The house, when I came up to it, looked just the same. Not a blind was raised, no sign of life was in the dull paved court, with its covered way leading to the disused door. The wind had quite gone down, and nothing moved.
I had not, at first, the courage to ring at the gate, and when I did ring, my errand seemed to me to be expressed in the very sound of the bell. The little parlour-maid came out, with the key in her hand, and, looking earnestly at me as she unlocked the gate, said:
"I beg your pardon, sir. Are you ill?"
"I have been much agitated, and am fatigued."
"Is anything the matter, sir?--Mr. James?--"
"Hush!" said I. "Yes, something has happened, that I have to break to Mrs. Steerforth. She is at home?"
The girl anxiously replied that her mistress was very seldom out now, even in a carriage, that she kept her room, that she saw no company, but would see me. Her mistress was up, she said, and Miss Dartle was with her. What message should she take upstairs?
Giving her a strict charge to be careful of her manner, and only to carry in my card and say I waited, I sat down in the drawing-room (which we had now reached) until she should come back. Its former pleasant air of occupation was gone, and the shutters were half-closed. The harp had not been used for many and many a day. His picture, as a boy, was there. The cabinet in which his mother had kept his letters was there. I wondered if she ever read them now, if she would ever read them more!
The house was so still that I heard the girl's light step upstairs. On her return, she brought a message, to the effect that Mrs. Steerforth was an invalid and could not come down, but, that if I would excuse her being in her chamber, she would be glad to see me. In a few moments I stood before her.
She was in his room, not in her own. I felt, of course, that she had taken to occupy it, in remembrance of him, and that the many tokens of his old sports and accomplishments, by which she was surrounded, remained there, just as he had left them, for the same reason. She murmured, however, even in her reception of me, that she was out of her own chamber because its aspect was unsuited to her infirmity, and with her stately look repelled the least suspicion of the truth.
At her chair, as usual, was Rosa Dartle. From the first moment of her dark eyes resting on me, I saw she knew I was the bearer of evil tidings. The scar sprung into view that instant. She withdrew herself a step behind the chair, to keep her own face out of Mrs. Steerforth's observation, and scrutinized me with a piercing gaze that never faltered, never shrunk.
"I am sorry to observe you are in mourning, sir," said Mrs. Steerforth.
"I am unhappily a widower," said I.
"You are very young to know so great a loss," she returned. "I am grieved to hear it. I am grieved to hear it. I hope Time will be good to you."
"I hope Time," said I, looking at her, "will be good to all of us. Dear Mrs. Steerforth, we must all trust to that, in our heaviest misfortunes."
The earnestness of my manner, and the tears in my eyes, alarmed her. The whole course of her thoughts appeared to stop, and change.
I tried to command my voice in gently saying his name, but it trembled. She repeated it to herself, two or three times, in a low tone. Then, addressing me, she said, with enforced calmness:
"My son is ill."
"Very ill."
"You have seen him?"
"I have."
"Are you reconciled?"
I could not say yes, I could not say no. She slightly turned her head towards the spot where Rosa Dartle had been standing at her elbow, and in that moment I said, by the motion of my lips, to Rosa, "Dead!"
That Mrs. Steerforth might not be induced to look behind her, and read, plainly written, what she was not yet prepared to know, I met her look quickly, but I had seen Rosa Dartle throw her hands up in the air with vehemence of despair, and horror, and then clasp them on her face.
The handsome lady--so like, oh so like!--regarded me with a fixed look, and put her hand to her forehead. I besought her to be calm, and prepare herself to bear what I had to tell, but I should rather have entreated her to weep, for she sat like a stone figure.
"When I was last here," I faltered, "Miss Dartle told me he was sailing here and there. The night before last was a dreadful one at sea. If he were at sea that night, and near a dangerous coast, as it is said he was, and if the vessel that was seen should really be the ship which--"
"Rosa!" said Mrs. Steerforth, "come to me!"
She came, but with no sympathy or gentleness. Her eyes gleamed like fire as she confronted his mother, and broke into a frightful laugh.
"Now," she said, "is your pride appeased, you madwoman? Now has he made atonement to you--with his life! Do you hear?--His life!"
Mrs. Steerforth, fallen back stiffly in her chair, and making no sound but a moan, cast her eyes upon her with a wide stare.
"Aye!" cried Rosa, smiting herself passionately on the breast, "look at me! Moan, and groan, and look at me! Look here!" striking the scar, "at your dead child's handiwork!"
The moan the mother uttered, from time to time, went to my heart. Always the same. Always inarticulate and stifled. Always accompanied with an incapable motion of the head, but with no change of face. Always proceeding from a rigid mouth and closed teeth, as if the jaw were locked and the face frozen up in pain.
"Do you remember when he did this?" she proceeded. "Do you remember when, in his inheritance of your nature, and in your pampering of his pride and passion, he did this, and disfigured me for life? Look at me, marked until I die with his high displeasure, and moan and groan for what you made him!"
"Miss Dartle," I entreated her. "For Heaven's sake--"
"I will speak!" she said, turning on me with her lightning eyes. "Be silent, you! Look at me, I say, proud mother of a proud false son! Moan for your nurture of him, moan for your corruption of him, moan for your loss of him, moan for mine!"
She clenched her hand, and trembled through her spare worn figure, as if her passion were killing her by inches.
"You, resent his self-will!" she exclaimed. "You, injured by his haughty temper! You, who opposed to both, when your hair was grey, the qualities which made both when you gave him birth! You, who from his cradle reared him to be what he was, and stunted what he should have been! Are you rewarded, now, for your years of trouble?"
"Oh Miss Dartle, shame! Oh cruel!"
"I tell you," she returned, "I will speak to her. No power on earth should stop me, while I was standing here! Have I been silent all these years, and shall I not speak now? I loved him better than you ever loved him!" turning on her fiercely. "I could have loved him, and asked no return. If I had been his wife, I could have been the slave of his caprices for a word of love a year. I should have been. Who knows it better than I? You were exacting, proud, punctilious, selfish. My love would have been devoted--would have trod your paltry whimpering underfoot!"
With flashing eyes, she stamped upon the ground as if she actually did it.
"Look here!" she said, striking the scar again, with a relentless hand. "When he grew into the better understanding of what he had done, he saw it, and repented of it! I could sing to him, and talk to him, and show the ardour that I felt in all he did, and attain with labour to such knowledge as most interested him, and I attracted him. When he was freshest and truest, he loved me. Yes, he did! Many a time, when you were put off with a slight word, he has taken Me to his heart!"
She said it with a taunting pride in the midst of her frenzy --for it was little less--yet with an eager remembrance of it, in which the smouldering embers of a gentler feeling kindled for the moment.
"I descended--as I might have known I should, but that he fascinated me with his boyish courtship--into a doll, a trifle for the occupation of an idle hour, to be dropped, and taken up, and trifled with, as the inconstant humour took him. When he grew weary, I grew weary. As his fancy died out, I would no more have tried to strengthen any power I had, than I would have married him on his being forced to t
ake me for his wife. We fell away from one another without a word. Perhaps you saw it, and were not sorry. Since then, I have been a mere disfigured piece of furniture between you both, having no eyes, no ears, no feelings, no remembrances. Moan? Moan for what you made him, not for your love. I tell you that the time was, when I loved him better than you ever did!"
She stood with her bright angry eyes confronting the wide stare, and the set face, and softened no more, when the moaning was repeated, than if the face had been a picture.
"Miss Dartle," said I, "if you can be so obdurate as not to feel for this afflicted mother----"
"Who feels for me?" she sharply retorted. "She has sown this. Let her moan for the harvest that she reaps today!"
"And if his faults----" I began.
"Faults!" she cried, bursting into passionate tears. "Who dares malign him? He had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he stooped!"
"No one can have loved him better, no one can hold him in dearer remembrance than I," I replied. "I meant to say, if you have no compassion for his mother, or if his faults--you have been bitter on them--"
"It's false," she cried, tearing her black hair, "I loved him!"
"--if his faults cannot," I went on, "be banished from your remembrance, in such an hour, look at that figure, even as one you have never seen before, and render it some help!"
All this time, the figure was unchanged, and looked unchangeable. Motionless, rigid, staring, moaning in the same dumb way from time to time, with the same helpless motion of the head, but giving no other sign of life. Miss Dartle suddenly kneeled down before it, and began to loosen the dress.
"A curse upon you!" she said, looking round at me, with a mingled expression of rage and grief. "It was in an evil hour that you ever came here! A curse upon youl Go!"
After passing out of the room, I hurried back to ring the bell, the sooner to alarm the servants. She had then taken the impassive figure in her arms, and, still, upon her knees, was weeping over it, kissing it, calling to it, rocking it to and fro upon her bosom like a child, and trying every tender means to rouse the dormant senses. No longer afraid of leaving her, I noiselessly turned back again, and alarmed the house as I went out.
Later in the day, I returned, and we laid him in his mother's room. She was just the same, they told me, Miss Dartle never left her, doctors were in attendance, many things had been tried, but she lay like a statue, except for the low sound now and then.
I went through the dreary house, and darkened the windows. The windows of the chamber where he lay, I darkened last. I lifted up the leaden hand, and held it to my heart, and all the world seemed death and silence, broken only by his mother's moaning.
CHAPTER LVII
The Emigrants
ONE THING MORE I HAD TO DO, BEFORE YIELDING MYSELF to the shock of these emotions. It was to conceal what had occurred, from those who were going away, and to dismiss them on their voyage in happy ignorance. In this, no time was to be lost.
I took Mr. Micawber aside that same night, and confided to him the task of standing between Mr. Peggotty and intelligence of the late catastrophe. He zealously undertook to do so, and to intercept any newspaper through which it might, without such precautions, reach him.
"If it penetrates to him, sir," said Mr. Micawber, striking himself on the breast, "it shall first pass through this bodyl"
Mr. Micawber, I must observe, in his adaptation of himself to a new state of society, had acquired a bold buccaneering air, not absolutely lawless, but defensive and prompt. One might have supposed him a child of the wilderness, long accustomed to live out of the confines of civilization, and about to return to his native wilds.
He had provided himself, among other things, with a complete suit of oilskin, and a straw-hat with a very low crown, pitched or caulked on the outside. In this rough clothing, with a common mariner's telescope under his arm, and a shrewd trick of casting up his eye at the sky as looking out for dirty weather, he was far more nautical, after his manner, than Mr. Peggotty. His whole family, if I may so express it, were cleared for action. I found Mrs. Micawber in the closest and most uncompromising of bonnets, made fast under the chin, and in a shawl which tied her up (as I had been tied up, when my aunt first received me) like a bundle, and was secured behind at the waist, in a strong knot. Miss Micawber I found made snug for stormy weather, in the same manner, with nothing superfluous about her. Master Micawber was hardly visible in a Guernsey shirt, and the shaggiest suit of slops I ever saw, and the children were done up, like preserved meats, in impervious cases. Both Mr. Micawber and his eldest son wore their sleeves loosely turned back at the wrists, as being ready to lend a hand in any direction, and to "tumble" up or sing out, "Yeo--Heave--Yeo!" on the shortest notice.
Thus Traddles and I found them at nightfall, assembled on the wooden steps, at that time known as Hungerford Stairs, watching the departure of a boat with some of their property on board. I had told Traddles of the terrible event, and it had greatly shocked him, but there could be no doubt of the kindness of keeping it a secret, and he had come to help me in this last service. It was here that I took Mr. Micawber aside, and received his promise.
The Micawber family were lodged in a little, dirty, tumble-down public-house, which in those days was close to the stairs, and whose protruding wooden rooms overhung the river. The family, as emigrants, being objects of some interest in and about Hungerford, attracted so many beholders, that we were glad to take refuge in their room. It was one of the wooden chambers upstairs, with the tide flowing underneath. My aunt and Agnes were there, busily making some little extra comforts, in the way of dress, for the children. Peggotty was quietly assisting, with the old insensible work-box, yard measure, and bit of wax-candle before her, that had now outlived so much.
It was not easy to answer her inquiries, still less to whisper Mr. Peggotty, when Mr. Micawber brought him in, that I had given the letter, and all was well. But I did both, and made them happy. If I showed any trace of what I felt, my own sorrows were sufficient to account for it.
"And when does the ship sail, Mr. Micawber?" asked my aunt.
Mr. Micawber considered it necessary to prepare either my aunt or his wife, by degrees, and said, sooner than he had expected yesterday.
"The boat brought you word, I suppose?" said my aunt.
"It did, ma'am," he returned.
"Well?" said my aunt. "And she sails--"
"Madam," he replied, "I am informed that we must positively be on board before seven tomorrow morning."
"Heyday!" said my aunt, "that's soon. Is it a sea-going fact, Mr. Peggotty?"
"'Tis so, ma'am. She'll drop down the river with that theer tide. If Mas'r Davy and my sister comes aboard at Gravesen', arternoon o' next day, they'll see the last on us."
"And that we shall do," said I, "be sure!"
"Until then, and until we are at sea," observed Mr. Micawber, with a glance of intelligence at me, "Mr. Peggotty and myself will constantly keep a double look-out together, on our goods and chattels. Emma, my love," said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat in his magnificent way, "my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles is so obliging as to solicit, in my ear, that he should have the privilege of ordering the ingredients necessary to the composition of a moderate portion of that Beverage which is peculiarly associated, in our minds, with the Roast Beef of Old England. I allude to--in short, Punch. Under ordinary circumstances, I should scruple to entreat the indulgence of Miss Trotwood and Miss Wickfield, but--"
"I can only say for myself," said my aunt, "that I will drink all happiness and success to you, Mr. Micawber, with the utmost pleasure."
"And I too!" said Agnes, with a smile.
Mr. Micawber immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to be quite at home, and in due time returned with a steaming jug. I could not but observe that he had been peeling the lemons with his own clasp-knife, which, as became the knife of a practical settler, was about a foot long, and which he wiped, not wholly without ostent
ation, on the sleeve of his coat. Mrs. Micawber and the two elder members of the family I now found to be provided with similar formidable instruments, while every child had its own wooden spoon attached to its body by a strong line. In a similar anticipation of life afloat, and in the Bush, Mr. Micawber, instead of helping Mrs. Micawber and his eldest son and daughter to punch in wine-glasses, which he might easily have done, for there was a shelf-full in the room, served it out to them in a series of villainous little tin pots, and I never saw him enjoy anything so much as drinking out of his own particular pint pot, and putting it in his pocket at the close of the evening.
"The luxuries of the old country," said Mr. Micawber, with an intense satisfaction in their renouncement, "we abandon. The denizens of the forest cannot, of course, expect to participate in the refinements of the land of the Free."
Here, a boy came in to say that Mr. Micawber was wanted downstairs.
"I have a presentiment," said Mrs. Micawber, setting down her tin pot, "that it is a member of my family!"
"If so, my dear," observed Mr. Micawber, with his usual suddenness of warmth on that subject, "as the member of your family--whoever he, she, or it, may be--has kept us waiting for a considerable period, perhaps the Member may now wait my convenience."
"Micawber," said his wife, in a low tone, "at such a time as this--"
" 'It is not meet,' " said Mr. Micawber, rising, " 'that every nice offence should bear its comment!' Emma, I stand reproved."
"The loss, Micawber," observed his wife, "has been my family's, not yours. If my family are at length sensible of the deprivation to which their own conduct has, in the past, exposed them, and now desire to extend the hand of fellowship, let it not be repulsed."
"My dear," he returned, "so be it!"
"If not for their sakes, for mine, Micawber," said his wife.
"Emma," he returned, "that view of the question is, at such a moment, irresistible. I cannot, even now, distinctly pledge myself to fall upon your family's neck, but the member of your family, who is now in attendance, shall have no genial warmth frozen by me."
Mr. Micawber withdrew, and was absent some little time, in the course of which Mrs. Micawber was not wholly free from an apprehension that words might have arisen between him and the Member. At length the same boy reappeared, and presented me with a note written in pencil, and headed, in a legal manner, "Heep v. Micawber." From this document, I learned that Mr. Micawber being again arrested, was in a final paroxysm of despair, and that he begged me to send him his knife and pint pot, by bearer, as they might prove serviceable during the brief remainder of his existence in jail. He also requested, as a last act of friendship, that I would see his family to the Parish Workhouse, and forget that such a Being ever lived.