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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 amusement of
his, I generally remained ashore. My occupation of Peggotty's spare-room
put a constraint upon me, from which he was free: for, knowing how
assiduously 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 compassion,
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 associated 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.
Our old neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Grayper, were gone to South
America, and the rain had made its way through the roof of their
empty house, and stained the outer walls. Mr. Chillip was married
again to a tall, raw-boned, high-nosed wife; and they had a weazen
little baby, with a heavy head that it couldn't hold up, and two
weak staring eyes, with which it seemed to be always wondering why
it had ever been born.
It was with a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure that I
used to linger about my native place, until the reddening winter
sun admonished me that it was time to start on my returning walk.
But, when the place was left behind, and especially when Steerforth
and I were happily seated over our dinner by a blazing fire, it
was delicious to think of having been there. So it was, though in
a softened degree, when I went to my neat room at night; and, turning
over the leaves of the crocodile-book (which was always there, upon
a little table), remembered with a grateful heart how blest I was
in having such a friend as Steerforth, such a friend as Peggotty,
and such a substitute for what I had lost as my excellent and generous
aunt.
MY nearest way to Yarmouth, in coming back from these long walks,
was by a ferry. It landed me on the flat between the town and the
sea, which I could make straight across, and so save myself a considerable
circuit by the high road. Mr. Peggotty's house being on that waste-place,
and not a hundred yards out of my track, I always looked in as I
went by. Steerforth was pretty sure to be there expecting me, and
we went on together through the frosty air and gathering fog towards
the twinkling lights of the town.
One dark evening, when I was later than usual - for I had, that
day, been making my parting visit to Blunderstone, as we were now
about to return home - I found him alone in Mr. Peggotty's house,
sitting thoughtfully before the fire. He was so intent upon his
own reflections that he was quite unconscious of my approach. This,
indeed, he might easily have been if he had been less absorbed,
for footsteps fell noiselessly on the sandy ground outside; but
even my entrance failed to rouse him. I was standing close to him,
looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he was lost in his
meditations.
He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoulder, that
he made me start too.
'You come upon me,' he said, almost angrily, 'like a reproachful
ghost!'
'I was obliged to announce myself, somehow,' I replied. 'Have
I called you down from the stars?'
'No,' he answered. 'No.'
'Up from anywhere, then?' said I, taking my seat near him.
'I was looking at the pictures in the fire,' he returned.
'But you are spoiling them for me,' said I, as he stirred it
quickly with a piece of burning wood, striking out of it a train
of red-hot sparks that went careering up the little chimney, and
roaring out into the air.
'You would not have seen them,' he returned. 'I detest this mongrel
time, neither day nor night. How late you are! Where have you been?'
'I have been taking leave of my usual walk,' said I.
'And I have been sitting here,' said Steerforth, glancing round
the room, 'thinking that all the people we found so glad on the
night of our coming down, might - to judge from the present wasted
air of the place - be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don't know
what harm. David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these
last twenty years!'
'My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?'
'I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!' he exclaimed.
'I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!'
There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed
me. He was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.
'It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of
a nephew,' he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece,
with his face towards the fire, 'than to be myself, twenty times
richer and twenty times wiser, and be the torment to myself that
I have been, in this Devil's bark of a boat, within the last half-hour!'
I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at first I
could only observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his head
upon his hand, and looking gloomily down at the fire. At length
I begged him, with all the earnestness I felt, to tell me what had
occurred to cross him so unusually, and to let me sympathize with
him, if I could not hope to advise him. Before I had well concluded,
he began to laugh - fretfully at first, but soon with returning
gaiety.
'Tut, it's nothing, Daisy! nothing!' he replied. 'I told you
at the inn in London, I am heavy company for myself, sometimes.
I have been a nightmare to myself, just now - must have had one,
I think. At odd dull times, nursery tales come up into the memory,
unrecognized for what they are. I believe I have been confounding
myself with the bad boy who "didn't care", and became
food for lions - a grander kind of going to the dogs, I suppose.
What old women call the horrors, have been creeping over me from
head to foot. I have been afraid of myself.'
'You are afraid of nothing else, I think,' said I.
'Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of too,' he
answered. 'Well! So it goes by! I am not about to be hipped again,
David; but I tell you, my good fellow, once more, that it would
have been well for me (and for more than me) if I had had a steadfast
and judicious father!'
His face was always full of expression, but I never saw it express
such a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words, with
his glance bent on the fire.
'So much for that!' he said, making as if he tossed something
light into the air, with his hand. "'Why, being gone, I am
a man again," like Macbeth. And now for dinner! If I have not
(Macbeth-like) broken up the feast with most admired disorder, Daisy.'
'But where are they all, I wonder!' said I.
'God knows,' said Steerforth. 'After strolling to the ferry looking
for you, I strolled in here and found the place deserted. That set
me thinking, and you found me thinking.'
The advent of Mrs. Gummidge with a basket, explained how the
house had happened to be empty. She had hurried out to buy something
that was needed, against Mr. Peggotty's return with the tide; and
had left the door open in the meanwhile, lest Ham and little Em'ly,
with whom it was an early night, should come home while she was
gone. Steerforth, after very much improving Mrs. Gummidge's spirits
by a cheerful salutation and a jocose embrace, took my arm, and
hurried me away.
He had improved his own spirits, no less than Mrs. Gummidge's,
for they were again at their usual flow, and he was full of vivacious
conversation as we went along.
'And so,' he said, gaily, 'we abandon this buccaneer life tomorrow,
do we?'
'So we agreed,' I returned. 'And our places by the coach are
taken, you know.'
'Ay! there's no help for it, I suppose,' said Steerforth. 'I
have almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world
but to go out tossing on the sea here. I wish there was not.'
'As long as the novelty should last,' said I, laughing.
'Like enough,' he returned; 'though there's a sarcastic meaning
in that observation for an amiable piece of innocence like my young
friend. Well! I dare say I am a capricious fellow, David. I know
I am; but while the iron is hot, I can strike it vigorously too.
I could pass a reasonably good examination already, as a pilot in
these waters, I think.'
'Mr. Peggotty says you are a wonder,' I returned.
'A nautical phenomenon, eh?' laughed Steerforth.
'Indeed he does, and you know how truly; I know how ardent you
are in any pursuit you follow, and how easily you can master it.
And that amazes me most in you, Steerforth- that you should be contented
with such fitful uses of your powers.'
'Contented?' he answered, merrily. 'I am never contented, except
with your freshness, my gentle Daisy. As to fitfulness, I have never
learnt the art of binding myself to any of the wheels on which the
Ixions of these days are turning round and round. I missed it somehow
in a bad apprenticeship, and now don't care about it. - You know
I have bought a boat down here?'
'What an extraordinary fellow you are, Steerforth!' I exclaimed,
stopping - for this was the first I had heard of it. 'When you may
never care to come near the place again!'
'I don't know that,' he returned. 'I have taken a fancy to the
place. At all events,' walking me briskly on, 'I have bought a boat
that was for sale - a clipper, Mr. Peggotty says; and so she is
- and Mr. Peggotty will be master of her in my absence.'
'Now I understand you, Steerforth!' said I, exultingly. 'You
pretend to have bought it for yourself, but you have really done
so to confer a benefit on him. I might have known as much at first,
knowing you. My dear kind Steerforth, how can I tell you what I
think of your generosity?'
'Tush!' he answered, turning red. 'The less said, the better.'
'Didn't I know?' cried I, 'didn't I say that there was not a
joy, or sorrow, or any emotion of such honest hearts that was indifferent
to you?'
'Aye, aye,' he answered, 'you told me all that. There let it
rest. We have said enough!'
Afraid of offending him by pursuing the subject when he made
so light of it, I only pursued it in my thoughts as we went on at
even a quicker pace than before.
'She must be newly rigged,' said Steerforth, 'and I shall leave
Littimer behind to see it done, that I may know she is quite complete.
Did I tell you Littimer had come down?'
' No.'
'Oh yes! came down this morning, with a letter from my mother.'
As our looks met, I observed that he was pale even to his lips,
though he looked very steadily at me. I feared that some difference
between him and his mother might have led to his being in the frame
of mind in which I had found him at the solitary fireside. I hinted
so.
'Oh no!' he said, shaking his head, and giving a slight laugh.
'Nothing of the sort! Yes. He is come down, that man of mine.'
'The same as ever?' said I.
'The same as ever,' said Steerforth. 'Distant and quiet as the
North Pole. He shall see to the boat being fresh named. She's the
"Stormy Petrel" now. What does Mr. Peggotty care for Stormy
Petrels! I'll have her christened again.'
'By what name?' I asked.
'The "Little Em'ly".'
As he had continued to look steadily at me, I took it as a reminder
that he objected to being extolled for his consideration. I could
not help showing in my face how much it pleased me, but I said little,
and he resumed his usual smile, and seemed relieved.
'But see here,' he said, looking before us, 'where the original
little Em'ly comes! And that fellow with her, eh? Upon my soul,
he's a true knight. He never leaves her!'
Ham was a boat-builder in these days, having improved a natural
ingenuity in that handicraft, until he had become a skilled workman.
He was in his working-dress, and looked rugged enough, but manly
withal, and a very fit protector for the blooming little creature
at his side. Indeed, there was a frankness in his face, an honesty,
and an undisguised show of his pride in her, and his love for her,
which were, to me, the best of good looks. I thought, as they came
towards us, that they were well matched even in that particular.
She withdrew her hand timidly from his arm as we stopped to speak
to them, and blushed as she gave it to Steerforth and to me. When
they passed on, after we had exchanged a few words, she did not
like to replace that hand, but, still appearing timid and constrained,
walked by herself. I thought all this very pretty and engaging,
and Steerforth seemed to think so too, as we looked after them fading
away in the light of a young moon.
Suddenly there passed us - evidently following them - a young
woman whose approach we had not observed, but whose face I saw as
she went by, and thought I had a faint remembrance of. She was lightly
dressed; looked bold, and haggard, and flaunting, and poor; but
seemed, for the time, to have given all that to the wind which was
blowing, and to have nothing in her mind but going after them. As
the dark distant level, absorbing their figures into itself, left
but itself visible between us and the sea and clouds, her figure
disappeared in like manner, still no nearer to them than before.
'That is a black shadow to be following the girl,' said Steerforth,
standing still; 'what does it mean?'
He spoke in a low voice that sounded almost strange to Me.
'She must have it in her mind to beg of them, I think,' said
I.
'A beggar would be no novelty,' said Steerforth; 'but it is a
strange thing that the beggar should take that shape tonight.'
'Why?' I asked.
'For no better reason, truly, than because I was thinking,' he
said, after a pause, 'of something like it, when it came by. Where
the Devil did it come from, I wonder!'
'From the shadow of this wall, I think,' said I, as we emerged
upon a road on which a wall abutted.
'It's gone!' he returned, looking over his shoulder. 'And all
ill go with it. Now for our dinner!'
But he looked again over his shoulder towards the sea-line glimmering
afar off, and yet again. And he wondered about it, in some broken
expressions, several times, in the short remainder of our walk;
and only seemed to forget it when the light of fire and candle shone
upon us, seated warm and merry, at table.
Littimer was there, and had his usual effect upon me. When I
said to him that I hoped Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle were well,
he answered respectfully (and of course respectably), that they
were tolerably well, he thanked me, and had sent their compliments.
This was all, and yet he seemed to me to say as plainly as a man
could say: 'You are very young, sir; you are exceedingly young.'
We had almost finished dinner, when taking a step or two towards
the table, from the corner where he kept watch upon us, or rather
upon me, as I felt, he said to his master:
'I beg your pardon, sir. Miss Mowcher is down here.'
'Who?' cried Steerforth, much astonished.
'Miss Mowcher, sir.'
'Why, what on earth does she do here?' said Steerforth.
'It appears to be her native part of the country, sir. She informs
me that she makes one of her professional visits here, every year,
sir. I met her in the street this afternoon, and she wished to know
if she might have the honour of waiting on you after dinner, sir.'
'Do you know the Giantess in question, Daisy?' inquired Steerforth.
I was obliged to confess - I felt ashamed, even of being at this
disadvantage before Littimer - that Miss Mowcher and I were wholly
unacquainted.
'Then you shall know her,' said Steerforth, 'for she is one of
the seven wonders of the world. When Miss Mowcher comes, show her
in.'
I felt some curiosity and excitement about this lady, especially
as Steerforth burst into a fit of laughing when I referred to her,
and positively refused to answer any question of which I made her
the subject. I remained, therefore, in a state of considerable expectation
until the cloth had been removed some half an hour, and we were
sitting over our decanter of wine before the fire, when the door
opened, and Littimer, with his habitual serenity quite undisturbed,
announced:
'Miss Mowcher!'
I looked at the doorway and saw nothing. I was still looking
at the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was a long while making
her appearance, when, to my infinite astonishment, there came waddling
round a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about
forty or forty-five, with a very large head and face, a pair of
roguish grey eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, to enable
herself to lay a finger archly against her snub nose, as she ogled
Steerforth, she was obliged to meet the finger half-way, and lay
her nose against it. Her chin, which was what is called a double
chin, was so fat that it entirely swallowed up the strings of her
bonnet, bow and all. Throat she had none; waist she had none; legs
she had none, worth mentioning; for though she was more than full-sized
down to where her waist would have been, if she had had any, and
though she terminated, as human beings generally do, in a pair of
feet, she was so short that she stood at a common-sized chair as
at a table, resting a bag she carried on the seat. This lady - dressed
in an off-hand, easy style; bringing her nose and her forefinger
together, with the difficulty I have described; standing with her
head necessarily on one side, and, with one of her sharp eyes shut
up, making an uncommonly knowing face - after ogling Steerforth
for a few moments, broke into a torrent of words.
'What! My flower!' she pleasantly began, shaking her large head
at him. 'You're there, are you! Oh, you naughty boy, fie for shame,
what do you do so far away from home? Up to mischief, I'll be bound.
Oh, you're a downy fellow, Steerforth, so you are, and I'm another,
ain't I? Ha, ha, ha! You'd have betted a hundred pound to five,
now, that you wouldn't have seen me here, wouldn't you? Bless you,
man alive, I'm everywhere. I'm here and there, and where not, like
the conjurer's half-crown in the lady's handkercher. Talking of
handkerchers - and talking of ladies - what a comfort you are to
your blessed mother, ain't you, my dear boy, over one of my shoulders,
and I don't say which!'
Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse,
threw back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a footstool in
front of the fire - making a kind of arbour of the dining table,
which spread its mahogany shelter above her head.
'Oh my stars and what's-their-names!' she went on, clapping a
hand on each of her little knees, and glancing shrewdly at me, 'I'm
of too full a habit, that's the fact, Steerforth. After a flight
of stairs, it gives me as much trouble to draw every breath I want,
as if it was a bucket of water. If you saw me looking out of an
upper window, you'd think I was a fine woman, wouldn't you?'
'I should think that, wherever I saw you,' replied Steerforth.
'Go along, you dog, do!' cried the little creature, making a
whisk at him with the handkerchief with which she was wiping her
face, 'and don't be impudent! But I give you my word and honour
I was at Lady Mithers's last week - THERE'S a woman! How SHE wears!
- and Mithers himself came into the room where I was waiting for
her - THERE'S a man! How HE wears! and his wig too, for he's had
it these ten years - and he went on at that rate in the complimentary
line, that I began to think I should be obliged to ring the bell.
Ha! ha! ha! He's a pleasant wretch, but he wants principle.'
'What were you doing for Lady Mithers?' asked Steerforth.
'That's tellings, my blessed infant,' she retorted, tapping her
nose again, screwing up her face, and twinkling her eyes like an
imp of supernatural intelligence. 'Never YOU mind! You'd like to
know whether I stop her hair from falling off, or dye it, or touch
up her complexion, or improve her eyebrows, wouldn't you? And so
you shall, my darling - when I tell you! Do you know what my great
grandfather's name was?'
'No,' said Steerforth.
'It was Walker, my sweet pet,' replied Miss Mowcher, 'and he
came of a long line of Walkers, that I inherit all the Hookey estates
from.'
I never beheld anything approaching to Miss Mowcher's wink except
Miss Mowcher's self-possession. She had a wonderful way too, when
listening to what was said to her, or when waiting for an answer
to what she had said herself, of pausing with her head cunningly
on one side, and one eye turned up like a magpie's. Altogether I
was lost in amazement, and sat staring at her, quite oblivious,
I am afraid, of the laws of politeness.
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