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 these 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 Em'ly'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 bedside, 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 XXXI
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 cloak 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 young leaves from the tree above my mother's grave.
A dread falls on me here. A cloud is lowering on the distant town, towards which I retraced my solitary steps. I fear to approach it. I cannot bear to think of what did come, upon that memorable night, of what must come again, if I go on.
It is no worse because I write of it. It would be no better if I stopped my most unwilling hand. It is done. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was.
My old nurse was to go to London with me next day, on the business of the will. Little Emily was passing that day at Mr. Omer's. We were all to meet in the old boathouse that night. Ham would bring Emily at the usual hour. I would walk back at my leisure. The brother and sister would return as they had come, and be expecting us, when the day closed in, at the fireside.
I parted from them at the wicket-gate, where visionary Straps had rested with Roderick Random's knapsack in the days of yore, and, instead of going straight back, walked a little distance on the road to Lowestoft. Then I turned, and walked back towards Yarmouth. I stayed to dine at a decent alehouse, some mile or two from the Ferry I have mentioned before, and thus the day wore away, and it was evening when I reached it. Rain was falling heavily by that time, and it was a wild night, but there was a moon behind the clouds, and it was not dark.
I was soon within sight of Mr. Peggotty's house, and of the light within it shining through the window. A little flounder ing across the sand, which was heavy, brought me to the door, and I went in.
It looked very comfortable indeed. Mr. Peggotty had smoked his evening pipe, and there were preparations for some supper by-and-by. The fire was bright; the ashes were thrown-up; the locker was ready for little Emily in her old place. In her own old place sat Peggotty, once more, looking (but for her dress) as if she had never left it. She had fallen back, already, on the society of the work-box with Saint Paul's upon the lid, the yard-measure in the cottage, and the bit of wax-candle, and there they all were, just as if they had never been disturbed. Mrs. Gummidge appeared to be fretting a little, in her old corner, and consequently looked quite natural, too.
"You're first of the lot, Mas'r Davy!" said Mr. Peggotty, with a happy face. "Doen't keep in that coat, sir, if it's wet."
"Thank you, Mr. Peggotty," said I, giving him my outer coat to hang up. "It's quite dry."
"So 'tis!" said Mr. Peggotty, feeling my shoulders. "As a chip! Sit ye down, sir. It ain't o' no use saying welcome to you, but you're welcome, kind and hearty."
"Thank you, Mr. Peggotty, I am sure of that. Well, Peggotty!" said I, giving her a kiss. "And how are you, old woman?"
"Ha, ha!" laughed Mr. Peggotty, sitting down beside us, and rubbing his hands in his sense of relief from recent trouble, and in the genuine heartiness of his nature, "there's not a woman in the wureld, sir--as I tell her--that need to feel more easy in her mind than her! She done her dooty by the departed, and the departed know'd it, and the departed done what was right by her, as she done what was right by the departed--and--and--and it's all right!"
Mrs. Gummidge groaned.
"Cheer up, my pretty mawther!" said Mr. Peggotty. (But he shook his head aside at us, evidently sensible of the tendency of the late occurrences to recall the memory of the old one.) "Doen't be down! Cheer up, for your own self, on'y a little bit, and see if a good deal more doen't come nat'ral!"
"Not to me, Dan'I," returned Mrs. Gummidge. "Nothink's nat'ral to me but to be lone and lorn."
"No, no," said Mr. Peggotty, soothing her sorrows.
"Yes, yes, Dan'l!" said Mrs. Gummidge. "I ain't a person to live with them as has had money left. Thinks go too contrairy with me. I had better be a riddance."
"Why, how should I ever spend it without you?" said Mr. Peggotty, with an air of serious remonstrance. "What are you a-talking on? Doen't I want you more now, than ever I did?"
"I know'd I was never wanted before!" cried Mrs. Gummidge, with a pitiable whimper, "and now I'm told so! How could I expect to be wanted, being so lone and lorn, and so contrairy!"
Mr. Peggotty seemed very much shocked at himself for having made a speech capable of this unfeeling construction, but was prevented from replying by Peggotty's pulling his sleeve, and shaking her head. After looking at Mrs. Gummidge for some moments, in sore distress of mind, he glanced at the Dutch clock, rose, snuffed the candle, and put it in the window.
"Theer!" said Mr. Peggotty, cheerily. "Theer we are, Missis Gummidge!" Mrs. Gummidge slightly groaned. "Lighted up, accordin' to custom! You're a-wonderin' what that's fur, sir! Well, it's fur our little Em'ly. You see, the path ain't over-light or cheerful arter dark, and when I'm here at the hour as she's a-comin' home, I puts the light in the winder. That, you see," said Mr. Peggotty, bending over me with great glee, "meets two objects. She says, says Em'ly, 'Theer's home!' she says. And likewise, says Em'ly, 'My uncle's theer!' Fur if I ain't theer, I never have no light showed."
"You're a baby!" said Peggotty, very fond of him for it, if she thought so.
"Well," returned Mr. Peggotty, standing with his legs pretty wide apart, and rubbing his hands up and down them in his comfortable satisfaction, as he looked alternately at us and at the fire, "I doen't know but I am. Not, you see, to look at."
"Not azackly," observed Peggotty.
"No," laughed Mr. Peggotty, "not to look at, but to--to consider on, you know. I doen't care, bless you! Now I tell you. When I go a-looking and looking about that theer pritty house of our Em'ly's, I'm--I'm Gormed," said Mr. Peggotty, with sudden emphasis--"theer! I can't say more--if I doen't feel as if the littlest things was her, a'most. I takes 'em up and I puts 'em down, and I touches of 'em as delicate as if they was our Em'ly. So 'tis with her little bonnets and that. I couldn't see one on 'em rough used a-purpose--not fur the whole wureld. There's a babby for you, in the form of a great Sea Porkypine!" said Mr. Peggotty, relieving his earnestness with a roar of laughter.
Peggotty and I both laughed, but not so loud.
"It's my opinion, you see," said Mr. Peggotty, with a delighted face, after some further rubbing of his legs, "as this is along of my havin' played with her so much, and made believe as we was Turks, and French, and sharks and every wariety of forinners--bless you, yes, and lions and whales, and I doen't know what all!--when she warn't no higher than my knee. I've got into the way on it, you know. Why, this here candle, now!" said Mr. Peggotty, gleefully holding out his hand towards it, "I know wery well that arter she's married and gone, I shall put that candle theer, just that same as now. I know wery well that when I'm here o' nights (and where else should I live, bless your arts, whatever fortun I come into!) and she ain't here, or I ain't theer, I shall put the candle in the winder, and sit afore the fire, pretending I'm expecting of her, like I'm a-doing now. There's a babby for you," said Mr. Peggotty, with another roar, "in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Why, at the present minute, when I see the candle sparkle up, I says to myself, 'She's a-looking at it! Em'ly's a-coming!' There's a babby for you, in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Right for all that," said Mr. Peggotty, stopping in his roar, and smiting his hands together, "fur here she is!"
It was only Ham. The night should have turned more wet since I came in, for he had a large sou'wester hat on, slouched over his face.
"Wheer's Em'ly?" said Mr. Peggotty.
Ham made a motion with his head, as if she were outside. Mr. Peggotty took the light from the window, trimmed it, put it on the table, and was busily stirring the fire, when Ham, who had not moved, said:
"Mas'r Davy, will you come out a minute, and see what Em'ly and me has got to show you?"
We went out. As I passed him at the door, I saw, to my astonishment and fright, that he was deadly pale. He pushed me hastily into the open air, and closed the door upon us. Only upon us two.
"Ham! what's the matter?"
"Mas'r Davy!--" Oh, for his broken heart, how dreadfully he wept!
I was pa
ralyzed by the sight of such grief. I don't know what I thought, or what I dreaded. I could only look at him.
"Ham! Poor good fellow! For Heaven's sake, tell me what's the matter!"
"My love, Mas'r Davy--the pride and hope of my art--her that I'd have died for, and would die for now--she's gone!"
"Gone!"
"Em'ly run away! Oh, Mas'r Davy, think how she's run away, when I pray my good and gracious God to kill her (her that is so dear above all things) sooner than let her come to ruin and disgrace!"
The face he turned up to the troubled sky, the quivering of his clasped hands, the agony of his figure, remain associated with that lonely waste, in my remembrance, to this hour. It is always night there, and he is the only object in the scene.
"You're a scholar," he said, hurriedly, "and know what's right and best. What am I to say, indoors? How am I ever to break it to him, Mas'r Davy?"
I saw the door move, and instinctively tried to hold the latch on the outside, to gain a moment's time. It was too late. Mr. Peggotty thrust forth his face, and never could I forget the change that came upon it when he saw us, if I were to live five hundred years.
I remember a great wail and cry, and the women hanging about him, and we all standing in the room, I with a paper in my hand, which Ham had given me, Mr. Peggotty, with his vest torn open, his hair wild, his face and lips quite white, and blood trickling down his bosom (it had sprung from his mouth, I think), looking fixedly at me.
"Read it, sir," he said, in a low shivering voice. "Slow, please. I doen't know as I can understand."
In the midst of the silence of death, I read thus, from a blotted letter:
" 'When you, who love me so much better than I ever have deserved, even when my mind was innocent, see this, I shall be far away.'"
"I shall be fur away," he repeated slowly. "Stop! Em'ly fur away. Well!"
" 'When I leave my dear home--my dear home--oh, my dear home!--in the morning.' " (the letter bore date on the previous night)
"'--it will be never to come back, unless he brings me back a lady. This will be found at night, many hours after, instead of me. Oh, if you knew how my heart is torn. If even you, that I have wronged so much, that never can forgive me, could only know what I suffer! I am too wicked to write about myself. Oh, take comfort in thinking that I am so bad. Oh, for mercy's sake, tell uncle that I never loved him half so dear as now. Oh, don't remember how affectionate and kind you have all been to me--don't remember we were ever to be married--but try to think as if I died when I was little, and was buried somewhere. Pray Heaven that I am going away from, have compassion on my uncle! Tell him that I never loved him half so dear. Be his comfort. Love some good girl, that will be what I was once to uncle, and be true to you, and worthy of you, and know no shame but me. God bless all! I'll pray for all, often, on my knees. If he don't bring me back a lady, and I don't pray for my own self, I'll pray for all. My parting love to uncle. My last tears, and my last thanks, for uncle!' "