"Who has ill-used him, you girl?" said Steerforth.
"Why, you have," returned Traddles.
"What have I done?" said Steerforth.
"What have you done?" retorted Traddles. "Hurt his feelings and lost him his situation."
"His feelings!" repeated Steerforth disdainfully. "His feelings will soon get the better of it, I'll be bound. His feelings are not like yours, Miss Traddles. As to his situation--which was a precious one, wasn't it?--do you suppose I am not going to write home, and take care that he gets some money? Polly?"
We thought this intention very noble in Steerforth, whose mother was a widow, and rich, and would do almost anything, it was said, that he asked her. We were all extremely glad to see Traddles so put down, and exalted Steerforth to the skies, especially when he told us, as he condescended to do, that what he had done had been done expressly for us, and for our cause, and that he had conferred a great boon upon us by unselfishly doing it.
But I must say that when I was going on with a story in the dark that night, Mr. Mell's old flute seemed more than once to sound mournfully in my ears, and that when at last Steerforth was tired, and I lay down in my bed, I fancied it playing so sorrowfully somewhere, that I was quite wretched.
I soon forgot him in the contemplation of Steerforth, who, in an easy amateur way, and without any book (he seemed to me to know everything by heart), took some of his classes until a new master was found. The new master came from a grammar-school, and before he entered on his duties, dined in the parlour one day, to be introduced to Steerforth. Steerforth approved of him highly, and told us he was a Brick. Without exactly understanding what learned distinction was meant by this, I respected him greatly for it, and had no doubt whatever of his superior knowledge, though he never took the pains with me--not that I was anybody--that Mr. Mell had taken.
There was only one other event in this half-year, out of the daily school life, that made an impression upon me which still survives. It survives for many reasons.
One afternoon, when we were all harassed into a state of dire confusion, and Mr. Creakle was laying about him dreadfully, Tungay came in, and called out in his usual strong way: "Visitors for Copperfield!"
A few words were interchanged between him and Mr. Creakle, as, who the visitors were, and what room they were to be shown into, and then I, who had, according to custom, stood up on the announcement being made, and felt quite faint with astonishment, was told to go by the back-stairs and get a clean frill on, before I repaired to the dining-room. These orders I obeyed, in such a flutter and hurry of my young spirits as I had never known before, and when I got to the parlour-door, and the thought came into my head that it might be my mother--I had only thought of Mr. or Miss Murdstone until then--I drew back my hand from the lock, and stopped to have a sob before I went in.
At first I saw nobody, but, feeling a pressure against the door, I looked round it, and there, to my amazement, were Mr. Peggotty and Ham, ducking at me with their hats, and squeezing one another against the wall. I could not help laughing, but it was much more in the pleasure of seeing them, than in the appearance they made. We shook hands in a very cordial way, and I laughed and laughed, until I pulled out my pocket-handkerchief and wiped my eyes.
Mr. Peggotty (who never shut his mouth once, I remember, during the visit) showed great concern when he saw me do this, and nudged Ham to say something.
"Cheer up, Mas'r Davy bor'!" said Ham, in his simpering way. "Why, how you have growed!"
"Am I grown?" I said, drying my eyes. I was not crying at anything particular that I know of, but somehow it made me cry, to see old friends.
"Growed, Mas'r Davy bor'? Ain't he growed!" said Ham.
"Ain't he growed!" said Mr. Peggotty.
They made me laugh again by laughing at each other, and then we all three laughed until I was in danger of crying again.
"Do you know how Mama is, Mr. Peggotty?" I said. "And how my dear, dear, old Peggotty is?"
"Oncommon," said Mr. Peggotty.
"And little Em'ly, and Mrs. Gummidge?"
"On--common," said Mr. Peggotty.
There was a silence. Mr. Peggotty, to relieve it, took two prodigious lobsters, and an enormous crab, and a large canvas bag of shrimps, out of his pockets, and piled them up in Ham's arms.
"You see," said Mr. Peggotty, "knowing as you was partial to a little relish with your wittles when you was along with us, we took the liberty. The old Mawther biled 'em, she did. Mrs. Gummidge biled 'em. Yes," said Mr. Peggotty, slowly, who I thought appeared to stick to the subject on account of having no other subject ready, "Mrs. Gummidge, I do assure you, she biled 'em."
I expressed my thanks. Mr. Peggotty, after looking at Ham, who stood smiling sheepishly over the shell-fish, without making any attempt to help him, said:
"We come, you see, the wind and tide making in our favour, in one of our Yarmouth lugs to Gravesen'. My sister she wrote to me the name of this here place, and wrote to me as if ever I chanced to come to Gravesen', I was to come over and inquire for Mas'r Davy, and give her dooty, humbly wishing him well, and reporting of the fam'ly as they was oncommon to-be-sure. Little Em'ly, you see, she'll write to my sister when I go back as I see you, and as you was similarly oncommon, and so we make it quite a merry-go-rounder."
I was obliged to consider a little before I understood what Mr. Peggotty meant by this figure, expressive of a complete circle of intelligence. I then thanked him heartily, and said, with a consciousness of reddening, that I supposed little Em'ly was altered too, since we used to pick up shells and pebbles on the beach.
"She's getting to be a woman, that's wot she's getting to be," said Mr. Peggotty. "Ask him."
He meant Ham, who beamed with delight and assent over the bag of shrimps.
"Her pretty face!" said Mr. Peggotty, with his own shining like a light.
"Her learning!" said Ham.
"Her writing!" said Mr. Peggotty. "Why it's as black as jet! And so large it is, you might see it anywheres."
It was perfectly delightful to behold with what enthusiasm Mr. Peggotty became inspired when he thought of his little favourite. He stands before me again, his bluff hairy face irradiating with a joyful love and pride for which I can find no description. His honest eyes fire up, and sparkle, as if their depths were stirred by something bright. His broad chest heaves with pleasure. His strong loose hands clench themselves, in his earnestness, and he emphasizes what he says with a right arm that shows, in my pigmy view, like a sledge hammer.
Ham was quite as earnest as he. I dare say they would have said much more about her, if they had not been abashed by the unexpected coming in of Steerforth, who, seeing me in a corner speaking with two strangers, stopped in a song he was singing, and said: "I didn't know you were here, young Copperfield!" (for it was not the usual visiting room) and crossed by us on his way out.
I am not sure whether it was in the pride of having such a friend as Steerforth, or in the desire to explain to him how I came to have such a friend as Mr. Peggotty, that I called to him as he was going away. But I said, modestly--Good Heaven, how it all comes back to me this long time afterwards! --
"Don't go, Steerforth, if you please. These are two Yarmouth boatmen--very kind, good people--who are relations of my nurse, and have come from Gravesend to see me."
"Aye, aye?" said Steerforth, returning. "I am glad to see them. How are you both?"
There was an ease in his manner--a gay and light manner it was, but not swaggering--which I still believe to have borne a kind of enchantment with it. I still believe him, in virtue of this carriage, his animal spirits, his delightful voice, his handsome face and figure, and, for aught I know, of some inborn power of attraction besides (which I think a few people possess), to have carried a spell with him to which it was a natural weakness to yield, and which not many persons could withstand. I could not but see how pleased they were with him, and how they seemed to open their hearts to him in a moment.
"Yo
u must let them know at home, if you please, Mr. Peggotty," I said, "when this letter is sent, that Mr. Steerforth is very kind to me, and that I don't know what I should ever do here without him."
"Nonsense!" said Steerforth, laughing. "You mustn't tell them anything of the sort."
"And if Mr. Steerforth ever comes into Norfolk or Suffolk, Mr. Peggotty," I said, "while I am there, you may depend upon it I shall bring him to Yarmouth, if he will let me, to see your house. You never saw such a good house, Steerforth. It's made out of a boat!"
"Made out of a boat, is it?" said Steerforth. "It's the right sort of house for such a thorough-built boatman."
"So 'tis, sir, so 'tis, sir," said Ham, grinning. "You're right, young gen'l'm'n. Mas'r Davy, bor', gen'l'm'n's right. A thorough-built boatman! Hor, hor! That's what he is, too!"
Mr. Peggotty was no less pleased than his nephew, though his modesty forbade him to claim a personal compliment so vociferously.
"Well, sir," he said, bowing and chuckling, and tucking in the ends of his neckerchief at his breast: "I thankee, sir, I thankee! I do my endeavours in my line of life, sir."
"The best of men can do no more, Mr. Peggotty," said Steerforth. He had got his name already.
"I'll pound it it's wot you do yourself, sir," said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, "and wot you do well--right well! I thankee, sir. I'm obleeged to you, sir, for your welcoming manner of me. I'm rough, sir, but I'm ready--leastways, I hope I'm ready, you unnerstand. My house ain't much for to see, sir, but it's hearty at your service if ever you should come along with Mas'r Davy to see it. I'm a reg'lar Dodman, I am," said Mr. Peggotty, by which he meant snail, and this was in allusion to his being slow to go, for he had attempted to go after every sentence, and had somehow or other come back again, "but I wish you both well, and I wish you happyl"
Ham echoed this sentiment, and we parted with them in the heartiest manner. I was almost tempted that evening to tell Steerforth about pretty little Em'ly, but I was too timid of mentioning her name, and too much afraid of his laughing at me. I remember that I thought a good deal, and in an uneasy sort of way, about Mr. Peggotty having said that she was getting on to be a woman, but I decided that was nonsense.
We transported the shell-fish, or the "relish" as Mr. Peggotty had modestly called it, up into our room unobserved, and made a great supper that evening. But Traddles couldn't get happily out of it. He was too unfortunate even to come through a supper like anybody else. He was taken ill in the night--quite prostrate he was--in consequence of Crab, and after being drugged with black draughts and blue pills, to an extent which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said was enough to undermine a horse's constitution, received a caning and six chapters of Greek Testament for refusing to confess.
The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of the daily strife and struggle of our lives, of the waning summer and the changing season, of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were run into bed, of the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was nothing but a great shivering-machine, of the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton, of clods of bread-and-butter, dog's-eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink surrounding all.
I well remember, though, how the distant idea of the holidays, after seeming for an immense time to be a stationary speck, began to come towards us, and to grow and grow. How, from counting months, we came to weeks, and then to days, and how I then began to be afraid that I should not be sent for, and when I learnt from Steerforth that I had been sent for and was certainly to go home, had dim forebodings that I might break my leg first. How the breaking-up day changed its place fast, at last, from the week after next to next week, this week, the day after tomorrow, tomorrow, when I was inside the Yarmouth mail, and going home.
I had many a broken sleep inside the Yarmouth mail, and many an incoherent dream of all these things. But when I awoke at intervals, the ground outside the window was not the playground of Salem House, and the sound in my ears was not the sound of Mr. Creakle giving it to Traddles, but was the sound of the coachman touching up the horses.
CHAPTER VIII
My Holidays, Especially One Happy Afternoon
WHEN WE ARRIVED BEFORE DAY AT THE INN WHERE THE mail stopped, which was not the inn where my friend the waiter lived, I was shown up to a nice little bedroom, with DOLPHIN painted on the door. Very cold I was, I know, notwithstanding the hot tea they had given me before a large fire downstairs, and very glad I was to turn into the Dolphin's bed, pull the Dolphin's blankets round my head, and go to sleep.
Mr. Barkis the carrier was to call for me in the morning at nine o'clock. I got up at eight, a little giddy from the shortness of my night's rest, and was ready for him before the appointed time. He received me exactly as if not five minutes had elapsed since we were last together, and I had only been into the hotel to get change for sixpence, or something of that sort.
As soon as I and my box were in the cart, and the carrier was seated, the lazy horse walked away with us all at his accustomed pace.
"You look very well, Mr. Barkis," I said, thinking he would like to know it.
Mr. Barkis rubbed his cheek with his cuff, and then looked at his cuff as if he expected to find some of the bloom upon it, but made no other acknowledgment of the compliment.
"I gave your message, Mr. Barkis," I said, "I wrote to Peggotty."
"Ah!" said Mr. Barkis.
Mr. Barkis seemed gruff, and answered drily.
"Wasn't it right, Mr. Barkis?" I asked, after a little hesitation.
"Why, no," said Mr. Barkis.
"Not the message?"
"The message was right enough, perhaps," said Mr. Barkis, "but it come to an end there."
Not understanding what he meant, I repeated inquisitively: "Came to an end, Mr. Barkis?"
"Nothing come of it," he explained, looking at me sideways. "No answer."
"There was an answer expected, was there, Mr. Barkis?" said I, opening my eyes. For this was a new light to me.
"When a man says he's willin'," said Mr. Barkis, turning his glance slowly on me again, "it's as much as to say, that man's a-waitin' for a answer."
"Well, Mr. Barkis?"
"Well," said Mr. Barkis, carrying his eyes back to his horse's ears, "that man's been a-waitin' for a answer ever since,"
"Have you told her so, Mr. Barkis?"
"N--no," growled Mr. Barkis, reflecting about it. "I ain't got no call to go and tell her so. I never said six words to her myself. I ain't a-goin' to tell her so."
"Would you like me to do it, Mr. Barkis?" said I, doubtfully.
"You might tell her, if you would," said Mr. Barkis, with another slow look at me, "that Barkis was a-waitin' for a answer. Says you--what name is it?"
"Her name?"
"Ahl" said Mr. Barkis, with a nod of his head.
"Peggotty."
"Chrisen name? Or nat'ral name?" said Mr. Barkis.
"Oh, it's not her Christian name. Her Christian name is Clara."
"Is it though?" said Mr. Barkis.
He seemed to find an immense fund of reflection in this circumstance, and sat pondering and inwardly whistling for some time.
"Well!" he resumed at length. "Says you, 'Peggotty! Barkis is a-waitin' for a answer.' Says she, perhaps, 'Answer to what?' Says you, 'To what I told you.' 'What is that?' says she. 'Barkis is willin',' says you."
This extremely artful suggestion, Mr. Barkis accompanied with a nudge of his elbow that gave me quite a stitch in my side. After that, he slouched over his horse in his usual manner, and made no other reference to the subject except, half-an-hour afterwards, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, and writing up, inside the tilt of the cart, "Clara Peggotty"--apparently as a private memorandum.
Ah, what a st
range feeling it was to be going home when it was not home, and to find that every object I looked at reminded me of the happy old home, which was like a dream I could never dream again! The days when my mother and I and Peggotty were all in all to one another, and there was no one to come between us, rose up before me so sorrowfully on the road, that I am not sure I was glad to be there--not sure but that I would rather have remained away, and forgotten it in Steerforth's company. But there I was, and soon I was at our house, where the bare old elm-trees wrung their many hands in the bleak wintry air, and shreds of the old rooks'-nest drifted away upon the wind.
The carrier put my box down at the garden-gate, and left me. I walked along the path towards the house, glancing at the windows, and fearing at every step to see Mr. Murdstone or Miss Murdstone lowering out of one of them. No face appeared, however, and being come to the house, and knowing how to open the door, before dark, without knocking, I went in with a quiet, timid step.
God knows how infantine the memory may have been, that was awakened within me by the sound of my mother's voice in the old parlour, when I set foot in the hall. She was singing in a low tone. I think I must have lain in her arms, and heard her singing so to me when I was but a baby. The strain was new to me, and yet it was so old that it filled my heart brimful, like a friend come back from a long absence.
I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion.
I spoke to her, and she started and cried out. But seeing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand up to my lips.
I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.
"He is your brother," said my mother, fondling me. "Davy, my pretty boy! My poor child!" Then she kissed me more and more, and clasped me round the neck. This she was doing when Peggotty came running in, and bounced down on the ground beside us, and went mad about us both for a quarter of an hour.