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

old time of coming home, you ever see him look as if he thought of one he used to love so dear. Oh, my heart is breaking when I think about it! I am kneeling down to you, begging and praying you not to be as hard with me as I deserve⁠—as I well, well, know I deserve⁠—but to be so gentle and so good, as to write down something of him, and to send it to me. You need not call me Little, you need not call me by the name I have disgraced; but oh, listen to my agony, and have mercy on me so far as to write me some word of uncle, never, never to be seen in this world by my eyes again!

“Dear, if your heart is hard towards me⁠—justly hard, I know⁠—but, listen, if it is hard, dear, ask him I have wronged the most⁠—him whose wife I was to have been⁠—before you quite decide against my poor poor prayer! If he should be so compassionate as to say that you might write something for me to read⁠—I think he would, oh, I think he would, if you would only ask him, for he always was so brave and so forgiving⁠—tell him then (but not else), that when I hear the wind blowing at night, I feel as if it was passing angrily from seeing him and uncle, and was going up to God against me. Tell him that if I was to die tomorrow (and oh, if I was fit, I would be so glad to die!) I would bless him and uncle with my last words, and pray for his happy home with my last breath!”

Some money was enclosed in this letter also. Five pounds. It was untouched like the previous sum, and he refolded it in the same way. Detailed instructions were added relative to the address of a reply, which, although they betrayed the intervention of several hands, and made it difficult to arrive at any very probable conclusion in reference to her place of concealment, made it at least not unlikely that she had written from that spot where she was stated to have been seen.

“What answer was sent?” I inquired of Mr. Peggotty.

“Missis Gummidge,” he returned, “not being a good scholar, sir, Ham kindly drawed it out, and she made a copy on it. They told her I was gone to seek her, and what my parting words was.”

“Is that another letter in your hand?” said I.

“It’s money, sir,” said Mr. Peggotty, unfolding it a little way. “Ten pound, you see. And wrote inside, ‘From a true friend,’ like the fust. But the fust was put underneath the door, and this come by the post, day afore yesterday. I’m a-going to seek her at the postmark.”

He showed it to me. It was a town on the Upper Rhine. He had found out, at Yarmouth, some foreign dealers who knew that country, and they had drawn him a rude map on paper, which he could very well understand. He laid it between us on the table; and, with his chin resting on one hand, tracked his course upon it with the other.

I asked him how Ham was? He shook his head.

“He works,” he said, “as bold as a man can. His name’s as good, in all that part, as any man’s is, anywheres in the wureld. Anyone’s hand is ready to help him, you understand, and his is ready to help them. He’s never been heerd fur to complain. But my sister’s belief is (’twixt ourselves) as it has cut him deep.”

“Poor fellow, I can believe it!”

“He ain’t no care, Mas’r Davy,” said Mr. Peggotty in a solemn whisper⁠—“kinder no care nohow for his life. When a man’s wanted for rough sarvice in rough weather, he’s theer. When there’s hard duty to be done with danger in it, he steps for’ard afore all his mates. And yet he’s as gentle as any child. There ain’t a child in Yarmouth that doen’t know him.”

He gathered up the letters thoughtfully, smoothing them with his hand; put them into their little bundle; and placed it tenderly in his breast again. The face was gone from the door. I still saw the snow drifting in; but nothing else was there.

“Well!” he said, looking to his bag, “having seen you tonight, Mas’r Davy (and that doos me good!), I shall away betimes tomorrow morning. You have seen what I’ve got heer’; putting his hand on where the little packet lay; all that troubles me is, to think that any harm might come to me, afore that money was give back. If I was to die, and it was lost, or stole, or elseways made away with, and it was never know’d by him but what I’d took it, I believe the t’other wureld wouldn’t hold me! I believe I must come back!”

He rose, and I rose too; we grasped each other by the hand again, before going out.

“I’d go ten thousand mile,” he said, “I’d go till I dropped dead, to lay that money down afore him. If I do that, and find my Em’ly, I’m content. If I doen’t find her, maybe she’ll come to hear, sometime, as her loving uncle only ended his search for her when he ended his life; and if I know her, even that will turn her home at last!”

As he went out into the rigorous night, I saw the lonely figure flit away before us. I turned him hastily on some pretence, and held him in conversation until it was gone.

He spoke of a traveller’s house on the Dover Road, where he knew he could find a clean, plain lodging for the night. I went with him over Westminster Bridge, and parted from him on the Surrey shore. Everything seemed, to my imagination, to be hushed in reverence for him, as he resumed his solitary journey through the snow.

I returned to the inn yard, and, impressed by my remembrance of