David Copperfield

by Charles Dickens

  "Now," said she, imperiously, without glancing at him, and touching the old wound as it throbbed, perhaps, in this instance, with pleasure rather than pain. "Tell Mr. Copperfield about the flight."

  "Mr. James and myself, ma'am--"

  "Don't address yourself to me!" she interrupted with a frown.

  "Mr. James and myself, sir--" "Nor to me, if you please," said I.

  Mr. Littimer, without being at all discomposed, signified by a slight obeisance, that anything that was most agreeable to us was most agreeable to him, and began again:

  "Mr. James and myself have been abroad with the young woman, ever since she left Yarmouth under Mr. James's protection. We have been in a variety of places, and seen a deal of foreign country. We have been in France, Switzerland, Italy--in fact, almost all parts."

  He looked at the back of the seat, as if he were addressing himself to that, and softly played upon it with his hands, as if he were striking chords upon a dumb piano.

  "Mr. James took quite uncommonly to the young woman, and was more settled, for a length of time, than I have known him to be since I have been in his service. The young woman was very improvable, and spoke the languages, and wouldn't have been known for the same country-person. I noticed that she was much admired wherever we went."

  Miss Dartle put her hand upon her side. I saw him steal a glance at her, and slightly smile to himself.

  "Very much admired, indeed, the young woman was. What with her dress, what with the air and sun, what with being made so much of, what with this, that, and the other, her merits really attracted general notice."

  He made a short pause. Her eyes wandered restlessly over the distant prospect, and she bit her nether lip to stop that busy mouth.

  Taking his hands from the seat, and placing one of them within the other, as he settled himself on one leg, Mr. Littimer proceeded, with his eyes cast down, and his respectable head a little advanced, and a little on one side:

  "The young woman went on in this manner for some time, being occasionally low in her spirits, until I think she began to weary Mr. James by giving way to her low spirits and tempers of that kind, and things were not so comfortable. Mr. James, he began to be restless again. The more restless he got, the worse she got, and I must say, for myself, that I had a very difficult time of it indeed between the two. Still matters were patched up here, and made good there, over and over again, and, altogether, lasted, I am sure, for a longer time than anybody could have expected."

  Recalling her eyes from the distance, she looked at me again now, with her former air. Mr. Littimer, clearing his throat behind his. hand with a respectable short cough, changed legs, and went on:

  "At last, when there had been, upon the whole, a good many words and reproaches, Mr. James he set off one morning, from the neighbourhood of Naples, where we had a villa (the young woman being very partial to the sea), and, under pretence of coming back in a day or so, left it in charge with me to break it out that, for the general happiness of all concerned, he was"--here an interruption of the short cough--"gone. But Mr. James, I must say, certainly did behave extremely honourable, for he proposed that the young woman should marry a very respectable person, who was fully prepared to overlook the past, and who was, at least, as good as anybody the young woman could have aspired to in a regular way, her connexions being very common."

  He changed legs again, and wetted his lips. I was convinced that the scoundrel spoke of himself, and I saw my conviction reflected in Miss Dartle's face.

  "This I also had it in charge to communicate. I was willing to do anything to relieve Mr. James from his difficulty, and to restore harmony between himself and an affectionate parent, who has undergone so much on his account. Therefore I undertook the commission. The young woman's violence when she came to, after I broke the fact of his departure, was beyond all expectations. She was quite mad, and had to be held by force, or, if she couldn't have got to a knife, or got to the sea, she'd have beaten her head against the marble floor."

  Miss Dartle, leaning back upon the seat, with a light of exultation in her face, seemed almost to caress the sounds this fellow had uttered.

  "But when I came to the second part of what had been entrusted to me," said Mr. Littimer, rubbing his hands, uneasily, "which anybody might have supposed would have been, at all events, appreciated as a kind intention, then the young woman came out in her true colours. A more outrageous person I never did see. Her conduct was surprisingly bad. She had no more gratitude, no more feeling, no more patience, no more reason in her, than a stock or a stone. If I hadn't been upon my guard, I am convinced she would have had my blood."

  "I think the better of her for it," said I, indignantly.

  Mr. Littimer bent his head, as much as to say, "Indeed, sir? But you're young!" and resumed his narrative.

  "It was necessary, in short, for a time, to take away everything nigh her, that she could do herself, or anybody else, an injury with, and to shut her up close. Notwithstanding which, she got out in the night, forced the lattice of a window, that I had nailed up myself, dropped on a vine that was trailed below, and never has been seen or heard of, to my knowledge, since."

  "She is dead, perhaps," said Miss Dartle with a smile as if she could have spurned the body of the ruined girl.

  "She may have drowned herself, miss," returned Mr. Littimer, catching at an excuse for addressing himself to somebody. "It's very possible. Or, she may have had assistance from the boatmen, and the boatmen's wives and children. Being given to low company, she was very much in the habit of talking to them on the beach, Miss Dartle, and sitting by their boats. I have known her do it, when Mr. James has been away, whole days. Mr. James was far from pleased to find out once, that she had told the children she was a boatman's daughter, and that in her own country, long ago, she had roamed about the beach, like them."

  Oh, Emily! Unhappy beauty! What a picture rose before me of her sitting on the far off-shore, among the children like herself when she was innocent, listening to little voices such as might have called her Mother had she been a poor man's wife and to the great voice of the sea, with its eternal "Never more!"

  "When it was clear that nothing could be done, Miss Dartle--"

  "Did I tell you not to speak to me?" she said, with stern contempt.

  "You spoke to me, miss," he replied. "I beg your pardon. But it is my service to obey."

  "Do your service," she returned. "Finish your story, and go!"

  "When it was clear," he said, with infinite respectability, and an obedient bow, "that she was not to be found, I went to Mr. James, at the place where it had been agreed that I should write to him, and informed him of what had occurred. Words passed between us in consequence, and I felt it due to my character to leave him. I could bear, and I have borne, a great deal from Mr. James, but he insulted me too far. He hurt me. Knowing the unfortunate difference between himself and his mother, and what her anxiety of mind was likely to be, I took the liberty of coming home to England, and relating--"

  "For money which I paid him," said Miss Dartle to me.

  "Just so, ma'am--and relating what I knew. I am not aware," said Mr. Littimer, after a moment's reflection, "that there is anything else. I am at present out of employment, and should be happy to meet with a respectable situation."

  Miss Dartle glanced at me, as though she would inquire if there were anything that I desired to ask. As there was something which had occurred to my mind, I said in reply:

  "I could wish to know from this--creature"--I could not bring myself to utter any more conciliatory word--"whether they intercepted a letter that was written to her from home, or whether he supposes that she received it."

  He remained calm and silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and the tip of every finger of his right hand delicately poised against the tip of every finger of his left.

  Miss Dartle turned her head disdainfully towards him.

  "I beg your pardon, miss," he said, awakening from his abstraction, "b
ut, however submissive to you, I have my position, though a servant. Mr. Copperfield and you, miss, are different people. If Mr. Copperfield wishes to know anything from me, I take the liberty of reminding Mr. Copperfield that he can put a question to me. I have a character to maintain."

  After a momentary struggle with myself, I turned my eyes upon him, and said, "You have heard my question. Consider it addressed to yourself, if you choose. What answer do you make?"

  "Sir," he rejoined, with an occasional separation and reunion of those delicate tips, "my answer must be qualified, because, to betray Mr. James's confidence to his mother, and to betray it to you, are two different actions. It is not probable, I consider, that Mr. James would encourage the receipt of letters likely to increase low spirits and unpleasantness, but further than that, sir, I should wish to avoid going."

  "Is that all?" inquired Miss Dartle of me.

  I indicated that I had nothing more to say. "Except," I added, as I saw him moving off, "that I understand this fellow's part in the wicked story, and that, as I shall make it known to the honest man who has been her father from her childhood, I would recommend him to avoid going too much into public."

  He had stopped the moment I began, and had listened with his usual repose of manner.

  "Thank you, sir. But you'll excuse me if I say, sir, that there are neither slaves or slave-drivers in this country, and that people are not allowed to take the law into their own hands. If they do, it is more to their own peril, I believe, than to other people's. Consequently speaking, I am not at all afraid of going wherever I may wish, sir."

  With that, he made a polite bow, and, with another to Miss Dartle, went away through the arch in the wall of holly by which he had come. Miss Dartle and I regarded each other for a little while in silence, her manner being exactly what it was, when she had produced the man.

  "He says besides," she observed, with a slow curling of her lip, "that his master, as he hears, is coasting Spain, and this done, is away to gratify his seafaring tastes till he is weary. But this is of no interest to you. Between these two proud persons, mother and son, there is a wider breach than before, and little hope of its healing, for they are one at heart, and time makes each more obstinate and imperious. Neither is this of any interest to you, but it introduces what I wish to say. This devil whom you make an angel of, I mean this low girl whom he picked out of the tide-mud," with her black eyes full upon me, and her passionate finger up, "may be alive, --for I believe some common things are hard to die. If she is, you will desire to have a pearl of such price found and taken care of. We desire that, too, that he may not by any chance be made her prey again. So far, we are united in one interest, and that is why I, who would do her any mischief that so coarse a wretch is capable of feeling, have sent for you to hear what you have heard."

  I saw, by the change in her face, that some one was advancing behind me. It was Mrs. Steerforth, who gave me her hand more coldly than of yore, and with an augmentation of her former stateliness of manner, but still, I perceived--and I was touched by it--with an ineffaceable remembrance of my old love for her son. She was greatly altered. Her fine figure was far less upright, her handsome face was deeply marked, and her hair was almost white. But when she sat down on the seat, she was a handsome lady still, and well I knew the bright eye with its lofty look, that had been a light in my very dreams at school.

  "Is Mr. Copperfield informed of everything, Rosa?"

  "Yes."

  "And has he heard Littimer himself?"

  "Yes, I have told him why you wished it."

  "You are a good girl. I have had some slight correspondence with your former friend, sir," addressing me, "but it has not restored his sense of duty or natural obligation. Therefore I have no other object in this, than what Rosa has mentioned. If, by the course which may relieve the mind of the decent man you brought here (for whom I am sorry--I can say no more), my son may be saved from again falling into the snares of a designing enemy, well!"

  She drew herself up, and sat looking straight before her, far away.

  "Madam," I said respectfully, "I understand. I assure you I am in no danger of putting any strained construction on your motives. But I must say, even to you, having known this injured family from childhood, that if you suppose the girl, so deeply wronged, has not been cruelly deluded, and would not rather die a hundred deaths than take a cup of water from your son's hand now, you cherish a terrible mistake."

  "Well, Rosa, well!" said Mrs. Steerforth, as the other was about to interpose, "it is no matter. Let it be. You are married, sir, I am told?"

  I answered that I had been some time married.

  "And are doing well? I hear little in the quiet life I lead, but I understand you are beginning to be famous."

  "I have been very fortunate," I said, "and find my name connected with some praise."

  "You have no mother?"--in a softened voice.

  "No."

  "It is a pity," she returned. "She would have been proud of you. Good night!"

  I took the hand she held out with a dignified, unbending air, and it was as calm in mine as if her breast had been at peace. Her pride could still its very pulses, it appeared, and draw the placid veil before her face, through which she sat looking straight before her on the far distance.

  As I moved away from them along the terrace, I could not help observing how steadily they both sat gazing on the prospect, and how it thickened and closed around them. Here and there, some early lamps were seen to twinkle in the distant city, and, in the eastern quarter of the sky, the lurid light still hovered. But, from the greater part of the broad valley interposed, a mist was rising like a sea, which, mingling with the darkness, made it seem as if the gathering waters would encompass them. I have reason to remember this, and think of it with awe, for, before I looked upon those two again, a stormy sea had risen to their feet.

  Reflecting on what had been thus told me, I felt it right that it should be communicated to Mr. Peggotty. On the following evening I went into London in quest of him. He was always wandering about from place to place, with his one object of recovering his niece before him, but was more in London than elsewhere. Often and often, now, had I seen him in the dead of night passing along the streets, searching, among the few who loitered out-of-doors at those untimely hours, for what he dreaded to find.

  He kept a lodging over the little chandler's shop in Hungerford Market, which I have had occasion to mention more than once, and from which he first went forth upon his errand of mercy. Hither I directed my walk. On making inquiry for him, I learned from the people of the house that he had not gone out yet, and I should find him in his room upstairs.

  He was sitting reading by a window in which he kept a few plants. The room was very neat and orderly. I saw in a moment that it was always kept prepared for her reception, and that he never went out but he thought it possible he might bring her home. He had not heard my tap at the door, and only raised his eyes when I laid my hand upon his shoulder.

  "Mas'r Davy! Thankee, sir! thankee hearty, for this visit! Sit ye down. You're kindly welcome, sirl"

  "Mr. Peggotty," said I, taking the chair he handed me, "don't expect much! I have heard some news."

  "Of Em'lyl"

  He put his hand, in a nervous manner, on his mouth, and turned pale, as he fixed his eyes on mine.

  "It gives no clue to where she is, but she is not with him."

  He sat down, looking intently at me, and listened in profound silence to all I had to tell. I well remember the sense of dignity, beauty even, with which the patient gravity of his face impressed me, when, having gradually removed his eyes from mine, he sat looking downward, leaning his forehead on his hand. He offered no interruption, but remained throughout perfectly still. He seemed to pursue her figure through the narrative, and to let every other shape go by him, as if it were nothing.

  When I had done, he shaded his face, and continued silent. I looked out of the window for a little while, and occupied mysel
f with the plants.

  "How do you fare to feel about it, Mas'r Davy?" he inquired at length.

  "I think that she is living," I replied.

  "I doen't know. Maybe the first shock was too rough, and in the wildness of her art--! That there blue water as she used to speak on. Could she have thowt o' that so many year, because it was to be her gravel"

  He said this, musing, in a low, frightened voice, and walked across the little room.

  ."And yet," he added, "Mas'r Davy, I have felt so sure as she was living--I have know'd awake and sleeping, as it was so trew that I should find her--I have been so led on by it, and held up by it--that I doen't believe I can have been deceived. No! Em'ly's alive!"

  He put his hand down firmly on the table, and set his sunburnt face into a resolute expression.

  "My niece, Em'ly, is alive, sir!" he said, steadfastly. "I doen't know wheer it comes from, or how 'tis, but I am told as she's alive!"

  He looked almost like a man inspired, as he said it. I waited for a few moments, until he could give me his undivided attention, and then proceeded to explain the precaution that, it had occurred to me last night, it would be wise to take.

  "Now, my dear friend--" I began.

  "Thankee, thankee, kind sir," he said, grasping my hand in both of his.

  "If she should make her way to London, which is likely --for where could she lose herself so readily as in this vast city, and what would she wish to do, but lose and hide herself, if she does not go home?--"

  "And she won't go home," he interposed, shaking his head mournfully. "If she had left of her own accord, she might, not as 'twas, sir."

  "If she should come here," said I, "I believe there is one person here, more likely to discover her than any other in the world. Do you remember--hear what I say, with fortitude--think of your great object!--do you remember Martha?"

  "Of our town?"

  I needed no other answer than his face.

  "Do you know that she is in London?"

  "I have seen her in the streets," he answered with a shiver.

  "But you don't know," said I, "that Emily was charitable to her, with Ham's help, long before she fled from home. Nor that, when we met one night, and spoke together in the room yonder, over the way, she listened at the door."