David Copperfield
his thoughts were so bent, he replied:
‘On what’s afore me, Mas’r Davy; and over yon.’ ‘On the life before you,
do you mean?’ He had pointed confusedly out to sea.
‘Ay, Mas’r Davy. I doen’t rightly know how ‘tis, but from over yon there
seemed to me to come--the end of it like,’ looking at me as if he were
waking, but with the same determined face.
‘What end?’ I asked, possessed by my former fear.
‘I doen’t know,’ he said, thoughtfully; ‘I was calling to mind that the
beginning of it all did take place here--and then the end come. But it’s
gone! Mas’r Davy,’ he added; answering, as I think, my look; ‘you han’t
no call to be afeerd of me: but I’m kiender muddled; I don’t fare to
feel no matters,’--which was as much as to say that he was not himself,
and quite confounded.
Mr. Peggotty stopping for us to join him: we did so, and said no more.
The remembrance of this, in connexion with my former thought, however,
haunted me at intervals, even until the inexorable end came at its
appointed time.
We insensibly approached the old boat, and entered. Mrs. Gummidge, no
longer moping in her especial corner, was busy preparing breakfast.
She took Mr. Peggotty’s hat, and placed his seat for him, and spoke so
comfortably and softly, that I hardly knew her.
‘Dan’l, my good man,’ said she, ‘you must eat and drink, and keep up
your strength, for without it you’ll do nowt. Try, that’s a dear soul!
An if I disturb you with my clicketten,’ she meant her chattering, ‘tell
me so, Dan’l, and I won’t.’
When she had served us all, she withdrew to the window, where she
sedulously employed herself in repairing some shirts and other clothes
belonging to Mr. Peggotty, and neatly folding and packing them in an old
oilskin bag, such as sailors carry. Meanwhile, she continued talking, in
the same quiet manner:
‘All times and seasons, you know, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, ‘I shall
be allus here, and everythink will look accordin’ to your wishes. I’m a
poor scholar, but I shall write to you, odd times, when you’re away, and
send my letters to Mas’r Davy. Maybe you’ll write to me too, Dan’l, odd
times, and tell me how you fare to feel upon your lone lorn journies.’
‘You’ll be a solitary woman heer, I’m afeerd!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘No, no, Dan’l,’ she returned, ‘I shan’t be that. Doen’t you mind me. I
shall have enough to do to keep a Beein for you’ (Mrs. Gummidge meant a
home), ‘again you come back--to keep a Beein here for any that may hap
to come back, Dan’l. In the fine time, I shall set outside the door as I
used to do. If any should come nigh, they shall see the old widder woman
true to ‘em, a long way off.’
What a change in Mrs. Gummidge in a little time! She was another woman.
She was so devoted, she had such a quick perception of what it would
be well to say, and what it would be well to leave unsaid; she was so
forgetful of herself, and so regardful of the sorrow about her, that I
held her in a sort of veneration. The work she did that day! There
were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the
outhouse--as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of
ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance
rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but
would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being
asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under
weights that she was quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all
sorts of unnecessary errands. As to deploring her misfortunes, she
appeared to have entirely lost the recollection of ever having had any.
She preserved an equable cheerfulness in the midst of her sympathy,
which was not the least astonishing part of the change that had come
over her. Querulousness was out of the question. I did not even observe
her voice to falter, or a tear to escape from her eyes, the whole day
through, until twilight; when she and I and Mr. Peggotty being alone
together, and he having fallen asleep in perfect exhaustion, she broke
into a half-suppressed fit of sobbing and crying, and taking me to the
door, said, ‘Ever bless you, Mas’r Davy, be a friend to him, poor dear!’
Then, she immediately ran out of the house to wash her face, in order
that she might sit quietly beside him, and be found at work there, when
he should awake. In short I left her, when I went away at night, the
prop and staff of Mr. Peggotty’s affliction; and I could not meditate
enough upon the lesson that I read in Mrs. Gummidge, and the new
experience she unfolded to me.
It was between nine and ten o’clock when, strolling in a melancholy
manner through the town, I stopped at Mr. Omer’s door. Mr. Omer had
taken it so much to heart, his daughter told me, that he had been very
low and poorly all day, and had gone to bed without his pipe.
‘A deceitful, bad-hearted girl,’ said Mrs. Joram. ‘There was no good in
her, ever!’
‘Don’t say so,’ I returned. ‘You don’t think so.’
‘Yes, I do!’ cried Mrs. Joram, angrily.
‘No, no,’ said I.
Mrs. Joram tossed her head, endeavouring to be very stern and cross; but
she could not command her softer self, and began to cry. I was young,
to be sure; but I thought much the better of her for this sympathy, and
fancied it became her, as a virtuous wife and mother, very well indeed.
‘What will she ever do!’ sobbed Minnie. ‘Where will she go! What will
become of her! Oh, how could she be so cruel, to herself and him!’
I remembered the time when Minnie was a young and pretty girl; and I was
glad she remembered it too, so feelingly.
‘My little Minnie,’ said Mrs. Joram, ‘has only just now been got to
sleep. Even in her sleep she is sobbing for Em’ly. All day long, little
Minnie has cried for her, and asked me, over and over again, whether
Em’ly was wicked? What can I say to her, when Em’ly tied a ribbon off
her own neck round little Minnie’s the last night she was here, and laid
her head down on the pillow beside her till she was fast asleep! The
ribbon’s round my little Minnie’s neck now. It ought not to be, perhaps,
but what can I do? Em’ly is very bad, but they were fond of one another.
And the child knows nothing!’
Mrs. Joram was so unhappy that her husband came out to take care of
her. Leaving them together, I went home to Peggotty’s; more melancholy
myself, if possible, than I had been yet.
That good creature--I mean Peggotty--all untired by her late anxieties
and sleepless nights, was at her brother’s, where she meant to stay till
morning. An old woman, who had been employed about the house for some
weeks past, while Peggotty had been unable to attend to it, was the
house’s only other occupant besides myself. As I had no occasion for her
services, I sent her to bed, by no means against her will, and sat down
before the kitchen fire a little while, to think about all this.
I was blending it with the deathbed of the late Mr. Barkis, and was
driving out with the tide towards the distance at which Ham had looked
so singularly in the morning, when I was recalled from my wanderings by
a knock at the door. There was a knocker upon the door, but it was not
that which made the sound. The tap was from a hand, and low down upon
the door, as if it were given by a child.
It made me start as much as if it had been the knock of a footman to a
person of distinction. I opened the door; and at first looked down,
to my amazement, on nothing but a great umbrella that appeared to be
walking about of itself. But presently I discovered underneath it, Miss
Mowcher.
I might not have been prepared to give the little creature a very kind
reception, if, on her removing the umbrella, which her utmost efforts
were unable to shut up, she had shown me the ‘volatile’ expression of
face which had made so great an impression on me at our first and last
meeting. But her face, as she turned it up to mine, was so earnest;
and when I relieved her of the umbrella (which would have been an
inconvenient one for the Irish Giant), she wrung her little hands in
such an afflicted manner; that I rather inclined towards her.
‘Miss Mowcher!’ said I, after glancing up and down the empty street,
without distinctly knowing what I expected to see besides; ‘how do you
come here? What is the matter?’ She motioned to me with her short right
arm, to shut the umbrella for her; and passing me hurriedly, went into
the kitchen. When I had closed the door, and followed, with the umbrella
in my hand, I found her sitting on the corner of the fender--it was a
low iron one, with two flat bars at top to stand plates upon--in the
shadow of the boiler, swaying herself backwards and forwards, and
chafing her hands upon her knees like a person in pain.
Quite alarmed at being the only recipient of this untimely visit, and
the only spectator of this portentous behaviour, I exclaimed again,
‘Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the matter! are you ill?’
‘My dear young soul,’ returned Miss Mowcher, squeezing her hands upon
her heart one over the other. ‘I am ill here, I am very ill. To think
that it should come to this, when I might have known it and perhaps
prevented it, if I hadn’t been a thoughtless fool!’
Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to the figure) went
backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her little body to and fro;
while a most gigantic bonnet rocked, in unison with it, upon the wall.
‘I am surprised,’ I began, ‘to see you so distressed and serious’--when
she interrupted me.
‘Yes, it’s always so!’ she said. ‘They are all surprised, these
inconsiderate young people, fairly and full grown, to see any natural
feeling in a little thing like me! They make a plaything of me, use me
for their amusement, throw me away when they are tired, and wonder that
I feel more than a toy horse or a wooden soldier! Yes, yes, that’s the
way. The old way!’
‘It may be, with others,’ I returned, ‘but I do assure you it is not
with me. Perhaps I ought not to be at all surprised to see you as you
are now: I know so little of you. I said, without consideration, what I
thought.’
‘What can I do?’ returned the little woman, standing up, and holding out
her arms to show herself. ‘See! What I am, my father was; and my sister
is; and my brother is. I have worked for sister and brother these many
years--hard, Mr. Copperfield--all day. I must live. I do no harm. If
there are people so unreflecting or so cruel, as to make a jest of
me, what is left for me to do but to make a jest of myself, them, and
everything? If I do so, for the time, whose fault is that? Mine?’
No. Not Miss Mowcher’s, I perceived.
‘If I had shown myself a sensitive dwarf to your false friend,’ pursued
the little woman, shaking her head at me, with reproachful earnestness,
‘how much of his help or good will do you think I should ever have had?
If little Mowcher (who had no hand, young gentleman, in the making of
herself) addressed herself to him, or the like of him, because of her
misfortunes, when do you suppose her small voice would have been heard?
Little Mowcher would have as much need to live, if she was the bitterest
and dullest of pigmies; but she couldn’t do it. No. She might whistle
for her bread and butter till she died of Air.’
Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her
handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.
‘Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,’ she
said, ‘that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it
all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way
through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return
for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can
throw bubbles back. If I don’t brood over all I want, it is the better
for me, and not the worse for anyone. If I am a plaything for you