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MARTHA
We were now down in Westminster. We had turned back to follow
her, having encountered her coming towards us; and Westminster Abbey
was the point at which she passed from the lights and noise of the
leading streets. She proceeded so quickly, when she got free of
the two currents of passengers setting towards and from the bridge,
that, between this and the advance she had of us when she struck
off, we were in the narrow water-side street by Millbank before
we came up with her. At that moment she crossed the road, as if
to avoid the footsteps that she heard so close behind; and, without
looking back, passed on even more rapidly.
A glimpse of the river through a dull gateway, where some waggons
were housed for the night, seemed to arrest my feet. I touched my
companion without speaking, and we both forbore to cross after her,
and both followed on that opposite side of the way; keeping as quietly
as we could in the shadow of the houses, but keeping very near her.
There was, and is when I write, at the end of that low-lying
street, a dilapidated little wooden building, probably an obsolete
old ferry-house. Its position is just at that point where the street
ceases, and the road begins to lie between a row of houses and the
river. As soon as she came here, and saw the water, she stopped
as if she had come to her destination; and presently went slowly
along by the brink of the river, looking intently at it.
All the way here, I had supposed that she was going to some house;
indeed, I had vaguely entertained the hope that the house might
be in some way associated with the lost girl. But that one dark
glimpse of the river, through the gateway, had instinctively prepared
me for her going no farther.
The neighbourhood was a dreary one at that time; as oppressive,
sad, and solitary by night, as any about London. There were neither
wharves nor houses on the melancholy waste of road near the great
blank Prison. A sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls.
Coarse grass and rank weeds straggled over all the marshy land in
the vicinity. In one part, carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun
and never finished, rotted away. In another, the ground was cumbered
with rusty iron monsters of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes,
furnaces, paddles, anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, and I
know not what strange objects, accumulated by some speculator, and
grovelling in the dust, underneath which - having sunk into the
soil of their own weight in wet weather - they had the appearance
of vainly trying to hide themselves. The clash and glare of sundry
fiery Works upon the river-side, arose by night to disturb everything
except the heavy and unbroken smoke that poured out of their chimneys.
Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a
sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the
rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering
above high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the
ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits dug for the dead
in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout; and a blighting influence
seemed to have proceeded from it over the whole place. Or else it
looked as if it had gradually decomposed into that nightmare condition,
out of the overflowings of the polluted stream.
As if she were a part of the refuse it had cast out, and left
to corruption and decay, the girl we had followed strayed down to
the river's brink, and stood in the midst of this night-picture,
lonely and still, looking at the water.
There were some boats and barges astrand in the mud, and these
enabled us to come within a few yards of her without being seen.
I then signed to Mr. Peggotty to remain where he was, and emerged
from their shade to speak to her. I did not approach her solitary
figure without trembling; for this gloomy end to her determined
walk, and the way in which she stood, almost within the cavernous
shadow of the iron bridge, looking at the lights crookedly reflected
in the strong tide, inspired a dread within me.
I think she was talking to herself. I am sure, although absorbed
in gazing at the water, that her shawl was off her shoulders, and
that she was muffling her hands in it, in an unsettled and bewildered
way, more like the action of a sleep-walker than a waking person.
I know, and never can forget, that there was that in her wild manner
which gave me no assurance but that she would sink before my eyes,
until I had her arm within my grasp.
At the same moment I said 'Martha!'
She uttered a terrified scream, and struggled with me with such
strength that I doubt if I could have held her alone. But a stronger
hand than mine was laid upon her; and when she raised her frightened
eyes and saw whose it was, she made but one more effort and dropped
down between us. We carried her away from the water to where there
were some dry stones, and there laid her down, crying and moaning.
In a little while she sat among the stones, holding her wretched
head with both her hands.
'Oh, the river!' she cried passionately. 'Oh, the river!'
'Hush, hush!' said I. 'Calm yourself.'
But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming,
'Oh, the river!' over and over again.
'I know it's like me!' she exclaimed. 'I know that I belong to
it. I know that it's the natural company of such as I am! It comes
from country places, where there was once no harm in it - and it
creeps through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable - and it
goes away, like my life, to a great sea, that is always troubled
- and I feel that I must go with it!' I have never known what despair
was, except in the tone of those words.
'I can't keep away from it. I can't forget it. It haunts me day
and night. It's the only thing in all the world that I am fit for,
or that's fit for me. Oh, the dreadful river!'
The thought passed 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 compassion 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 pass, 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 attitude, 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, 'God 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 passionate
sorrow was quite hushed and mute.
'If you heerd,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'owt of what passed 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 assurance 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 passing 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 assistance,' 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.
We followed her at a short distance, our way lying in the same
direction, until we came back into the lighted and populous streets.
I had such implicit confidence in her declaration, that I then put
it to Mr. Peggotty, whether it would not seem, in the onset, like
distrusting her, to follow her any farther. He being of the same
mind, and equally reliant on her, we suffered her to take her own
road, and took ours, which was towards Highgate. He accompanied
me a good part of the way; and when we parted, with a prayer for
the success of this fresh effort, there was a new and thoughtful
compassion in him that I was at no loss to interpret.
It was midnight when I arrived at home. I had reached my own
gate, and was standing listening for the deep bell of St. Paul's,
the sound of which I thought had been borne towards me among the
multitude of striking clocks, when I was rather surprised to see
that the door of my aunt's cottage was open, and that a faint light
in the entry was shining out across the road.
Thinking that my aunt might have relapsed into one of her old
alarms, and might be watching the progress of some imaginary conflagration
in the distance, I went to speak to her. It was with very great
surprise that I saw a man standing in her little garden.
He had a glass and bottle in his hand, and was in the act of
drinking. I stopped short, among the thick foliage outside, for
the moon was up now, though obscured; and I recognized the man whom
I had once supposed to be a delusion of Mr. Dick's, and had once
encountered with my aunt in the streets of the city.
He was eating as well as drinking, and seemed to eat with a hungry
appetite. He seemed curious regarding the cottage, too, as if it
were the first time he had seen it. After stooping to put the bottle
on the ground, he looked up at the windows, and looked about; though
with a covert and impatient air, as if he was anxious to be gone.
The light in the passage was obscured for a moment, and my aunt
came out. She was agitated, and told some money into his hand. I
heard it chink.
'What's the use of this?' he demanded.
'I can spare no more,' returned my aunt.
'Then I can't go,' said he. 'Here! You may take it back!'
'You bad man,' returned my aunt, with great emotion; 'how can
you use me so? But why do I ask? It is because you know how weak
I am! What have I to do, to free myself for ever of your visits,
but to abandon you to your deserts?'
'And why don't you abandon me to my deserts?' said he.
'You ask me why!' returned my aunt. 'What a heart you must have!'
He stood moodily rattling the money, and shaking his head, until
at length he said:
'Is this all you mean to give me, then?'
'It is all I CAN give you,' said my aunt. 'You know I have had
losses, and am poorer than I used to be. I have told you so. Having
got it, why do you give me the pain of looking at you for another
moment, and seeing what you have become?' 'I have become shabby
enough, if you mean that,' he said. 'I lead the life of an owl.'
'You stripped me of the greater part of all I ever had,' said
my aunt. 'You closed my heart against the whole world, years and
years. You treated me falsely, ungratefully, and cruelly. Go, and
repent of it. Don't add new injuries to the long, long list of injuries
you have done me!'
'Aye!' he returned. 'It's all very fine - Well! I must do the
best I can, for the present, I suppose.'
In spite of himself, he appeared abashed by my aunt's indignant
tears, and came slouching out of the garden. Taking two or three
quick steps, as if I had just come up, I met him at the gate, and
went in as he came out. We eyed one another narrowly in passing,
and with no favour.
'Aunt,' said I, hurriedly. 'This man alarming you again! Let
me speak to him. Who is he?'
'Child,' returned my aunt, taking my arm, 'come in, and don't
speak to me for ten minutes.'
We sat down in her little parlour. My aunt retired behind the
round green fan of former days, which was screwed on the back of
a chair, and occasionally wiped her eyes, for about a quarter of
an hour. Then she came out, and took a seat beside me.
'Trot,' said my aunt, calmly, 'it's my husband.'
'Your husband, aunt? I thought he had been dead!'
'Dead to me,' returned my aunt, 'but living.'
I sat in silent amazement.
'Betsey Trotwood don't look a likely subject for the tender passion,'
said my aunt, composedly, 'but the time was, Trot, when she believed
in that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well.
When there was no proof of attachment and affection that she would
not have given him. He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly
breaking her heart. So she put all that sort of sentiment, once
and for ever, in a grave, and filled it up, and flattened it down.'
'My dear, good aunt!'
'I left him,' my aunt proceeded, laying her hand as usual on
the back of mine, 'generously. I may say at this distance of time,
Trot, that I left him generously. He had been so cruel to me, that
I might have effected a separation on easy terms for myself; but
I did not. He soon made ducks and drakes of what I gave him, sank
lower and lower, married another woman, I believe, became an adventurer,
a gambler, and a cheat. What he is now, you see. But he was a fine-looking
man when I married him,' said my aunt, with an echo of her old pride
and admiration in her tone; 'and I believed him - I was a fool!
- to be the soul of honour!'
She gave my hand a squeeze, and shook her head.
'He is nothing to me now, Trot- less than nothing. But, sooner
than have him punished for his offences (as he would be if he prowled
about in this country), I give him more money than I can afford,
at intervals when he reappears, to go away. I was a fool when I
married him; and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject,
that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I wouldn't
have even this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with. For I
was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman was.'
MY aunt dismissed the matter with a heavy sigh, and smoothed
her dress.
'There, my dear!' she said. 'Now you know the beginning, middle,
and end, and all about it. We won't mention the subject to one another
any more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else.
This is my grumpy, frumpy story, and we'll keep it to ourselves,
Trot!'
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