David Copperfield, Charles Dickens [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

and bore the traces of deeper emotion than my letter alone, weakened by the doubts her fondness would have raised upon it, would have been likely to create. I thought her more like him than ever I had thought her; and I felt, rather than saw, that the resemblance was not lost on my companion.

She sat upright in her armchair, with a stately, immovable, passionless air, that it seemed as if nothing could disturb. She looked very steadfastly at Mr. Peggotty when he stood before her; and he looked quite as steadfastly at her. Rosa Dartle’s keen glance comprehended all of us. For some moments not a word was spoken.

She motioned to Mr. Peggotty to be seated. He said, in a low voice, “I shouldn’t feel it nat’ral, ma’am, to sit down in this house. I’d sooner stand.” And this was succeeded by another silence, which she broke thus:

“I know, with deep regret, what has brought you here. What do you want of me? What do you ask me to do?”

He put his hat under his arm, and feeling in his breast for Emily’s letter, took it out, unfolded it, and gave it to her. “Please to read that, ma’am. That’s my niece’s hand!”

She read it, in the same stately and impassive way⁠—untouched by its contents, as far as I could see⁠—and returned it to him.

“ ‘Unless he brings me back a lady,’ ” said Mr. Peggotty, tracing out that part with his finger. “I come to know, ma’am, whether he will keep his wured?”

“No,” she returned.

“Why not?” said Mr. Peggotty.

“It is impossible. He would disgrace himself. You cannot fail to know that she is far below him.”

“Raise her up!” said Mr. Peggotty.

“She is uneducated and ignorant.”

“Maybe she’s not; maybe she is,” said Mr. Peggotty. “I think not, ma’am; but I’m no judge of them things. Teach her better!”

“Since you oblige me to speak more plainly, which I am very unwilling to do, her humble connections would render such a thing impossible, if nothing else did.”

“Hark to this, ma’am,” he returned, slowly and quietly. “You know what it is to love your child. So do I. If she was a hundred times my child, I couldn’t love her more. You doen’t know what it is to lose your child. I do. All the heaps of riches in the wureld would be nowt to me (if they was mine) to buy her back! But, save her from this disgrace, and she shall never be disgraced by us. Not one of us that she’s growed up among, not one of us that’s lived along with her and had her for their all in all, these many year, will ever look upon her pritty face again. We’ll be content to let her be; we’ll be content to think of her, far off, as if she was underneath another sun and sky; we’ll be content to trust her to her husband⁠—to her little children, p’raps⁠—and bide the time when all of us shall be alike in quality afore our God!”

The rugged eloquence with which he spoke, was not devoid of all effect. She still preserved her proud manner, but there was a touch of softness in her voice, as she answered:

“I justify nothing. I make no counter-accusations. But I am sorry to repeat, it is impossible. Such a marriage would irretrievably blight my son’s career, and ruin his prospects. Nothing is more certain than that it never can take place, and never will. If there is any other compensation⁠—”

“I am looking at the likeness of the face,” interrupted Mr. Peggotty, with a steady but a kindling eye, “that has looked at me, in my home, at my fireside, in my boat⁠—wheer not?⁠—smiling and friendly, when it was so treacherous, that I go half wild when I think of it. If the likeness of that face don’t turn to burning fire, at the thought of offering money to me for my child’s blight and ruin, it’s as bad. I doen’t know, being a lady’s, but what it’s worse.”

She changed now, in a moment. An angry flush overspread her features; and she said, in an intolerant manner, grasping the armchair tightly with her hands:

“What compensation can you make to me for opening such a pit between me and my son? What is your love to mine? What is your separation to ours?”

Miss Dartle softly touched her, and bent down her head to whisper, but she would not hear a word.

“No, Rosa, not a word! Let the man listen to what I say! My son, who has been the object of my life, to whom its every thought has been devoted, whom I have gratified from a child in every wish, from whom I have had no separate existence since his birth⁠—to take up in a moment with a miserable girl, and avoid me! To repay my confidence with systematic deception, for her sake, and quit me for her! To set this wretched fancy, against his mother’s claims upon his duty, love, respect, gratitude⁠—claims that every day and hour of his life should have strengthened into ties that nothing could be proof against! Is this no injury?”

Again Rosa Dartle tried to soothe her; again ineffectually.

“I say, Rosa, not a word! If he can stake his all upon the lightest object, I can stake my all upon a greater purpose. Let him go where he will, with the means that my love has secured to him! Does he think to reduce me by long absence? He knows his mother very little if he does. Let him put away his whim now, and he is welcome back. Let him not put her away now, and he never shall come near me, living or dying, while I can raise my hand to make a sign against it, unless, being rid of her forever, he comes humbly to me and begs for my forgiveness. This is my right. This is the acknowledgement I will have. This is the separation that there is between us! And is this,” she added, looking