DAVID
COPPERFIELD
PART 47
CHAPTER 47. 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!'
To be continued
