The thought pa.s.sed through my mind that in the face of my companion, as he looked upon her without speech or motion, I might have read his niece"s history, if I had known nothing of it. I never saw, in any painting or reality, horror and compa.s.sion so impressively blended. He shook as if he would have fallen; and his hand--I touched it with my own, for his appearance alarmed me--was deadly cold.
"She is in a state of frenzy," I whispered to him. "She will speak differently in a little time."
I don"t know what he would have said in answer. He made some motion with his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken; but he had only pointed to her with his outstretched hand.
A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more hid her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of humiliation and ruin. Knowing that this state must pa.s.s, before we could speak to her with any hope, I ventured to restrain him when he would have raised her, and we stood by in silence until she became more tranquil.
"Martha," said I then, leaning down, and helping her to rise--she seemed to want to rise as if with the intention of going away, but she was weak, and leaned against a boat. "Do you know who this is, who is with me?"
She said faintly, "Yes."
"Do you know that we have followed you a long way tonight?"
She shook her head. She looked neither at him nor at me, but stood in a humble att.i.tude, holding her bonnet and shawl in one hand, without appearing conscious of them, and pressing the other, clenched, against her forehead.
"Are you composed enough," said I, "to speak on the subject which so interested you--I hope Heaven may remember it!--that snowy night?"
Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to me for not having driven her away from the door.
"I want to say nothing for myself," she said, after a few moments. "I am bad, I am lost. I have no hope at all. But tell him, sir," she had shrunk away from him, "if you don"t feel too hard to me to do it, that I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune." "It has never been attributed to you," I returned, earnestly responding to her earnestness.
"It was you, if I don"t deceive myself," she said, in a broken voice, "that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so gentle to me; didn"t shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me such kind help! Was it you, sir?"
"It was," said I.
"I should have been in the river long ago," she said, glancing at it with a terrible expression, "if any wrong to her had been upon my mind.
I never could have kept out of it a single winter"s night, if I had not been free of any share in that!"
"The cause of her flight is too well understood," I said. "You are innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe,--we know."
"Oh, I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a better heart!" exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret; "for she was always good to me! She never spoke a word to me but what was pleasant and right. Is it likely I would try to make her what I am myself, knowing what I am myself, so well? When I lost everything that makes life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was that I was parted for ever from her!"
Mr. Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunwale of the boat, and his eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.
"And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from some belonging to our town," cried Martha, "the bitterest thought in all my mind was, that the people would remember she once kept company with me, and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven knows, I would have died to have brought back her good name!"
Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse and grief was terrible.
"To have died, would not have been much--what can I say?---I would have lived!" she cried. "I would have lived to be old, in the wretched streets--and to wander about, avoided, in the dark--and to see the day break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used to shine into my room, and wake me once--I would have done even that, to save her!"
Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections.
"What shall I ever do!" she said, fighting thus with her despair. "How can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to everyone I come near!" Suddenly she turned to my companion. "Stamp upon me, kill me! When she was your pride, you would have thought I had done her harm if I had brushed against her in the street. You can"t believe--why should you?---a syllable that comes out of my lips. It would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a word. I don"t complain. I don"t say she and I are alike--I know there is a long, long way between us. I only say, with all my guilt and wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and love her. Oh, don"t think that all the power I had of loving anything is quite worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does. Kill me for being what I am, and having ever known her; but don"t think that of me!"
He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild distracted manner; and, when she was silent, gently raised her.
"Martha," said Mr. Peggotty, "G.o.d forbid as I should judge you. Forbid as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen"t know half the change that"s come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it likely. Well!" he paused a moment, then went on. "You doen"t understand how "tis that this here gentleman and me has wished to speak to you. You doen"t understand what "tis we has afore us. Listen now!"
His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrinkingly, before him, as if she were afraid to meet his eyes; but her pa.s.sionate sorrow was quite hushed and mute.
"If you heerd," said Mr. Peggotty, "owt of what pa.s.sed between Mas"r Davy and me, th" night when it snew so hard, you know as I have been--wheer not--fur to seek my dear niece. My dear niece," he repeated steadily. "Fur she"s more dear to me now, Martha, than she was dear afore."
She put her hands before her face; but otherwise remained quiet.
"I have heerd her tell," said Mr. Peggotty, "as you was early left fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough seafaring-way, their place. Maybe you can guess that if you"d had such a friend, you"d have got into a way of being fond of him in course of time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me."
As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her, taking it up from the ground for that purpose.
"Whereby," said he, "I know, both as she would go to the wureld"s furdest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she would fly to the wureld"s furdest end to keep off seeing me. For though she ain"t no call to doubt my love, and doen"t--and doen"t," he repeated, with a quiet a.s.surance of the truth of what he said, "there"s shame steps in, and keeps betwixt us."
I read, in every word of his plain impressive way of delivering himself, new evidence of his having thought of this one topic, in every feature it presented.
"According to our reckoning," he proceeded, "Mas"r Davy"s here, and mine, she is like, one day, to make her own poor solitary course to London. We believe--Mas"r Davy, me, and all of us--that you are as innocent of everything that has befell her, as the unborn child. You"ve spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you. Bless her, I knew she was! I knew she always was, to all. You"re thankful to her, and you love her. Help us all you can to find her, and may Heaven reward you!"
She looked at him hastily, and for the first time, as if she were doubtful of what he had said.
"Will you trust me?" she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.
"Full and free!" said Mr. Peggotty.
"To speak to her, if I should ever find her; shelter her, if I have any shelter to divide with her; and then, without her knowledge, come to you, and bring you to her?" she asked hurriedly.
We both replied together, "Yes!"
She lifted up her eyes, and solemnly declared that she would devote herself to this task, fervently and faithfully. That she would never waver in it, never be diverted from it, never relinquish it, while there was any chance of hope. If she were not true to it, might the object she now had in life, which bound her to something devoid of evil, in its pa.s.sing away from her, leave her more forlorn and more despairing, if that were possible, than she had been upon the river"s brink that night; and then might all help, human and Divine, renounce her evermore!
She did not raise her voice above her breath, or address us, but said this to the night sky; then stood profoundly quiet, looking at the gloomy water.
We judged it expedient, now, to tell her all we knew; which I recounted at length. She listened with great attention, and with a face that often changed, but had the same purpose in all its varying expressions. Her eyes occasionally filled with tears, but those she repressed. It seemed as if her spirit were quite altered, and she could not be too quiet.
She asked, when all was told, where we were to be communicated with, if occasion should arise. Under a dull lamp in the road, I wrote our two addresses on a leaf of my pocket-book, which I tore out and gave to her, and which she put in her poor bosom. I asked her where she lived herself. She said, after a pause, in no place long. It were better not to know.
Mr. Peggotty suggesting to me, in a whisper, what had already occurred to myself, I took out my purse; but I could not prevail upon her to accept any money, nor could I exact any promise from her that she would do so at another time. I represented to her that Mr. Peggotty could not be called, for one in his condition, poor; and that the idea of her engaging in this search, while depending on her own resources, shocked us both. She continued steadfast. In this particular, his influence upon her was equally powerless with mine. She gratefully thanked him but remained inexorable.
"There may be work to be got," she said. "I"ll try."
"At least take some a.s.sistance," I returned, "until you have tried."
"I could not do what I have promised, for money," she replied. "I could not take it, if I was starving. To give me money would be to take away your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away the only certain thing that saves me from the river."
"In the name of the great judge," said I, "before whom you and all of us must stand at His dread time, dismiss that terrible idea! We can all do some good, if we will."
She trembled, and her lip shook, and her face was paler, as she answered:
"It has been put into your hearts, perhaps, to save a wretched creature for repentance. I am afraid to think so; it seems too bold. If any good should come of me, I might begin to hope; for nothing but harm has ever come of my deeds yet. I am to be trusted, for the first time in a long while, with my miserable life, on account of what you have given me to try for. I know no more, and I can say no more."
Again she repressed the tears that had begun to flow; and, putting out her trembling hand, and touching Mr. Peggotty, as if there was some healing virtue in him, went away along the desolate road. She had been ill, probably for a long time. I observed, upon that closer opportunity of observation, that she was worn and haggard, and that her sunken eyes expressed privation and endurance.