David Copperfield
height, without the least defence. The incident is so impressed on my
remembrance, that if I were a draughtsman I could draw its form here,
I dare say, accurately as it was that day, and little Em’ly springing
forward to her destruction (as it appeared to me), with a look that I
have never forgotten, directed far out to sea.
The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came back safe
to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at the cry I had uttered;
fruitlessly in any case, for there was no one near. But there have been
times since, in my manhood, many times there have been, when I have
thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that
in the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, there
was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any tempting her towards
him permitted on the part of her dead father, that her life might have
a chance of ending that day? There has been a time since when I have
wondered whether, if the life before her could have been revealed to me
at a glance, and so revealed as that a child could fully comprehend it,
and if her preservation could have depended on a motion of my hand, I
ought to have held it up to save her. There has been a time since--I do
not say it lasted long, but it has been--when I have asked myself the
question, would it have been better for little Em’ly to have had the
waters close above her head that morning in my sight; and when I have
answered Yes, it would have been.
This may be premature. I have set it down too soon, perhaps. But let it
stand.
We strolled a long way, and loaded ourselves with things that we thought
curious, and put some stranded starfish carefully back into the water--I
hardly know enough of the race at this moment to be quite certain
whether they had reason to feel obliged to us for doing so, or the
reverse--and then made our way home to Mr. Peggotty’s dwelling. We
stopped under the lee of the lobster-outhouse to exchange an innocent
kiss, and went in to breakfast glowing with health and pleasure.
‘Like two young mavishes,’ Mr. Peggotty said. I knew this meant, in our
local dialect, like two young thrushes, and received it as a compliment.
Of course I was in love with little Em’ly. I am sure I loved that
baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity and more
disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a later time
of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy raised up
something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealized,
and made a very angel of her. If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread
a little pair of wings and flown away before my eyes, I don’t think I
should have regarded it as much more than I had had reason to expect.
We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner,
hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up
himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play. I told Em’ly
I adored her, and that unless she confessed she adored me I should be
reduced to the necessity of killing myself with a sword. She said she
did, and I have no doubt she did.
As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty
in our way, little Em’ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no
future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for
growing younger. We were the admiration of Mrs. Gummidge and Peggotty,
who used to whisper of an evening when we sat, lovingly, on our little
locker side by side, ‘Lor! wasn’t it beautiful!’ Mr. Peggotty smiled at
us from behind his pipe, and Ham grinned all the evening and did nothing
else. They had something of the sort of pleasure in us, I suppose, that
they might have had in a pretty toy, or a pocket model of the Colosseum.
I soon found out that Mrs. Gummidge did not always make herself so
agreeable as she might have been expected to do, under the circumstances
of her residence with Mr. Peggotty. Mrs. Gummidge’s was rather a fretful
disposition, and she whimpered more sometimes than was comfortable for
other parties in so small an establishment. I was very sorry for
her; but there were moments when it would have been more agreeable, I
thought, if Mrs. Gummidge had had a convenient apartment of her own to
retire to, and had stopped there until her spirits revived.
Mr. Peggotty went occasionally to a public-house called The Willing
Mind. I discovered this, by his being out on the second or third evening
of our visit, and by Mrs. Gummidge’s looking up at the Dutch clock,
between eight and nine, and saying he was there, and that, what was
more, she had known in the morning he would go there.
Mrs. Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had burst into tears
in the forenoon, when the fire smoked. ‘I am a lone lorn creetur’,’ were
Mrs. Gummidge’s words, when that unpleasant occurrence took place, ‘and
everythink goes contrary with me.’
‘Oh, it’ll soon leave off,’ said Peggotty--I again mean our
Peggotty--‘and besides, you know, it’s not more disagreeable to you than
to us.’
‘I feel it more,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
It was a very cold day, with cutting blasts of wind. Mrs. Gummidge’s
peculiar corner of the fireside seemed to me to be the warmest and
snuggest in the place, as her chair was certainly the easiest, but it
didn’t suit her that day at all. She was constantly complaining of the
cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her back which she called
‘the creeps’. At last she shed tears on that subject, and said again
that she was ‘a lone lorn creetur’ and everythink went contrary with
her’.
‘It is certainly very cold,’ said Peggotty. ‘Everybody must feel it so.’
‘I feel it more than other people,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
So at dinner; when Mrs. Gummidge was always helped immediately after me,
to whom the preference was given as a visitor of distinction. The
fish were small and bony, and the potatoes were a little burnt. We all
acknowledged that we felt this something of a disappointment; but Mrs.
Gummidge said she felt it more than we did, and shed tears again, and
made that former declaration with great bitterness.
Accordingly, when Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o’clock, this
unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched
and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had
been patching up a great pair of waterboots; and I, with little Em’ly
by my side, had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had never made any
other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes since
tea.
‘Well, Mates,’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking his seat, ‘and how are you?’
We all said something, or looked something, to welcome him, except Mrs.
Gummidge, who only shook her head over her knitting.
‘What’s amiss?’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a clap of his hands. ‘Cheer up,
old Mawther!’ (Mr. Peggotty meant old girl.)
Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. She took out an old
black silk handkerchief and wiped her eyes; but instead of putting it
in her pocket, kept it out, and wiped them again, and still kept it out,
ready for use.
‘What’s amiss, dame?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘Nothing,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge. ‘You’ve come from The Willing Mind,
Dan’l?’
‘Why yes, I’ve took a short spell at The Willing Mind tonight,’ said Mr.
Peggotty.
‘I’m sorry I should drive you there,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
‘Drive! I don’t want no driving,’ returned Mr. Peggotty with an honest
laugh. ‘I only go too ready.’
‘Very ready,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, shaking her head, and wiping her eyes.
‘Yes, yes, very ready. I am sorry it should be along of me that you’re
so ready.’
‘Along o’ you! It an’t along o’ you!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Don’t ye
believe a bit on it.’
‘Yes, yes, it is,’ cried Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I know what I am. I know that I
am a lone lorn creetur’, and not only that everythink goes contrary with
me, but that I go contrary with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than
other people do, and I show it more. It’s my misfortun’.’
I really couldn’t help thinking, as I sat taking in all this, that the
misfortune extended to some other members of that family besides Mrs.
Gummidge. But Mr. Peggotty made no such retort, only answering with
another entreaty to Mrs. Gummidge to cheer up.
‘I an’t what I could wish myself to be,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I am far
from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrary. I feel my
troubles, and they make me contrary. I wish I didn’t feel ‘em, but I
do. I wish I could be hardened to ‘em, but I an’t. I make the house
uncomfortable. I don’t wonder at it. I’ve made your sister so all day,
and Master Davy.’
Here I was suddenly melted, and roared out, ‘No, you haven’t, Mrs.
Gummidge,’ in great mental distress.
‘It’s far from right that I should do it,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘It an’t
a fit return. I had better go into the house and die. I am a lone lorn
creetur’, and had much better not make myself contrary here. If thinks
must go contrary with me, and I must go contrary myself, let me go
contrary in my parish. Dan’l, I’d better go into the house, and die and
be a riddance!’
Mrs. Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to bed. When
she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not exhibited a trace of any feeling
but the profoundest sympathy, looked round upon us, and nodding his head
with a lively expression of that sentiment still animating his face,
said in a whisper:
‘She’s been thinking of the old ‘un!’
I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was supposed to
have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on seeing me to bed, explained
that it was the late Mr. Gummidge; and that her brother always took that
for a received truth on such occasions, and that it always had a moving
effect upon him. Some time after he was in his hammock that night, I
heard him myself repeat to Ham, ‘Poor thing! She’s been thinking of the
old ‘un!’ And whenever Mrs. Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner
during the remainder of our stay (which happened some few times), he
always said the same thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and
always with the tenderest commiseration.
So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the variation of
the tide, which altered Mr. Peggotty’s times of going out and coming in,
and altered Ham’s engagements also. When the latter was unemployed, he
sometimes walked with us to show us the boats and ships, and once
or twice he took us for a row. I don’t know why one slight set of
impressions should be more particularly associated with a place than
another, though I believe this obtains with most people, in reference
especially to the associations of their childhood. I never hear the
name, or read the name, of Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain
Sunday morning on the beach, the bells ringing for church, little Em’ly
leaning on my shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and
the sun, away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing
us the ships, like their own shadows.
At last the day came for going home. I bore up against the separation
from Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge, but my agony of mind at leaving
little Em’ly was piercing. We went arm-in-arm to the public-house where
the carrier put up, and I promised, on the road, to write to her. (I
redeemed that promise afterwards, in characters larger than those in
which apartments are usually announced in manuscript, as being to let.)
We were greatly overcome at parting; and if ever, in my life, I have had
a void made in my heart, I had one made that day.
Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had been ungrateful to my
home again, and had thought little or nothing about it. But I was no
sooner turned towards it, than my reproachful young conscience seemed