DAVID
COPPERFIELD
PART 56
CHAPTER 56. THE NEW WOUND, AND THE OLD
No need,
O Steerforth, to have said, when we last spoke together, in that hour which I
so little deemed to be our parting-hour—no need to have said, 'Think of me at
my best!' I had done that ever; and could I change now, looking on this sight!
They
brought a hand-bier, and laid him on it, and covered him with a flag, and took
him up and bore him on towards the houses. All the men who carried him had
known him, and gone sailing with him, and seen him merry and bold. They carried
him through the wild roar, a hush in the midst of all the tumult; and took him
to the cottage where Death was already.
But when
they set the bier down on the threshold, they looked at one another, and at me,
and whispered. I knew why. They felt as if it were not right to lay him down in
the same quiet room.
We went
into the town, and took our burden to the inn. So soon as I could at all
collect my thoughts, I sent for Joram, and begged him to provide me a
conveyance in which it could be got to London in the night. I knew that the
care of it, and the hard duty of preparing his mother to receive it, could only
rest with me; and I was anxious to discharge that duty as faithfully as I
could.
I chose
the night for the journey, that there might be less curiosity when I left the
town. But, although it was nearly midnight when I came out of the yard in a
chaise, followed by what I had in charge, there were many people waiting. At
intervals, along the town, and even a little way out upon the road, I saw more:
but at length only the bleak night and the open country were around me, and the
ashes of my youthful friendship.
Upon a
mellow autumn day, about noon, when the ground was perfumed by fallen leaves,
and many more, in beautiful tints of yellow, red, and brown, yet hung upon the
trees, through which the sun was shining, I arrived at Highgate. I walked the
last mile, thinking as I went along of what I had to do; and left the carriage
that had followed me all through the night, awaiting orders to advance.
The
house, when I came up to it, looked just the same. Not a blind was raised; no
sign of life was in the dull paved court, with its covered way leading to the
disused door. The wind had quite gone down, and nothing moved.
I had
not, at first, the courage to ring at the gate; and when I did ring, my errand
seemed to me to be expressed in the very sound of the bell. The little
parlour-maid came out, with the key in her hand; and looking earnestly at me as
she unlocked the gate, said:
'I beg
your pardon, sir. Are you ill?'
'I have
been much agitated, and am fatigued.'
'Is
anything the matter, sir?—-Mr. James?—' 'Hush!' said I. 'Yes, something has
happened, that I have to break to Mrs. Steerforth. She is at home?'
The girl
anxiously replied that her mistress was very seldom out now, even in a
carriage; that she kept her room; that she saw no company, but would see me.
Her mistress was up, she said, and Miss Dartle was with her. What message
should she take upstairs?
Giving
her a strict charge to be careful of her manner, and only to carry in my card
and say I waited, I sat down in the drawing-room (which we had now reached)
until she should come back. Its former pleasant air of occupation was gone, and
the shutters were half closed. The harp had not been used for many and many a
day. His picture, as a boy, was there. The cabinet in which his mother had kept
his letters was there. I wondered if she ever read them now; if she would ever
read them more!
The house
was so still that I heard the girl's light step upstairs. On her return, she
brought a message, to the effect that Mrs. Steerforth was an invalid and could
not come down; but that if I would excuse her being in her chamber, she would
be glad to see me. In a few moments I stood before her.
She was
in his room; not in her own. I felt, of course, that she had taken to occupy
it, in remembrance of him; and that the many tokens of his old sports and
accomplishments, by which she was surrounded, remained there, just as he had
left them, for the same reason. She murmured, however, even in her reception of
me, that she was out of her own chamber because its aspect was unsuited to her
infirmity; and with her stately look repelled the least suspicion of the truth.
At her
chair, as usual, was Rosa Dartle. From the first moment of her dark eyes
resting on me, I saw she knew I was the bearer of evil tidings. The scar sprung
into view that instant. She withdrew herself a step behind the chair, to keep
her own face out of Mrs. Steerforth's observation; and scrutinized me with a
piercing gaze that never faltered, never shrunk.
'I am
sorry to observe you are in mourning, sir,' said Mrs. Steerforth.
'I am
unhappily a widower,' said I.
'You are
very young to know so great a loss,' she returned. 'I am grieved to hear it. I
am grieved to hear it. I hope Time will be good to you.'
'I hope
Time,' said I, looking at her, 'will be good to all of us. Dear Mrs.
Steerforth, we must all trust to that, in our heaviest misfortunes.'
The
earnestness of my manner, and the tears in my eyes, alarmed her. The whole
course of her thoughts appeared to stop, and change.
I tried
to command my voice in gently saying his name, but it trembled. She repeated it
to herself, two or three times, in a low tone. Then, addressing me, she said,
with enforced calmness:
'My son
is ill.'
'Very
ill.'
'You have
seen him?'
'I have.'
'Are you
reconciled?'
I could
not say Yes, I could not say No. She slightly turned her head towards the spot
where Rosa Dartle had been standing at her elbow, and in that moment I said, by
the motion of my lips, to Rosa, 'Dead!'
That Mrs.
Steerforth might not be induced to look behind her, and read, plainly written,
what she was not yet prepared to know, I met her look quickly; but I had seen
Rosa Dartle throw her hands up in the air with vehemence of despair and horror,
and then clasp them on her face.
The
handsome lady—so like, oh so like!—regarded me with a fixed look, and put her
hand to her forehead. I besought her to be calm, and prepare herself to bear
what I had to tell; but I should rather have entreated her to weep, for she sat
like a stone figure.
'When I
was last here,' I faltered, 'Miss Dartle told me he was sailing here and there.
The night before last was a dreadful one at sea. If he were at sea that night,
and near a dangerous coast, as it is said he was; and if the vessel that was
seen should really be the ship which—'
'Rosa!'
said Mrs. Steerforth, 'come to me!'
She came,
but with no sympathy or gentleness. Her eyes gleamed like fire as she
confronted his mother, and broke into a frightful laugh.
'Now,'
she said, 'is your pride appeased, you madwoman? Now has he made atonement to
you—with his life! Do you hear?—-His life!'
Mrs.
Steerforth, fallen back stiffly in her chair, and making no sound but a moan,
cast her eyes upon her with a wide stare.
'Aye!'
cried Rosa, smiting herself passionately on the breast, 'look at me! Moan, and
groan, and look at me! Look here!' striking the scar, 'at your dead child's
handiwork!'
The moan
the mother uttered, from time to time, went to My heart. Always the same.
Always inarticulate and stifled. Always accompanied with an incapable motion of
the head, but with no change of face. Always proceeding from a rigid mouth and
closed teeth, as if the jaw were locked and the face frozen up in pain.
'Do you
remember when he did this?' she proceeded. 'Do you remember when, in his
inheritance of your nature, and in your pampering of his pride and passion, he
did this, and disfigured me for life? Look at me, marked until I die with his
high displeasure; and moan and groan for what you made him!'
'Miss
Dartle,' I entreated her. 'For Heaven's sake—'
'I WILL
speak!' she said, turning on me with her lightning eyes. 'Be silent, you! Look
at me, I say, proud mother of a proud, false son! Moan for your nurture of him,
moan for your corruption of him, moan for your loss of him, moan for mine!'
She
clenched her hand, and trembled through her spare, worn figure, as if her
passion were killing her by inches.
'You,
resent his self-will!' she exclaimed. 'You, injured by his haughty temper! You,
who opposed to both, when your hair was grey, the qualities which made both
when you gave him birth! YOU, who from his cradle reared him to be what he was,
and stunted what he should have been! Are you rewarded, now, for your years of
trouble?'
'Oh, Miss
Dartle, shame! Oh cruel!'
'I tell
you,' she returned, 'I WILL speak to her. No power on earth should stop me,
while I was standing here! Have I been silent all these years, and shall I not
speak now? I loved him better than you ever loved him!' turning on her
fiercely. 'I could have loved him, and asked no return. If I had been his wife,
I could have been the slave of his caprices for a word of love a year. I should
have been. Who knows it better than I? You were exacting, proud, punctilious,
selfish. My love would have been devoted—would have trod your paltry whimpering
under foot!'
With
flashing eyes, she stamped upon the ground as if she actually did it.
'Look
here!' she said, striking the scar again, with a relentless hand. 'When he grew
into the better understanding of what he had done, he saw it, and repented of
it! I could sing to him, and talk to him, and show the ardour that I felt in
all he did, and attain with labour to such knowledge as most interested him;
and I attracted him. When he was freshest and truest, he loved me. Yes, he did!
Many a time, when you were put off with a slight word, he has taken Me to his
heart!'
She said
it with a taunting pride in the midst of her frenzy—for it was little less—yet
with an eager remembrance of it, in which the smouldering embers of a gentler
feeling kindled for the moment.
'I
descended—as I might have known I should, but that he fascinated me with his
boyish courtship—into a doll, a trifle for the occupation of an idle hour, to
be dropped, and taken up, and trifled with, as the inconstant humour took him.
When he grew weary, I grew weary. As his fancy died out, I would no more have
tried to strengthen any power I had, than I would have married him on his being
forced to take me for his wife. We fell away from one another without a word.
Perhaps you saw it, and were not sorry. Since then, I have been a mere
disfigured piece of furniture between you both; having no eyes, no ears, no
feelings, no remembrances. Moan? Moan for what you made him; not for your love.
I tell you that the time was, when I loved him better than you ever did!'
She stood
with her bright angry eyes confronting the wide stare, and the set face; and
softened no more, when the moaning was repeated, than if the face had been a
picture.
'Miss
Dartle,' said I, 'if you can be so obdurate as not to feel for this afflicted
mother—'
'Who
feels for me?' she sharply retorted. 'She has sown this. Let her moan for the
harvest that she reaps today!'
'And if
his faults—' I began.
'Faults!'
she cried, bursting into passionate tears. 'Who dares malign him? He had a soul
worth millions of the friends to whom he stooped!'
'No one
can have loved him better, no one can hold him in dearer remembrance than I,' I
replied. 'I meant to say, if you have no compassion for his mother; or if his
faults—you have been bitter on them—'
'It's
false,' she cried, tearing her black hair; 'I loved him!'
'—if his
faults cannot,' I went on, 'be banished from your remembrance, in such an hour;
look at that figure, even as one you have never seen before, and render it some
help!'
All this
time, the figure was unchanged, and looked unchangeable. Motionless, rigid,
staring; moaning in the same dumb way from time to time, with the same helpless
motion of the head; but giving no other sign of life. Miss Dartle suddenly
kneeled down before it, and began to loosen the dress.
'A curse
upon you!' she said, looking round at me, with a mingled expression of rage and
grief. 'It was in an evil hour that you ever came here! A curse upon you! Go!'
After
passing out of the room, I hurried back to ring the bell, the sooner to alarm
the servants. She had then taken the impassive figure in her arms, and, still
upon her knees, was weeping over it, kissing it, calling to it, rocking it to
and fro upon her bosom like a child, and trying every tender means to rouse the
dormant senses. No longer afraid of leaving her, I noiselessly turned back
again; and alarmed the house as I went out.
Later in
the day, I returned, and we laid him in his mother's room. She was just the
same, they told me; Miss Dartle never left her; doctors were in attendance,
many things had been tried; but she lay like a statue, except for the low sound
now and then.
I went
through the dreary house, and darkened the windows. The windows of the chamber
where he lay, I darkened last. I lifted up the leaden hand, and held it to my
heart; and all the world seemed death and silence, broken only by his mother's
moaning.
To be continued
