David Copperfield
came moaning on across the flat as it had done before. But I could not
help fancying, now, that it moaned of those who were gone; and instead
of thinking that the sea might rise in the night and float the boat
away, I thought of the sea that had risen, since I last heard those
sounds, and drowned my happy home. I recollect, as the wind and water
began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into my
prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to marry little Em’ly, and so
dropping lovingly asleep.
The days passed pretty much as they had passed before, except--it was
a great exception--that little Em’ly and I seldom wandered on the beach
now. She had tasks to learn, and needle-work to do; and was absent
during a great part of each day. But I felt that we should not have had
those old wanderings, even if it had been otherwise. Wild and full of
childish whims as Em’ly was, she was more of a little woman than I
had supposed. She seemed to have got a great distance away from me,
in little more than a year. She liked me, but she laughed at me, and
tormented me; and when I went to meet her, stole home another way, and
was laughing at the door when I came back, disappointed. The best times
were when she sat quietly at work in the doorway, and I sat on the
wooden step at her feet, reading to her. It seems to me, at this
hour, that I have never seen such sunlight as on those bright April
afternoons; that I have never seen such a sunny little figure as I used
to see, sitting in the doorway of the old boat; that I have never beheld
such sky, such water, such glorified ships sailing away into golden air.
On the very first evening after our arrival, Mr. Barkis appeared in an
exceedingly vacant and awkward condition, and with a bundle of oranges
tied up in a handkerchief. As he made no allusion of any kind to this
property, he was supposed to have left it behind him by accident when
he went away; until Ham, running after him to restore it, came back with
the information that it was intended for Peggotty. After that occasion
he appeared every evening at exactly the same hour, and always with a
little bundle, to which he never alluded, and which he regularly put
behind the door and left there. These offerings of affection were of a
most various and eccentric description. Among them I remember a double
set of pigs’ trotters, a huge pin-cushion, half a bushel or so of
apples, a pair of jet earrings, some Spanish onions, a box of dominoes,
a canary bird and cage, and a leg of pickled pork.
Mr. Barkis’s wooing, as I remember it, was altogether of a peculiar
kind. He very seldom said anything; but would sit by the fire in much
the same attitude as he sat in his cart, and stare heavily at Peggotty,
who was opposite. One night, being, as I suppose, inspired by love, he
made a dart at the bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread, and put
it in his waistcoat-pocket and carried it off. After that, his great
delight was to produce it when it was wanted, sticking to the lining of
his pocket, in a partially melted state, and pocket it again when it was
done with. He seemed to enjoy himself very much, and not to feel at all
called upon to talk. Even when he took Peggotty out for a walk on the
flats, he had no uneasiness on that head, I believe; contenting himself
with now and then asking her if she was pretty comfortable; and I
remember that sometimes, after he was gone, Peggotty would throw her
apron over her face, and laugh for half-an-hour. Indeed, we were
all more or less amused, except that miserable Mrs. Gummidge, whose
courtship would appear to have been of an exactly parallel nature, she
was so continually reminded by these transactions of the old one.
At length, when the term of my visit was nearly expired, it was given
out that Peggotty and Mr. Barkis were going to make a day’s holiday
together, and that little Em’ly and I were to accompany them. I had but
a broken sleep the night before, in anticipation of the pleasure of
a whole day with Em’ly. We were all astir betimes in the morning; and
while we were yet at breakfast, Mr. Barkis appeared in the distance,
driving a chaise-cart towards the object of his affections.
Peggotty was dressed as usual, in her neat and quiet mourning; but Mr.
Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of which the tailor had given him
such good measure, that the cuffs would have rendered gloves unnecessary
in the coldest weather, while the collar was so high that it pushed his
hair up on end on the top of his head. His bright buttons, too, were
of the largest size. Rendered complete by drab pantaloons and a buff
waistcoat, I thought Mr. Barkis a phenomenon of respectability.
When we were all in a bustle outside the door, I found that Mr. Peggotty
was prepared with an old shoe, which was to be thrown after us for luck,
and which he offered to Mrs. Gummidge for that purpose.
‘No. It had better be done by somebody else, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
‘I’m a lone lorn creetur’ myself, and everythink that reminds me of
creetur’s that ain’t lone and lorn, goes contrary with me.’
‘Come, old gal!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘Take and heave it.’
‘No, Dan’l,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head.
‘If I felt less, I could do more. You don’t feel like me, Dan’l; thinks
don’t go contrary with you, nor you with them; you had better do it
yourself.’
But here Peggotty, who had been going about from one to another in a
hurried way, kissing everybody, called out from the cart, in which we
all were by this time (Em’ly and I on two little chairs, side by side),
that Mrs. Gummidge must do it. So Mrs. Gummidge did it; and, I am sorry
to relate, cast a damp upon the festive character of our departure, by
immediately bursting into tears, and sinking subdued into the arms of
Ham, with the declaration that she knowed she was a burden, and had
better be carried to the House at once. Which I really thought was a
sensible idea, that Ham might have acted on.
Away we went, however, on our holiday excursion; and the first thing
we did was to stop at a church, where Mr. Barkis tied the horse to some
rails, and went in with Peggotty, leaving little Em’ly and me alone in
the chaise. I took that occasion to put my arm round Em’ly’s waist, and
propose that as I was going away so very soon now, we should determine
to be very affectionate to one another, and very happy, all day. Little
Em’ly consenting, and allowing me to kiss her, I became desperate;
informing her, I recollect, that I never could love another, and that
I was prepared to shed the blood of anybody who should aspire to her
affections.
How merry little Em’ly made herself about it! With what a demure
assumption of being immensely older and wiser than I, the fairy little
woman said I was ‘a silly boy’; and then laughed so charmingly that
I forgot the pain of being called by that disparaging name, in the
pleasure of looking at her.
Mr. Barkis and Peggotty were a good while in the church, but came out at
last, and then we drove away into the country. As we were going along,
Mr. Barkis turned to me, and said, with a wink,--by the by, I should
hardly have thought, before, that he could wink:
‘What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?’
‘Clara Peggotty,’ I answered.
‘What name would it be as I should write up now, if there was a tilt
here?’
‘Clara Peggotty, again?’ I suggested.
‘Clara Peggotty BARKIS!’ he returned, and burst into a roar of laughter
that shook the chaise.
In a word, they were married, and had gone into the church for no other
purpose. Peggotty was resolved that it should be quietly done; and
the clerk had given her away, and there had been no witnesses of the
ceremony. She was a little confused when Mr. Barkis made this abrupt
announcement of their union, and could not hug me enough in token of her
unimpaired affection; but she soon became herself again, and said she
was very glad it was over.
We drove to a little inn in a by-road, where we were expected, and
where we had a very comfortable dinner, and passed the day with great
satisfaction. If Peggotty had been married every day for the last ten
years, she could hardly have been more at her ease about it; it made no
sort of difference in her: she was just the same as ever, and went
out for a stroll with little Em’ly and me before tea, while Mr. Barkis
philosophically smoked his pipe, and enjoyed himself, I suppose, with
the contemplation of his happiness. If so, it sharpened his appetite;
for I distinctly call to mind that, although he had eaten a good deal of
pork and greens at dinner, and had finished off with a fowl or two, he
was obliged to have cold boiled bacon for tea, and disposed of a large
quantity without any emotion.
I have often thought, since, what an odd, innocent, out-of-the-way kind
of wedding it must have been! We got into the chaise again soon after
dark, and drove cosily back, looking up at the stars, and talking about
them. I was their chief exponent, and opened Mr. Barkis’s mind to
an amazing extent. I told him all I knew, but he would have believed
anything I might have taken it into my head to impart to him; for he
had a profound veneration for my abilities, and informed his wife in my
hearing, on that very occasion, that I was ‘a young Roeshus’--by which I
think he meant prodigy.
When we had exhausted the subject of the stars, or rather when I had
exhausted the mental faculties of Mr. Barkis, little Em’ly and I made a
cloak of an old wrapper, and sat under it for the rest of the journey.
Ah, how I loved her! What happiness (I thought) if we were married,
and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields,
never growing older, never growing wiser, children ever, rambling hand
in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our
heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried
by the birds when we were dead! Some such picture, with no real world in
it, bright with the light of our innocence, and vague as the stars afar
off, was in my mind all the way. I am glad to think there were two such
guileless hearts at Peggotty’s marriage as little Em’ly’s and mine. I
am glad to think the Loves and Graces took such airy forms in its homely
procession.
Well, we came to the old boat again in good time at night; and there
Mr. and Mrs. Barkis bade us good-bye, and drove away snugly to their
own home. I felt then, for the first time, that I had lost Peggotty. I
should have gone to bed with a sore heart indeed under any other roof
but that which sheltered little Em’ly’s head.
Mr. Peggotty and Ham knew what was in my thoughts as well as I did, and
were ready with some supper and their hospitable faces to drive it away.
Little Em’ly came and sat beside me on the locker for the only time in
all that visit; and it was altogether a wonderful close to a wonderful
day.
It was a night tide; and soon after we went to bed, Mr. Peggotty and Ham
went out to fish. I felt very brave at being left alone in the solitary
house, the protector of Em’ly and Mrs. Gummidge, and only wished that
a lion or a serpent, or any ill-disposed monster, would make an attack
upon us, that I might destroy him, and cover myself with glory. But as
nothing of the sort happened to be walking about on Yarmouth flats that
night, I provided the best substitute I could by dreaming of dragons
until morning.
With morning came Peggotty; who called to me, as usual, under my window
as if Mr. Barkis the carrier had been from first to last a dream too.
After breakfast she took me to her own home, and a beautiful little
home it was. Of all the moveables in it, I must have been impressed by
a certain old bureau of some dark wood in the parlour (the tile-floored