David Copperfield
‘I found out an English gen’leman as was in authority,’ said Mr.
Peggotty, ‘and told him I was a-going to seek my niece. He got me them
papers as I wanted fur to carry me through--I doen’t rightly know how
they’re called--and he would have give me money, but that I was thankful
to have no need on. I thank him kind, for all he done, I’m sure! “I’ve
wrote afore you,” he says to me, “and I shall speak to many as will come
that way, and many will know you, fur distant from here, when you’re
a-travelling alone.” I told him, best as I was able, what my gratitoode
was, and went away through France.’
‘Alone, and on foot?’ said I.
‘Mostly a-foot,’ he rejoined; ‘sometimes in carts along with people
going to market; sometimes in empty coaches. Many mile a day a-foot, and
often with some poor soldier or another, travelling to see his friends.
I couldn’t talk to him,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘nor he to me; but we was
company for one another, too, along the dusty roads.’
I should have known that by his friendly tone.
‘When I come to any town,’ he pursued, ‘I found the inn, and waited
about the yard till someone turned up (someone mostly did) as know’d
English. Then I told how that I was on my way to seek my niece, and they
told me what manner of gentlefolks was in the house, and I waited to see
any as seemed like her, going in or out. When it warn’t Em’ly, I went on
agen. By little and little, when I come to a new village or that, among
the poor people, I found they know’d about me. They would set me down at
their cottage doors, and give me what-not fur to eat and drink, and show
me where to sleep; and many a woman, Mas’r Davy, as has had a daughter
of about Em’ly’s age, I’ve found a-waiting fur me, at Our Saviour’s
Cross outside the village, fur to do me sim’lar kindnesses. Some has had
daughters as was dead. And God only knows how good them mothers was to
me!’
It was Martha at the door. I saw her haggard, listening face distinctly.
My dread was lest he should turn his head, and see her too.
‘They would often put their children--particular their little girls,’
said Mr. Peggotty, ‘upon my knee; and many a time you might have seen
me sitting at their doors, when night was coming in, a’most as if they’d
been my Darling’s children. Oh, my Darling!’
Overpowered by sudden grief, he sobbed aloud. I laid my trembling hand
upon the hand he put before his face. ‘Thankee, sir,’ he said, ‘doen’t
take no notice.’
In a very little while he took his hand away and put it on his breast,
and went on with his story. ‘They often walked with me,’ he said, ‘in
the morning, maybe a mile or two upon my road; and when we parted, and
I said, “I’m very thankful to you! God bless you!” they always seemed to
understand, and answered pleasant. At last I come to the sea. It warn’t
hard, you may suppose, for a seafaring man like me to work his way
over to Italy. When I got theer, I wandered on as I had done afore. The
people was just as good to me, and I should have gone from town to town,
maybe the country through, but that I got news of her being seen among
them Swiss mountains yonder. One as know’d his servant see ‘em there,
all three, and told me how they travelled, and where they was. I made
fur them mountains, Mas’r Davy, day and night. Ever so fur as I went,
ever so fur the mountains seemed to shift away from me. But I come up
with ‘em, and I crossed ‘em. When I got nigh the place as I had been
told of, I began to think within my own self, “What shall I do when I
see her?”’
The listening face, insensible to the inclement night, still drooped at
the door, and the hands begged me--prayed me--not to cast it forth.
‘I never doubted her,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘No! Not a bit! On’y let her
see my face--on’y let her heer my voice--on’y let my stanning still
afore her bring to her thoughts the home she had fled away from, and the
child she had been--and if she had growed to be a royal lady, she’d have
fell down at my feet! I know’d it well! Many a time in my sleep had I
heerd her cry out, “Uncle!” and seen her fall like death afore me. Many
a time in my sleep had I raised her up, and whispered to her, “Em’ly, my
dear, I am come fur to bring forgiveness, and to take you home!”’
He stopped and shook his head, and went on with a sigh.
‘He was nowt to me now. Em’ly was all. I bought a country dress to put
upon her; and I know’d that, once found, she would walk beside me over
them stony roads, go where I would, and never, never, leave me more. To
put that dress upon her, and to cast off what she wore--to take her on
my arm again, and wander towards home--to stop sometimes upon the road,
and heal her bruised feet and her worse-bruised heart--was all that I
thowt of now. I doen’t believe I should have done so much as look at
him. But, Mas’r Davy, it warn’t to be--not yet! I was too late, and they
was gone. Wheer, I couldn’t learn. Some said heer, some said theer.
I travelled heer, and I travelled theer, but I found no Em’ly, and I
travelled home.’
‘How long ago?’ I asked.
‘A matter o’ fower days,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I sighted the old boat
arter dark, and the light a-shining in the winder. When I come nigh and
looked in through the glass, I see the faithful creetur Missis Gummidge
sittin’ by the fire, as we had fixed upon, alone. I called out, “Doen’t
be afeerd! It’s Dan’l!” and I went in. I never could have thowt the old
boat would have been so strange!’ From some pocket in his breast, he
took out, with a very careful hand a small paper bundle containing two
or three letters or little packets, which he laid upon the table.
‘This fust one come,’ he said, selecting it from the rest, ‘afore I had
been gone a week. A fifty pound Bank note, in a sheet of paper, directed
to me, and put underneath the door in the night. She tried to hide her
writing, but she couldn’t hide it from Me!’
He folded up the note again, with great patience and care, in exactly
the same form, and laid it on one side.
‘This come to Missis Gummidge,’ he said, opening another, ‘two or three
months ago.’ After looking at it for some moments, he gave it to me, and
added in a low voice, ‘Be so good as read it, sir.’
I read as follows:
‘Oh what will you feel when you see this writing, and know it comes from
my wicked hand! But try, try--not for my sake, but for uncle’s goodness,
try to let your heart soften to me, only for a little little time! Try,
pray do, to relent towards a miserable girl, and write down on a bit of
paper whether he is well, and what he said about me before you left off
ever naming me among yourselves--and whether, of a night, when it is my
old time of coming home, you ever see him look as if he thought of one
he used to love so dear. Oh, my heart is breaking when I think about
it! I am kneeling down to you, begging and praying you not to be as
hard with me as I deserve--as I well, well, know I deserve--but to be so
gentle and so good, as to write down something of him, and to send it to
me. You need not call me Little, you need not call me by the name I have
disgraced; but oh, listen to my agony, and have mercy on me so far as to
write me some word of uncle, never, never to be seen in this world by my
eyes again!
‘Dear, if your heart is hard towards me--justly hard, I know--but,
listen, if it is hard, dear, ask him I have wronged the most--him whose
wife I was to have been--before you quite decide against my poor poor
prayer! If he should be so compassionate as to say that you might write
something for me to read--I think he would, oh, I think he would, if you
would only ask him, for he always was so brave and so forgiving--tell
him then (but not else), that when I hear the wind blowing at night,
I feel as if it was passing angrily from seeing him and uncle, and was
going up to God against me. Tell him that if I was to die tomorrow (and
oh, if I was fit, I would be so glad to die!) I would bless him and
uncle with my last words, and pray for his happy home with my last
breath!’
Some money was enclosed in this letter also. Five pounds. It was
untouched like the previous sum, and he refolded it in the same way.
Detailed instructions were added relative to the address of a reply,
which, although they betrayed the intervention of several hands, and
made it difficult to arrive at any very probable conclusion in reference
to her place of concealment, made it at least not unlikely that she had
written from that spot where she was stated to have been seen.
‘What answer was sent?’ I inquired of Mr. Peggotty.
‘Missis Gummidge,’ he returned, ‘not being a good scholar, sir, Ham
kindly drawed it out, and she made a copy on it. They told her I was
gone to seek her, and what my parting words was.’
‘Is that another letter in your hand?’ said I.
‘It’s money, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, unfolding it a little way. ‘Ten
pound, you see. And wrote inside, “From a true friend,” like the fust.
But the fust was put underneath the door, and this come by the post, day
afore yesterday. I’m a-going to seek her at the post-mark.’
He showed it to me. It was a town on the Upper Rhine. He had found out,
at Yarmouth, some foreign dealers who knew that country, and they had
drawn him a rude map on paper, which he could very well understand. He
laid it between us on the table; and, with his chin resting on one hand,
tracked his course upon it with the other.
I asked him how Ham was? He shook his head.
‘He works,’ he said, ‘as bold as a man can. His name’s as good, in all
that part, as any man’s is, anywheres in the wureld. Anyone’s hand is
ready to help him, you understand, and his is ready to help them. He’s
never been heerd fur to complain. But my sister’s belief is (‘twixt
ourselves) as it has cut him deep.’
‘Poor fellow, I can believe it!’
‘He ain’t no care, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty in a solemn
whisper--‘kinder no care no-how for his life. When a man’s wanted for
rough sarvice in rough weather, he’s theer. When there’s hard duty to
be done with danger in it, he steps for’ard afore all his mates. And yet
he’s as gentle as any child. There ain’t a child in Yarmouth that doen’t
know him.’
He gathered up the letters thoughtfully, smoothing them with his hand;
put them into their little bundle; and placed it tenderly in his breast
again. The face was gone from the door. I still saw the snow drifting
in; but nothing else was there.
‘Well!’ he said, looking to his bag, ‘having seen you tonight, Mas’r
Davy (and that doos me good!), I shall away betimes tomorrow morning.
You have seen what I’ve got heer’; putting his hand on where the little
packet lay; ‘all that troubles me is, to think that any harm might come
to me, afore that money was give back. If I was to die, and it was lost,
or stole, or elseways made away with, and it was never know’d by him
but what I’d took it, I believe the t’other wureld wouldn’t hold me! I
believe I must come back!’
He rose, and I rose too; we grasped each other by the hand again, before
going out.
‘I’d go ten thousand mile,’ he said, ‘I’d go till I dropped dead, to lay
that money down afore him. If I do that, and find my Em’ly, I’m content.
If I doen’t find her, maybe she’ll come to hear, sometime, as her loving
uncle only ended his search for her when he ended his life; and if I
know her, even that will turn her home at last!’
As he went out into the rigorous night, I saw the lonely figure flit
away before us. I turned him hastily on some pretence, and held him in
conversation until it was gone.
He spoke of a traveller’s house on the Dover Road, where he knew he
could find a clean, plain lodging for the night. I went with him over
Westminster Bridge, and parted from him on the Surrey shore. Everything
seemed, to my imagination, to be hushed in reverence for him, as he