In a moment we were all shaking hands with one another, and asking one another how we did, and telling one another how glad we were to meet, and all talking at once. Mr. Peggotty was so proud and overjoyed to see us, that he did not know what to say or do, but kept over and over again shaking hands with me, and then with Steerforth, and then with me, and then ruffling his s.h.a.ggy hair all over his head, and laughing with such glee and triumph, that it was a treat to see him.
"Why, that you two gent"lmen--gent"lmen growed--should come to this here roof tonight, of all nights in my life," said Mr. Peggotty, "is such a thing as never happened afore, I do rightly believe! Em"ly, my darling, come here! Come here, my little witch! There"s Mas"r Davy"s friend, my dear! There"s the gent"lman as you"ve heerd on, Em"ly. He comes to see you, along with Mas"r Davy, on the brightest night of your uncle"s life as ever was or will be, Gorm the t"other one, and horroar for it!"
After delivering this speech all in a breath, and with extraordinary animation and pleasure, Mr. Peggotty put one of his large hands rapturously on each side of his niece"s face, and kissing it a dozen times, laid it with a gentle pride and love upon his broad chest, and patted it as if his hand had been a lady"s. Then he let her go; and as she ran into the little chamber where I used to sleep, looked round upon us, quite hot and out of breath with his uncommon satisfaction.
"If you two gent"lmen--gent"lmen growed now, and such gent"lmen--" said Mr. Peggotty.
"So th" are, so th" are!" cried Ham. "Well said! So th" are. Mas"r Davy bor"--gent"lmen growed--so th" are!"
"If you two gent"lmen, gent"lmen growed," said Mr. Peggotty, "don"t ex-cuse me for being in a state of mind, when you understand matters, I"ll arks your pardon. Em"ly, my dear!--She knows I"m a going to tell,"
here his delight broke out again, "and has made off. Would you be so good as look arter her, Mawther, for a minute?"
Mrs. Gummidge nodded and disappeared.
"If this ain"t," said Mr. Peggotty, sitting down among us by the fire, "the brightest night o" my life, I"m a sh.e.l.lfish--biled too--and more I can"t say. This here little Em"ly, sir," in a low voice to Steerforth, "--her as you see a blushing here just now--"
Steerforth only nodded; but with such a pleased expression of interest, and of partic.i.p.ation in Mr. Peggotty"s feelings, that the latter answered him as if he had spoken.
"To be sure," said Mr. Peggotty. "That"s her, and so she is. Thankee, sir."
Ham nodded to me several times, as if he would have said so too.
"This here little Em"ly of ours," said Mr. Peggotty, "has been, in our house, what I suppose (I"m a ignorant man, but that"s my belief) no one but a little bright-eyed creetur can be in a house. She ain"t my child; I never had one; but I couldn"t love her more. You understand! I couldn"t do it!"
"I quite understand," said Steerforth.
"I know you do, sir," returned Mr. Peggotty, "and thankee again. Mas"r Davy, he can remember what she was; you may judge for your own self what she is; but neither of you can"t fully know what she has been, is, and will be, to my loving art. I am rough, sir," said Mr. Peggotty, "I am as rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one, unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can know, I think, what our little Em"ly is to me. And betwixt ourselves,"
sinking his voice lower yet, "that woman"s name ain"t Missis Gummidge neither, though she has a world of merits." Mr. Peggotty ruffled his hair again, with both hands, as a further preparation for what he was going to say, and went on, with a hand upon each of his knees:
"There was a certain person as had know"d our Em"ly, from the time when her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a babby, when a young gal, when a woman. Not much of a person to look at, he warn"t,"
said Mr. Peggotty, "something o" my own build--rough--a good deal o"
the sou"-wester in him--wery salt--but, on the whole, a honest sort of a chap, with his art in the right place."
I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to which he sat grinning at us now.
"What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do," said Mr. Peggotty, with his face one high noon of enjoyment, "but he loses that there art of his to our little Em"ly. He follers her about, he makes hisself a sort o" servant to her, he loses in a great measure his relish for his wittles, and in the long-run he makes it clear to me wot"s amiss. Now I could wish myself, you see, that our little Em"ly was in a fair way of being married. I could wish to see her, at all ewents, under articles to a honest man as had a right to defend her. I don"t know how long I may live, or how soon I may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any night, in a gale of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the town-lights shining for the last time over the rollers as I couldn"t make no head against, I could go down quieter for thinking "There"s a man ash.o.r.e there, iron-true to my little Em"ly, G.o.d bless her, and no wrong can touch my Em"ly while so be as that man lives.""
Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right arm, as if he were waving it at the town-lights for the last time, and then, exchanging a nod with Ham, whose eye he caught, proceeded as before.
"Well! I counsels him to speak to Em"ly. He"s big enough, but he"s bashfuller than a little un, and he don"t like. So I speak. "What! Him!"
says Em"ly. "Him that I"ve know"d so intimate so many years, and like so much. Oh, Uncle! I never can have him. He"s such a good fellow!" I gives her a kiss, and I says no more to her than, "My dear, you"re right to speak out, you"re to choose for yourself, you"re as free as a little bird." Then I aways to him, and I says, "I wish it could have been so, but it can"t. But you can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is, Be as you was with her, like a man." He says to me, a-shaking of my hand, "I will!" he says. And he was--honourable and manful--for two year going on, and we was just the same at home here as afore."
Mr. Peggotty"s face, which had varied in its expression with the various stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former triumphant delight, as he laid a hand upon my knee and a hand upon Steerforth"s (previously wetting them both, for the greater emphasis of the action), and divided the following speech between us:
"All of a sudden, one evening--as it might be tonight--comes little Em"ly from her work, and him with her! There ain"t so much in that, you"ll say. No, because he takes care on her, like a brother, arter dark, and indeed afore dark, and at all times. But this tarpaulin chap, he takes hold of her hand, and he cries out to me, joyful, "Look here!
This is to be my little wife!" And she says, half bold and half shy, and half a laughing and half a crying, "Yes, Uncle! If you please."--If I please!" cried Mr. Peggotty, rolling his head in an ecstasy at the idea; "Lord, as if I should do anythink else!--"If you please, I am steadier now, and I have thought better of it, and I"ll be as good a little wife as I can to him, for he"s a dear, good fellow!" Then Missis Gummidge, she claps her hands like a play, and you come in. Theer! the murder"s out!" said Mr. Peggotty--"You come in! It took place this here present hour; and here"s the man that"ll marry her, the minute she"s out of her time."
Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty dealt him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and friendship; but feeling called upon to say something to us, he said, with much faltering and great difficulty:
"She warn"t no higher than you was, Mas"r Davy--when you first come--when I thought what she"d grow up to be. I see her grown up--gent"lmen--like a flower. I"d lay down my life for her--Mas"r Davy--Oh! most content and cheerful! She"s more to me--gent"lmen--than--she"s all to me that ever I can want, and more than ever I--than ever I could say. I--I love her true. There ain"t a gent"lman in all the land--nor yet sailing upon all the sea--that can love his lady more than I love her, though there"s many a common man--would say better--what he meant."
I thought it affecting to see such a st.u.r.dy fellow as Ham was now, trembling in the strength of what he felt for the pretty little creature who had won his heart. I thought the simple confidence reposed in us by Mr. Peggotty and by himself, was, in itself, affecting. I was affected by the story altogether. How far my emotions were influenced by the recollections of my childhood, I don"t know. Whether I had come there with any lingering fancy that I was still to love little Em"ly, I don"t know. I know that I was filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first, with an indescribably sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have changed to pain.
Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the prevailing chord among them with any skill, I should have made a poor hand of it. But it depended upon Steerforth; and he did it with such address, that in a few minutes we were all as easy and as happy as it was possible to be.
"Mr. Peggotty," he said, "you are a thoroughly good fellow, and deserve to be as happy as you are tonight. My hand upon it! Ham, I give you joy, my boy. My hand upon that, too! Daisy, stir the fire, and make it a brisk one! and Mr. Peggotty, unless you can induce your gentle niece to come back (for whom I vacate this seat in the corner), I shall go.
Any gap at your fireside on such a night--such a gap least of all--I wouldn"t make, for the wealth of the Indies!"
So Mr. Peggotty went into my old room to fetch little Em"ly. At first little Em"ly didn"t like to come, and then Ham went. Presently they brought her to the fireside, very much confused, and very shy,--but she soon became more a.s.sured when she found how gently and respectfully Steerforth spoke to her; how skilfully he avoided anything that would embarra.s.s her; how he talked to Mr. Peggotty of boats, and ships, and tides, and fish; how he referred to me about the time when he had seen Mr. Peggotty at Salem House; how delighted he was with the boat and all belonging to it; how lightly and easily he carried on, until he brought us, by degrees, into a charmed circle, and we were all talking away without any reserve.
Em"ly, indeed, said little all the evening; but she looked, and listened, and her face got animated, and she was charming. Steerforth told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which arose out of his talk with Mr.
Peggotty), as if he saw it all before him--and little Em"ly"s eyes were fastened on him all the time, as if she saw it too. He told us a merry adventure of his own, as a relief to that, with as much gaiety as if the narrative were as fresh to him as it was to us--and little Em"ly laughed until the boat rang with the musical sounds, and we all laughed (Steerforth too), in irresistible sympathy with what was so pleasant and light-hearted. He got Mr. Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, "When the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow"; and he sang a sailor"s song himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have almost fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round the house, and murmuring low through our unbroken silence, was there to listen.
As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success never attained by anyone else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me), since the decease of the old one. He left her so little leisure for being miserable, that she said next day she thought she must have been bewitched.
But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the conversation.
When little Em"ly grew more courageous, and talked (but still bashfully) across the fire to me, of our old wanderings upon the beach, to pick up sh.e.l.ls and pebbles; and when I asked her if she recollected how I used to be devoted to her; and when we both laughed and reddened, casting these looks back on the pleasant old times, so unreal to look at now; he was silent and attentive, and observed us thoughtfully. She sat, at this time, and all the evening, on the old locker in her old little corner by the fire--Ham beside her, where I used to sit. I could not satisfy myself whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or in a maidenly reserve before us, that she kept quite close to the wall, and away from him; but I observed that she did so, all the evening.
As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took our leave. We had had some biscuit and dried fish for supper, and Steerforth had produced from his pocket a full flask of Hollands, which we men (I may say we men, now, without a blush) had emptied. We parted merrily; and as they all stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they could upon our road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em"ly peeping after us, from behind Ham, and heard her soft voice calling to us to be careful how we went.
"A most engaging little Beauty!" said Steerforth, taking my arm. "Well!
It"s a quaint place, and they are quaint company, and it"s quite a new sensation to mix with them."
"How fortunate we are, too," I returned, "to have arrived to witness their happiness in that intended marriage! I never saw people so happy.
How delightful to see it, and to be made the sharers in their honest joy, as we have been!"
"That"s rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn"t he?" said Steerforth.
He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that I felt a shock in this unexpected and cold reply. But turning quickly upon him, and seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved:
"Ah, Steerforth! It"s well for you to joke about the poor! You may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman"s, or humour a love like my old nurse"s, I know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you.
And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!"
He stopped, and, looking in my face, said, "Daisy, I believe you are in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!" Next moment he was gaily singing Mr. Peggotty"s song, as we walked at a round pace back to Yarmouth.
CHAPTER 22. SOME OLD SCENES, AND SOME NEW PEOPLE
Steerforth and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of the country. We were very much together, I need not say; but occasionally we were asunder for some hours at a time. He was a good sailor, and I was but an indifferent one; and when he went out boating with Mr. Peggotty, which was a favourite amus.e.m.e.nt of his, I generally remained ash.o.r.e. My occupation of Peggotty"s spare-room put a constraint upon me, from which he was free: for, knowing how a.s.siduously she attended on Mr. Barkis all day, I did not like to remain out late at night; whereas Steerforth, lying at the Inn, had nothing to consult but his own humour. Thus it came about, that I heard of his making little treats for the fishermen at Mr. Peggotty"s house of call, "The Willing Mind", after I was in bed, and of his being afloat, wrapped in fishermen"s clothes, whole moonlight nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at flood. By this time, however, I knew that his restless nature and bold spirits delighted to find a vent in rough toil and hard weather, as in any other means of excitement that presented itself freshly to him; so none of his proceedings surprised me.
Another cause of our being sometimes apart, was, that I had naturally an interest in going over to Blunderstone, and revisiting the old familiar scenes of my childhood; while Steerforth, after being there once, had naturally no great interest in going there again. Hence, on three or four days that I can at once recall, we went our several ways after an early breakfast, and met again at a late dinner. I had no idea how he employed his time in the interval, beyond a general knowledge that he was very popular in the place, and had twenty means of actively diverting himself where another man might not have found one.
For my own part, my occupation in my solitary pilgrimages was to recall every yard of the old road as I went along it, and to haunt the old spots, of which I never tired. I haunted them, as my memory had often done, and lingered among them as my younger thoughts had lingered when I was far away. The grave beneath the tree, where both my parents lay--on which I had looked out, when it was my father"s only, with such curious feelings of compa.s.sion, and by which I had stood, so desolate, when it was opened to receive my pretty mother and her baby--the grave which Peggotty"s own faithful care had ever since kept neat, and made a garden of, I walked near, by the hour. It lay a little off the churchyard path, in a quiet corner, not so far removed but I could read the names upon the stone as I walked to and fro, startled by the sound of the church-bell when it struck the hour, for it was like a departed voice to me. My reflections at these times were always a.s.sociated with the figure I was to make in life, and the distinguished things I was to do. My echoing footsteps went to no other tune, but were as constant to that as if I had come home to build my castles in the air at a living mother"s side.
There were great changes in my old home. The ragged nests, so long deserted by the rooks, were gone; and the trees were lopped and topped out of their remembered shapes. The garden had run wild, and half the windows of the house were shut up. It was occupied, but only by a poor lunatic gentleman, and the people who took care of him. He was always sitting at my little window, looking out into the churchyard; and I wondered whether his rambling thoughts ever went upon any of the fancies that used to occupy mine, on the rosy mornings when I peeped out of that same little window in my night-clothes, and saw the sheep quietly feeding in the light of the rising sun.