fare to

feel no matters,’--which was as much as to say that he was not himself,

and quite confounded.

Mr. Peggotty stopping for us to join him: we did so, and said no more.

The remembrance of this, in connexion with my former thought, however,

haunted me at intervals, even until the inexorable end came at its

appointed time.

We insensibly approached the old boat, and entered. Mrs. Gummidge, no

longer moping in her especial corner, was busy preparing breakfast.

She took Mr. Peggotty’s hat, and placed his seat for him, and spoke so

comfortably and softly, that I hardly knew her.

‘Dan’l, my good man,’ said she, ‘you must eat and drink, and keep up

your strength, for without it you’ll do nowt. Try, that’s a dear soul!

An if I disturb you with my clicketten,’ she meant her chattering, ‘tell

me so, Dan’l, and I won’t.’

When she had served us all, she withdrew to the window, where she

sedulously employed herself in repairing some shirts and other clothes

belonging to Mr. Peggotty, and neatly folding and packing them in an old

oilskin bag, such as sailors carry. Meanwhile, she continued talking, in

the same quiet manner:

‘All times and seasons, you know, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, ‘I shall

be allus here, and everythink will look accordin’ to your wishes. I’m a

poor scholar, but I shall write to you, odd times, when you’re away, and

send my letters to Mas’r Davy. Maybe you’ll write to me too, Dan’l, odd

times, and tell me how you fare to feel upon your lone lorn journies.’

‘You’ll be a solitary woman heer, I’m afeerd!’ said Mr. Peggotty.

‘No, no, Dan’l,’ she returned, ‘I shan’t be that. Doen’t you mind me. I

shall have enough to do to keep a Beein for you’ (Mrs. Gummidge meant a

home), ‘again you come back--to keep a Beein here for any that may hap

to come back, Dan’l. In the fine time, I shall set outside the door as I

used to do. If any should come nigh, they shall see the old widder woman

true to ‘em, a long way off.’

What a change in Mrs. Gummidge in a little time! She was another woman.

She was so devoted, she had such a quick perception of what it would

be well to say, and what it would be well to leave unsaid; she was so

forgetful of herself, and so regardful of the sorrow about her, that I

held her in a sort of veneration. The work she did that day! There

were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the

outhouse--as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of

ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance

rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but

would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being

asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under

weights that she was quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all

sorts of unnecessary errands. As to deploring her misfortunes, she

appeared to have entirely lost the recollection of ever having had any.

She preserved an equable cheerfulness in the midst of her sympathy,

which was not the least astonishing part of the change that had come

over her. Querulousness was out of the question. I did not even observe

her voice to falter, or a tear to escape from her eyes, the whole day

through, until twilight; when she and I and Mr. Peggotty being alone

together, and he having fallen asleep in perfect exhaustion, she broke

into a half-suppressed fit of sobbing and crying, and taking me to the

door, said, ‘Ever bless you, Mas’r Davy, be a friend to him, poor dear!’

Then, she immediately ran out of the house to wash her face, in order

that she might sit quietly beside him, and be found at work there, when

he should awake. In short I left her, when I went away at night, the

prop and staff of Mr. Peggotty’s affliction; and I could not meditate

enough upon the lesson that I read in Mrs. Gummidge, and the new

experience she unfolded to me.

It was between nine and ten o’clock when, strolling in a melancholy

manner through the town, I stopped at Mr. Omer’s door. Mr. Omer had

taken it so much to heart, his daughter told me, that he had been very

low and poorly all day, and had gone to bed without his pipe.

‘A deceitful, bad-hearted girl,’ said Mrs. Joram. ‘There was no good in

her, ever!’

‘Don’t say so,’ I returned. ‘You don’t think so.’

‘Yes, I do!’ cried Mrs. Joram, angrily.

‘No, no,’ said I.

Mrs. Joram tossed her head, endeavouring to be very stern and cross; but

she could not command her softer self, and began to cry. I was young,

to be sure; but I thought much the better of her for this sympathy, and

fancied it became her, as a virtuous wife and mother, very well indeed.

‘What will she ever do!’ sobbed Minnie. ‘Where will she go! What will

become of her! Oh, how could she be so cruel, to herself and him!’

I remembered the time when Minnie was a young and pretty girl; and I was

glad she remembered it too, so feelingly.

‘My little Minnie,’ said Mrs. Joram, ‘has only just now been got to

sleep. Even in her sleep she is sobbing for Em’ly. All day long, little

Minnie has cried for her, and asked me, over and over again, whether

Em’ly was wicked? What can I say to her, when Em’ly tied a ribbon off

her own neck round little Minnie’s the last night she was here, and laid

her head down on the pillow beside her till she was fast asleep! The

ribbon’s round my little Minnie’s neck now. It ought not to be, perhaps,

but what can I do? Em’ly is very bad, but they were fond of one another.

And the child knows nothing!’

Mrs. Joram was so unhappy that her husband came out to take care of

her. Leaving them together, I went home to Peggotty’s; more melancholy

myself, if possible, than I had been yet.

That good creature--I mean Peggotty--all untired by her late anxieties

and sleepless nights, was at her brother’s, where she meant to stay till

morning. An old woman, who had been employed about the house for some

weeks past, while Peggotty had been unable to attend to it, was the

house’s only other occupant besides myself. As I had no occasion for her

services, I sent her to bed, by no means against her will, and sat down

before the kitchen fire a little while, to think about all this.

I was blending it with the deathbed of the late Mr. Barkis, and was