"Mas'r Davy!" he replied in astonishment. "That night when it snew so hard?"
"That night. I have never seen her since. I went back, after parting from you, to speak to her, but she was gone. I was unwilling to mention her to you then, and I am now, but she is the person of whom I speak, and with whom I think we should communicate. Do you understand?"
"Too well, sir," he replied. We had sunk our voices almost to a whisper, and continued to speak in that tone.
"You say you have seen her. Do you think that you could find her? I could only hope to do so by chance."
"I think, Mas'r Davy, I know wheer to look."
"It is dark. Being together, shall we go out now, and try to find her tonight?"
He assented, and prepared to accompany me. Without appearing to observe what he was doing, I saw how carefully he adjusted the little room, put a candle ready and the means of lighting it, arranged the bed, and finally took out of a drawer one of her dresses (I remember to have seen her wear it), neatly folded with some other garments, and a bonnet, which he placed upon a chair. He made no allusion to these clothes, neither did I. There they had been waiting for her, many and many a night, no doubt.
"The time was, Mas'r Davy," he said, as we came downstairs, "when I thowt this girl, Martha, a'most like the dirt underneath my Em'ly's feet. God forgive me, there's a difference now!"
As we went along, partly to hold him in conversation, and partly to satisfy myself, I asked him about Ham. He said, almost in the same words as formerly, that Ham was just the same, "wearing away his life with kiender no care nohow for't, but never murmuring, and liked by all."
I asked him what he thought Ham's state of mind was, in reference to the cause of their misfortunes? Whether he believed it was dangerous? What he supposed, for example, Ham would do, if he and Steerforth ever should encounter?
"I doen't know, sir," he replied. "I have thowt of it oftentimes, but I can't arrize myself of it, no matters."
I recalled to his remembrance the morning after her departure, when we were all three on the beach. "Do you recollect," said I, "a certain wild way in which he looked out to sea, and spoke about 'the end of it'?"
"Sure I do!" said he.
"What do you suppose he meant?"
"Mas'r Davy," he replied, "I've put the question to myself a mort o'times, and never found no answer. And theer's one curious thing--that, though he is so pleasant, I wouldn't fare to feel comfortable to try and get his mind upon't. He never said a wured to me as warn't as dootiful as dootiful could be, and it ain't likely as he'd begin to speak any other ways now, but it's fur from being fleet water in his mind, where them thowts lays. It's deep, sir, and I can't see down."
"You are right," said I, "and that has sometimes made me anxious."
"And me too, Mas'r Davy," he rejoined. "Even more so, I do assure you, than his ventersome ways, though both belongs to the alteration in him. I doen't know as he'd do violence under any circumstances, but I hope as them two may be kep asunders."
We had come, through Temple Bar, into the city. Conversing no more now, and walking at my side, he yielded himself up to the one aim of his devoted life, and went on, with that hushed concentration of his faculties which would have made his figure solitary in a multitude. We were not far from Blackfriars Bridge, when he turned his head and pointed to a solitary female figure flitting along the opposite side of the street. I knew it, readily, to be the figure that we sought.
We crossed the road, and were pressing on towards her, when it occurred to me that she might be more disposed to feel a woman's interest in the lost girl, if we spoke to her in a quieter place, aloof from the crowd, and where we should be less observed. I advised my companion, therefore, that we should not address her yet, but follow her, consulting in this, likewise, an indistinct desire I had, to know where she went.
He acquiescing, we followed at a distance, never losing sight of her, but never caring to come very near, as she frequently looked about. Once she stopped to listen to a band of music, and then we stopped too.
She went on a long way. Still we went on. It was evident, from the manner in which she held her course, that she was going to some fixed destination, and this, and her keeping in the busy streets, and I suppose the strange fascination in the secrecy and mystery of so following anyone, made me adhere to my first purpose. At length she turned into a dull, dark street, where the noise and crowd were lost, and I said, "We may speak to her now," and, mending our pace, we went after her.
CHAPTER XLVII
Martha
WE WERE NOW DOWN IN WESTMINSTER. WE HAD TURNED back to follow her, having encountered her coming towards us, and Westminster Abbey was the point at which she passed from the lights and noise of the leading streets. She proceeded so quickly, when she got free of the two currents of passengers setting towards and from the bridge, that, between this and the advance she had of us when she struck off, we were in the narrow water-side street by Millbank before we came up with her. At that moment she crossed the road, as if to avoid the footsteps that she heard so close behind, and, without looking back, passed on even more rapidly.
A glimpse of the river through a dull gateway, where some waggons were housed for the night, seemed to arrest my feet. I touched my companion without speaking, and we both forebore to cross after her, and both followed on that opposite side of the way, keeping as quietly as we could in the shadow of the houses, but keeping very near her.
There was, and is when I write, at the end of that lowlying street, a dilapidated little wooden building, probably an obsolete old ferry-house. Its position is just at that point where the street ceases, and the road begins to lie between a row of houses and the river. As soon as she came here, and saw the water, she stopped as if she had come to her destination, and, presently, went slowly along by the brink of the river, looking intently at it.
All the way here, I had supposed that she was going to some house, indeed, I had vaguely entertained the hope that the house might be in some way associated with the lost girl. But, that one dark glimpse of the river, through the gateway, had instinctively prepared me for her going no farther.
The neighbourhood was a dreary one at that time, as oppressive, sad, and solitary by night, as any about London. There were neither wharves nor houses on the melancholy waste of road near the great blank Prison. A sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls. Coarse grass and rank weeds straggled over all the marshy land in the vicinity. In one part, carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun and never finished, rotted away. In another, the ground was cumbered with rusty iron monsters of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles, anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, and I know not what strange objects, accumulated by some speculator, and grovelling in the dust, underneath which--having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet weather--they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves. The clash and glare of sundry fiery Works upon the river-side arose by night to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb tide. There was a story that one of the pits dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout, and a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over the whole place. Or else it looked as if it had gradually decomposed into that nightmare condition, out of the overflowings of the polluted stream.
As if she were a part of the refuse it had cast out, and left to corruption and decay, the girl we had followed strayed down to the river's brink, and stood in the midst of this night-picture, lonely and still, looking at the water.
There were some boats and barges astrand in the mud, and these enabled us to come within a few yards of her without being seen. I then signed to Mr. Peggotty to remain where he was, and emerged
from their shade to speak to her. I did not approach her solitary figure without trembling, for this gloomy end to her determined walk, and the way in which she stood, almost within the cavernous shadow of the iron bridge, looking at the lights crookedly reflected in the strong tide, inspired a dread within me.
I think she was talking to herself. I am sure, although absorbed in gazing at the water, that her shawl was off her shoulders, and that she was muffling her hands in it, in an unsettled and bewildered way, more like the action of a sleep walker than a waking person. I know, and never can forget, that there was that in her wild manner which gave me no assurance but that she would sink before my eyes, until I had her arm within my grasp.
At the same moment I said "Martha!"
She uttered a terrified scream, and struggled with me with such strength that I doubt if I could have held her alone. But a stronger hand than mine was laid upon her, and when she raised her frightened eyes and saw whose it was, she made but one more effort and dropped down between us. We carried her away from the water to where there were some dry stones, and there laid her down, crying and moaning. In a little while she sat among the stones, holding her wretched head with both her hands.
"Oh, the river!" she cried passionately. "Oh, the river!"
"Hush, hush!" said I. "Calm yourself."
But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming, "Oh, the riverl" over and over again.
"I know it's like me!" she exclaimed. "I know that I belong to it. I know that it's the natural company of such as I am! It comes from country places, where there was once no harm in it--and it creeps through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable--and it goes away, like my life, to a great sea, that is always troubled--and I feel that I must go with it!"
I have never known what despair was, except in the tone of those words.
"I can't keep away from it. I can't forget it. It haunts me day and night. It's the only thing in all the world that I am fit for, or that's fit for me. Oh, the dreadful river!"
The thought passed through my mind that in the face of my companion, as he looked upon her without speech or motion, I might have read his niece's history, if I had known nothing of it. I never saw, in any painting or reality, horror and compassion so impressively blended. He shook as if he would have fallen, and his hand--I touched it with my own, for his appearance alarmed me--was deadly cold.
"She is in a state of frenzy," I whispered to him. "She will speak differently in a little time."
I don't know what he would have said in answer. He made some motion with his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken, but he had only pointed to her with his outstretched hand.
A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more hid her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of humiliation and ruin. Knowing that this state must pass, before we could speak to her with any hope, I ventured to restrain him when he would have raised her, and we stood by in silence until she became more tranquil.
"Martha," said I then, leaning down, and helping her to rise--she seemed to want to rise as if with the intention of going away, but she was weak, and leaned against a boat. "Do you know who this is, who is with me?"
She said faintly, "Yes."
"Do you know that we have followed you a long way tonight?"
She shook her head. She looked neither at him nor at me, but stood in a humble attitude, holding her bonnet and shawl in one hand, without appearing conscious of them, and pressing the other, clenched, against her forehead.
"Are you composed enough," said I, "to speak on the subject which so interested you--I hope Heaven may remember it!--that snowy night?"
Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to me for not having driven her away from the door.
"I want to say nothing for myself," she said, after a few moments. "I am bad, I am lost. I have no hope at all. But tell him, sir," she had shrunk away from him, "if you don't feel too hard to me to do it, that I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune."
"It has never been attributed to you," I returned, earnestly responding to her earnestness.
"It was you, if I don't deceive myself," she said, in a broken voice, "that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me, was so gentle to me, didn't shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me such kind help! Was it you, sir?"
"It was," said I.
"I should have been in the river long ago," she said, glancing at it with a terrible expression, "if any wrong to her had been upon my mind. I never could have kept out of it a single winter's night, if I had not been free of any share in that!"
"The cause of her flight is too well understood," I said. "You are innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe --we know."
"Oh I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a better heart!" exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret, "for she was always good to me! She never spoke a word to me but what was pleasant and right. Is it likely I would try to make her what I am myself, knowing what I am myself so well? When I lost everything that makes life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was that I was parted for ever from her!"
Mr. Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunwale of the boat, and his eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.
"And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from some belonging to our town," cried Martha, "the bitterest thought in all my mind was that the people would remember she once kept company with me, and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven knows, I would have died to have brought back her good name!"
Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse and grief was terrible.
"To have died would not have been much--what can I say?--I would have lived!" she cried. "I would have lived to be old, in the wretched streets--and to wander about, avoided, in the dark--and to see the day break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used to shine into my room, and wake me once--I would have done even that to save her!"
Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture constantly, stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections.
"What shall I ever do!" she said, fighting thus with her despair. "How can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to everyone I come near!" Suddenly she turned to my companion. "Stamp upon me, kill me! When she was your pride, you would have thought I had done her harm if I had brushed against her in the street. You can't believe --why should you?--a syllable that comes out of my lips. It would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a word. I don't complain. I don't say she and I are alike. I know there is a long, long way between us. I only say, with all my guilt and wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and love her. Oh don't think that all the power I had of loving anything is quite worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does. Kill me for being what I am, and having ever known her, but don't think that of me!"
He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild distracted manner, and, when she was silent, gently raised her.
"Martha," said Mr. Peggotty, "God forbid as I should judge you. Forbid as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen't know half the change that's come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it likely. Well!" he paused a moment, then went on. "You doen't understand how 'tis that this here gentleman and me has wished to speak to you. You doen't understand what 'tis we has afore us. Listen now!"
His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrink ingly, before him, as if she were afraid to meet his eyes, but her passionate sorrow was quite hushed and mute.
"If you heerd," said Mr. Peggotty, "owt of what passed between Mas'r Davy and me, th' night when it snew so hard, you know as I have b
een--wheer not--fur to seek my dear niece. My dear niece," he repeated steadily. "Fur she's more dear to me now, Martha, than ever she was dear afore."
She put her hands before her face, but otherwise remained quiet.
"I have heerd her tell," said Mr. Peggotty, "as you was early left fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough seafaring way, their place. Maybe you can guess that if you'd had such a friend, you'd have got into a way of being fond of him in course of time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me."
As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her, taking it up from the ground for that purpose.
"Whereby," said he, "I know, both as she would go to the wureld's furdest end with me, if she could once see me again, and that she would fly to the wureld's furdest end to keep off seeing me. For though she ain't no call to doubt my love, and doen't--and doen't," he repeated, with a quiet assurance of the truth of what he said, "there's shame steps in, and keeps betwixt us."
I read, in every word of his plain impressive way of delivering himself, new evidence of his having thought of this one topic, in every feature it presented.
"According to our reckoning," he proceeded, "Mas'r Davy's here, and mine, she is like, one day, to make her own poor solitary course to London. We believe--Mas'r Davy, me, and all of us--that you are as innocent of everything that has befel her, as the unborn child. You've spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you. Bless her, I knew she was! I knew she always was, to all. You're thankful to her, and you love her. Help us all you can to find her, and may Heaven reward youl"
She looked at him hastily, and, for the first time, as if she were doubtful of what he had said.
"Will you trust me?" she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.
"Full and freel" said Mr. Peggotty.
"To speak to her, if I should ever find her, shelter her, if I have any shelter to divide with her, and then, without her knowledge, come to you, and bring you to her?" she asked hurriedly.
We both replied together, "Yes!"