第 73 页

driving out with the tide towards the distance at which Ham had looked

so singularly in the morning, when I was recalled from my wanderings by

a knock at the door. There was a knocker upon the door, but it was not

that which made the sound. The tap was from a hand, and low down upon

the door, as if it were given by a child.

It made me start as much as if it had been the knock of a footman to a

person of distinction. I opened the door; and at first looked down,

to my amazement, on nothing but a great umbrella that appeared to be

walking about of itself. But presently I discovered underneath it, Miss

Mowcher.

I might not have been prepared to give the little creature a very kind

reception, if, on her removing the umbrella, which her utmost efforts

were unable to shut up, she had shown me the ‘volatile’ expression of

face which had made so great an impression on me at our first and last

meeting. But her face, as she turned it up to mine, was so earnest;

and when I relieved her of the umbrella (which would have been an

inconvenient one for the Irish Giant), she wrung her little hands in

such an afflicted manner; that I rather inclined towards her.

‘Miss Mowcher!’ said I, after glancing up and down the empty street,

without distinctly knowing what I expected to see besides; ‘how do you

come here? What is the matter?’ She motioned to me with her short right

arm, to shut the umbrella for her; and passing me hurriedly, went into

the kitchen. When I had closed the door, and followed, with the umbrella

in my hand, I found her sitting on the corner of the fender--it was a

low iron one, with two flat bars at top to stand plates upon--in the

shadow of the boiler, swaying herself backwards and forwards, and

chafing her hands upon her knees like a person in pain.

Quite alarmed at being the only recipient of this untimely visit, and

the only spectator of this portentous behaviour, I exclaimed again,

‘Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the matter! are you ill?’

‘My dear young soul,’ returned Miss Mowcher, squeezing her hands upon

her heart one over the other. ‘I am ill here, I am very ill. To think

that it should come to this, when I might have known it and perhaps

prevented it, if I hadn’t been a thoughtless fool!’

Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to the figure) went

backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her little body to and fro;

while a most gigantic bonnet rocked, in unison with it, upon the wall.

‘I am surprised,’ I began, ‘to see you so distressed and serious’--when

she interrupted me.

‘Yes, it’s always so!’ she said. ‘They are all surprised, these

inconsiderate young people, fairly and full grown, to see any natural

feeling in a little thing like me! They make a plaything of me, use me

for their amusement, throw me away when they are tired, and wonder that

I feel more than a toy horse or a wooden soldier! Yes, yes, that’s the

way. The old way!’

‘It may be, with others,’ I returned, ‘but I do assure you it is not

with me. Perhaps I ought not to be at all surprised to see you as you

are now: I know so little of you. I said, without consideration, what I

thought.’

‘What can I do?’ returned the little woman, standing up, and holding out

her arms to show herself. ‘See! What I am, my father was; and my sister

is; and my brother is. I have worked for sister and brother these many

years--hard, Mr. Copperfield--all day. I must live. I do no harm. If

there are people so unreflecting or so cruel, as to make a jest of

me, what is left for me to do but to make a jest of myself, them, and

everything? If I do so, for the time, whose fault is that? Mine?’

No. Not Miss Mowcher’s, I perceived.

‘If I had shown myself a sensitive dwarf to your false friend,’ pursued

the little woman, shaking her head at me, with reproachful earnestness,

‘how much of his help or good will do you think I should ever have had?

If little Mowcher (who had no hand, young gentleman, in the making of

herself) addressed herself to him, or the like of him, because of her

misfortunes, when do you suppose her small voice would have been heard?

Little Mowcher would have as much need to live, if she was the bitterest

and dullest of pigmies; but she couldn’t do it. No. She might whistle

for her bread and butter till she died of Air.’

Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her

handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.

‘Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,’ she

said, ‘that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it

all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way

through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return

for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can

throw bubbles back. If I don’t brood over all I want, it is the better

for me, and not the worse for anyone. If I am a plaything for you

giants, be gentle with me.’

Miss Mowcher replaced her handkerchief in her pocket, looking at me with

very intent expression all the while, and pursued:

‘I saw you in the street just now. You may suppose I am not able to

walk as fast as you, with my short legs and short breath, and I couldn’t

overtake you; but I guessed where you came, and came after you. I have

been here before, today, but the good woman wasn’t at home.’

‘Do you know her?’ I demanded.

‘I know of her, and about her,’ she replied, ‘from Omer and Joram. I

was there at seven o’clock this morning. Do you remember what Steerforth

said to me about this unfortunate girl, that time when I saw you both at

the inn?’

The great bonnet on Miss Mowcher’s head, and the greater bonnet on

the wall, began to go backwards and forwards again when she asked this

question.

I remembered very well what she referred to, having had it in my

thoughts many times that day. I told her so.

‘May the Father of all Evil confound him,’ said the little woman,

holding up her forefinger between me and her sparkling eyes, ‘and ten

times more confound that wicked servant; but I believed it was YOU who

had a boyish passion for her!’

‘I?’ I repeated.

‘Child, child! In the name of blind ill-fortune,’ cried Miss Mowcher,

wringing her hands impatiently, as she went to and fro again upon the

fender, ‘why did you praise her so, and blush, and look disturbed?’

I could not conceal from myself that I had done this, though for a

reason very different from her supposition.

‘What did I know?’ said Miss Mowcher, taking out her handkerchief again,

and giving one little stamp on the ground whenever, at short intervals,

she applied it to her eyes with both hands at once. ‘He was crossing you

and wheedling you, I saw; and you were soft wax in his hands, I saw. Had

I left the room a minute, when his man told me that “Young Innocence”

(so he called you, and you may call him “Old Guilt” all the days of your

life) had set his heart upon her, and she was giddy and liked him, but

his master was resolved that no harm should come of it--more for your

sake than for hers--and that that was their business here? How could I

BUT believe him? I saw Steerforth soothe and please you by his praise

of her! You were the first to mention her name. You owned to an old

admiration of her. You were hot and cold, and red and white, all at once

when I spoke to you of her. What could I think--what DID I think--but

that you were a young libertine in everything but experience, and had

fallen into hands that had experience enough, and could manage you

(having the fancy) for your own good? Oh! oh! oh! They were afraid of my

finding out the truth,’ exclaimed Miss Mowcher, getting off the

fender, and trotting up and down the kitchen with her two short arms

distressfully lifted up, ‘because I am a sharp little thing--I need be,

to get through the world at all!--and they deceived me altogether, and

I gave the poor unfortunate girl a letter, which I fully believe was

the beginning of her ever speaking to Littimer, who was left behind on

purpose!’

I stood amazed at the revelation of all this perfidy, looking at Miss

Mowcher as she walked up and down the kitchen until she was out of

breath: when she sat upon the fender again, and, drying her face with

her handkerchief, shook her head for a long time, without otherwise

moving, and without breaking silence.

‘My country rounds,’ she added at length, ‘brought me to Norwich, Mr.

Copperfield, the night before last. What I happened to find there,

about their secret way of coming and going, without you--which was

strange--led to my suspecting something wrong. I got into the coach

from London last night, as it came through Norwich, and was here this

morning. Oh, oh, oh! too late!’

Poor little Mowcher turned so chilly after all her crying and fretting,

that she turned round on the fender, putting her poor little wet feet in

among the ashes to warm them, and sat looking at the fire, like a large

doll. I sat in a chair on the other side of the hearth, lost in unhappy

reflections, and looking at the fire too, and sometimes at her.

‘I must go,’ she said at last, rising as she spoke. ‘It’s late. You

don’t mistrust me?’

Meeting her sharp glance, which was as sharp as ever when she asked me,

I could not on that short challenge answer no, quite frankly.

‘Come!’ said she, accepting the offer of my hand to help her over the

fender, and looking wistfully up into my face, ‘you know you wouldn’t

mistrust me, if I was a full-sized woman!’

I felt that there was much truth in this; and I felt rather ashamed of

myself.

‘You are a young man,’ she said, nodding. ‘Take a word of advice,

even from three foot nothing. Try not to associate bodily defects with

mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason.’

She had got over the fender now, and I had got over my suspicion. I told

her that I believed she had given me a faithful account of herself,

and that we had both been hapless instruments in designing hands. She

thanked me, and said I was a good fellow.

‘Now, mind!’ she exclaimed, turning back on her way to the door, and

looking shrewdly at me, with her forefinger up again.--‘I have some

reason to suspect, from what I have heard--my ears are always open; I

can’t afford to spare what powers I have--that they are gone abroad. But

if ever they return, if ever any one of them returns, while I am alive,

I am more likely than another, going about as I do, to find it out soon.

Whatever I know, you shall know. If ever I can do anything to serve the

poor betrayed girl, I will do it faithfully, please Heaven! And Littimer

had better have a bloodhound at his back, than little Mowcher!’

I placed implicit faith in this last statement, when I marked the look

with which it was accompanied.

‘Trust me no more, but trust me no less, than you would trust a

full-sized woman,’ said the little creature, touching me appealingly

on the wrist. ‘If ever you see me again, unlike what I am now, and like

what I was when you first saw me, observe what company I am in. Call to

mind that I am a very helpless and defenceless little thing. Think of

me at home with my brother like myself and sister like myself, when my

day’s work is done. Perhaps you won’t, then, be very hard upon me, or

surprised if I can be distressed and serious. Good night!’

I gave Miss Mowcher my hand, with a very different opinion of her from

that which I had hitherto entertained, and opened the door to let her

out. It was not a trifling business to get the great umbrella up, and

properly balanced in her grasp; but at last I successfully accomplished

this, and saw it go bobbing down the street through the rain, without

the least appearance of having anybody underneath it, except when a

heavier fall than usual from some over-charged water-spout sent it

toppling over, on one side, and discovered Miss Mowcher struggling

violently to get it right. After making one or two sallies to her

relief, which were rendered futile by the umbrella’s hopping on again,

like an immense bird, before I could reach it, I came in, went to bed,

and slept till morning.

In the morning I was joined by Mr. Peggotty and by my old nurse, and we

went at an early hour to the coach office, where Mrs. Gummidge and Ham

were waiting to take leave of us.

‘Mas’r Davy,’ Ham whispered, drawing me aside, while Mr. Peggotty was

stowing his bag among the luggage, ‘his life is quite broke up. He

doen’t know wheer he’s going; he doen’t know--what’s afore him; he’s

bound upon a voyage that’ll last, on and off, all the rest of his days,

take my wured for ‘t, unless he finds what he’s a seeking of. I am sure

you’ll be a friend to him, Mas’r Davy?’

‘Trust me, I will indeed,’ said I, shaking hands with Ham earnestly.

‘Thankee. Thankee, very kind, sir. One thing furder. I’m in good employ,

you know, Mas’r Davy, and I han’t no way now of spending what I gets.

Money’s of no use to me no more, except to live. If you can lay it out

for him, I shall do my work with a better art. Though as to that, sir,’

and he spoke very steadily and mildly, ‘you’re not to think but I shall

work at all times, like a man, and act the best that lays in my power!’

I told him I was well convinced of it; and I hinted that I hoped the

time might even come, when he would cease to lead the lonely life he

naturally contemplated now.

‘No, sir,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘all that’s past and over with me,

sir. No one can never fill the place that’s empty. But you’ll bear in

mind about the money, as theer’s at all times some laying by for him?’

Reminding him of the fact, that Mr. Peggotty derived a steady,

though certainly a very moderate income from the bequest of his late

brother-in-law, I promised to do so. We then took leave of each other. I

cannot leave him even now, without remembering with a pang, at once his

modest fortitude and his great sorrow.

As to Mrs. Gummidge, if I were to endeavour to describe how she ran down

the street by the side of the coach, seeing nothing but Mr. Peggotty on

the roof, through the tears she tried to repress, and dashing herself

against the people who were coming in the opposite direction, I should

enter on a task of some difficulty. Therefore I had better leave her