No More Learning

Peggotty, with a delighted face,
after some further rubbing of his legs, 'as this is along of my havin'
played with her so much, and made believe as we was Turks, and French,
and sharks, and every wariety of forinners--bless you, yes; and lions
and whales, and I doen't know what all! --when she warn't no higher than
my knee. I've got into the way on it, you know. Why, this here candle,
now! ' said Mr. Peggotty, gleefully holding out his hand towards it,
'I know wery well that arter she's married and gone, I shall put that
candle theer, just the same as now. I know wery well that when I'm
here o' nights (and where else should I live, bless your arts, whatever
fortun' I come into! ) and she ain't here or I ain't theer, I shall
put the candle in the winder, and sit afore the fire, pretending I'm
expecting of her, like I'm a doing now. THERE'S a babby for you,' said
Mr. Peggotty, with another roar, 'in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Why,
at the present minute, when I see the candle sparkle up, I says to
myself, "She's a looking at it! Em'ly's a coming! " THERE'S a babby
for you, in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Right for all that,' said Mr.
Peggotty, stopping in his roar, and smiting his hands together; 'fur
here she is! '

It was only Ham. The night should have turned more wet since I came in,
for he had a large sou'wester hat on, slouched over his face.

'Wheer's Em'ly? ' said Mr. Peggotty.

Ham made a motion with his head, as if she were outside. Mr. Peggotty
took the light from the window, trimmed it, put it on the table, and was
busily stirring the fire, when Ham, who had not moved, said:

'Mas'r Davy, will you come out a minute, and see what Em'ly and me has
got to show you? '

We went out. As I passed him at the door, I saw, to my astonishment and
fright, that he was deadly pale. He pushed me hastily into the open air,
and closed the door upon us. Only upon us two.

'Ham! what's the matter? '

'Mas'r Davy! --' Oh, for his broken heart, how dreadfully he wept!

I was paralysed by the sight of such grief. I don't know what I thought,
or what I dreaded. I could only look at him.

'Ham! Poor good fellow! For Heaven's sake, tell me what's the matter! '

'My love, Mas'r Davy--the pride and hope of my art--her that I'd have
died for, and would die for now--she's gone! '

'Gone! '

'Em'ly's run away! Oh, Mas'r Davy, think HOW she's run away, when I
pray my good and gracious God to kill her (her that is so dear above all
things) sooner than let her come to ruin and disgrace! '

The face he turned up to the troubled sky, the quivering of his clasped
hands, the agony of his figure, remain associated with the lonely waste,
in my remembrance, to this hour. It is always night there, and he is the
only object in the scene.

'You're a scholar,' he said, hurriedly, 'and know what's right and
best. What am I to say, indoors? How am I ever to break it to him, Mas'r
Davy? '

I saw the door move, and instinctively tried to hold the latch on the
outside, to gain a moment's time. It was too late. Mr. Peggotty thrust
forth his face; and never could I forget the change that came upon it
when he saw us, if I were to live five hundred years.

I remember a great wail and cry, and the women hanging about him, and we
all standing in the room; I with a paper in my hand, which Ham had given
me; Mr. Peggotty, with his vest torn open, his hair wild, his face and
lips quite white, and blood trickling down his bosom (it had sprung from
his mouth, I think), looking fixedly at me.

'Read it, sir,' he said, in a low shivering voice. 'Slow, please. I
doen't know as I can understand. '

In the midst of the silence of death, I read thus, from a blotted
letter:


'"When you, who love me so much better than I ever have deserved, even
when my mind was innocent, see this, I shall be far away. "'


'I shall be fur away,' he repeated slowly. 'Stop! Em'ly fur away. Well! '


'"When I leave my dear home--my dear home--oh, my dear home! --in the
morning,"'

the letter bore date on the previous night:


'"--it will be never to come back, unless he brings me back a lady. This
will be found at night, many hours after, instead of me. Oh, if you knew
how my heart is torn. If even you, that I have wronged so much, that
never can forgive me, could only know what I suffer! I am too wicked to
write about myself! Oh, take comfort in thinking that I am so bad. Oh,
for mercy's sake, tell uncle that I never loved him half so dear as
now. Oh, don't remember how affectionate and kind you have all been to
me--don't remember we were ever to be married--but try to think as if I
died when I was little, and was buried somewhere. Pray Heaven that I
am going away from, have compassion on my uncle! Tell him that I never
loved him half so dear. Be his comfort. Love some good girl that will
be what I was once to uncle, and be true to you, and worthy of you, and
know no shame but me. God bless all! I'll pray for all, often, on my
knees. If he don't bring me back a lady, and I don't pray for my own
self, I'll pray for all. My parting love to uncle. My last tears, and my
last thanks, for uncle! "'

That was all.

He stood, long after I had ceased to read, still looking at me. At
length I ventured to take his hand, and to entreat him, as well as
I could, to endeavour to get some command of himself. He replied, 'I
thankee, sir, I thankee! ' without moving.

Ham spoke to him. Mr. Peggotty was so far sensible of HIS affliction,
that he wrung his hand; but, otherwise, he remained in the same state,
and no one dared to disturb him.

Slowly, at last, he moved his eyes from my face, as if he were waking
from a vision, and cast them round the room. Then he said, in a low
voice:

'Who's the man? I want to know his name. '

Ham glanced at me, and suddenly I felt a shock that struck me back.

'There's a man suspected,' said Mr. Peggotty. 'Who is it? '

'Mas'r Davy! ' implored Ham. 'Go out a bit, and let me tell him what I
must. You doen't ought to hear it, sir. '

I felt the shock again. I sank down in a chair, and tried to utter some
reply; but my tongue was fettered, and my sight was weak.

'I want to know his name! ' I heard said once more.

'For some time past,' Ham faltered, 'there's been a servant about here,
at odd times. There's been a gen'lm'n too. Both of 'em belonged to one
another. '

Mr. Peggotty stood fixed as before, but now looking at him.

'The servant,' pursued Ham, 'was seen along with--our poor girl--last
night. He's been in hiding about here, this week or over. He was thought
to have gone, but he was hiding. Doen't stay, Mas'r Davy, doen't! '

I felt Peggotty's arm round my neck, but I could not have moved if the
house had been about to fall upon me.

'A strange chay and hosses was outside town, this morning, on the
Norwich road, a'most afore the day broke,' Ham went on. 'The servant
went to it, and come from it, and went to it again. When he went to it
again, Em'ly was nigh him. The t'other was inside. He's the man. '

'For the Lord's love,' said Mr. Peggotty, falling back, and putting out
his hand, as if to keep off what he dreaded. 'Doen't tell me his name's
Steerforth! '

'Mas'r Davy,' exclaimed Ham, in a broken voice, 'it ain't no fault
of yourn--and I am far from laying of it to you--but his name is
Steerforth, and he's a damned villain! '

Mr. Peggotty uttered no cry, and shed no tear, and moved no more, until
he seemed to wake again, all at once, and pulled down his rough coat
from its peg in a corner.

'Bear a hand with this! I'm struck of a heap, and can't do it,' he said,
impatiently. 'Bear a hand and help me. Well! ' when somebody had done so.
'Now give me that theer hat! '

Ham asked him whither he was going.

'I'm a going to seek my niece. I'm a going to seek my Em'ly. I'm a
going, first, to stave in that theer boat, and sink it where I would
have drownded him, as I'm a living soul, if I had had one thought of
what was in him! As he sat afore me,' he said, wildly, holding out his
clenched right hand, 'as he sat afore me, face to face, strike me down
dead, but I'd have drownded him, and thought it right! --I'm a going to
seek my niece. '

'Where? ' cried Ham, interposing himself before the door.

'Anywhere! I'm a going to seek my niece through the wureld. I'm a going
to find my poor niece in her shame, and bring her back. No one stop me!
I tell you I'm a going to seek my niece! '

'No, no! ' cried Mrs. Gummidge, coming between them, in a fit of crying.
'No, no, Dan'l, not as you are now. Seek her in a little while, my lone
lorn Dan'l, and that'll be but right! but not as you are now. Sit ye
down, and give me your forgiveness for having ever been a worrit to you,
Dan'l--what have my contraries ever been to this! --and let us speak a
word about them times when she was first an orphan, and when Ham was
too, and when I was a poor widder woman, and you took me in. It'll
soften your poor heart, Dan'l,' laying her head upon his shoulder, 'and
you'll bear your sorrow better; for you know the promise, Dan'l, "As
you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto
me",--and that can never fail under this roof, that's been our shelter
for so many, many year! '

He was quite passive now; and when I heard him crying, the impulse that
had been upon me to go down upon my knees, and ask their pardon for the
desolation I had caused, and curse Steerforth, yielded to a better
feeling, My overcharged heart found the same relief, and I cried too.



CHAPTER 32. THE BEGINNING OF A LONG JOURNEY


What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so
I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than
when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress
of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was
brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I
did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a
noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of
my devotion to him. Deeply as I felt my own unconscious part in his
pollution of an honest home, I believed that if I had been brought face
to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach. I should have
loved him so well still--though he fascinated me no longer--I should
have held in so much tenderness the memory of my affection for him, that
I think I should have been as weak as a spirit-wounded child, in all
but the entertainment of a thought that we could ever be re-united.
That thought I never had. I felt, as he had felt, that all was at an end
between us. What his remembrances of me were, I have never known--they
were light enough, perhaps, and easily dismissed--but mine of him were
as the remembrances of a cherished friend, who was dead.

Yes, Steerforth, long removed from the scenes of this poor history! My
sorrow may bear involuntary witness against you at the judgement Throne;
but my angry thoughts or my reproaches never will, I know!

The news of what had happened soon spread through the town; insomuch
that as I passed along the streets next morning, I overheard the people
speaking of it at their doors. Many were hard upon her, some few were
hard upon him, but towards her second father and her lover there was
but one sentiment. Among all kinds of people a respect for them in
their distress prevailed, which was full of gentleness and delicacy. The
seafaring men kept apart, when those two were seen early, walking with
slow steps on the beach; and stood in knots, talking compassionately
among themselves.

It was on the beach, close down by the sea, that I found them. It would
have been easy to perceive that they had not slept all last night, even
if Peggotty had failed to tell me of their still sitting just as I
left them, when it was broad day. They looked worn; and I thought Mr.
Peggotty's head was bowed in one night more than in all the years I had
known him. But they were both as grave and steady as the sea itself,
then lying beneath a dark sky, waveless--yet with a heavy roll upon it,
as if it breathed in its rest--and touched, on the horizon, with a strip
of silvery light from the unseen sun.

'We have had a mort of talk, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty to me, when we had
all three walked a little while in silence, 'of what we ought and doen't
ought to do. But we see our course now. '

I happened to glance at Ham, then looking out to sea upon the distant
light, and a frightful thought came into my mind--not that his face
was angry, for it was not; I recall nothing but an expression of stern
determination in it--that if ever he encountered Steerforth, he would
kill him.

'My dooty here, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'is done. I'm a going to seek
my--' he stopped, and went on in a firmer voice: 'I'm a going to seek
her. That's my dooty evermore. '

He shook his head when I asked him where he would seek her, and inquired
if I were going to London tomorrow? I told him I had not gone today,
fearing to lose the chance of being of any service to him; but that I
was ready to go when he would.

'I'll go along with you, sir,' he rejoined, 'if you're agreeable,
tomorrow. '

We walked again, for a while, in silence.

'Ham,'he presently resumed,'he'll hold to his present work, and go and
live along with my sister. The old boat yonder--'

'Will you desert the old boat, Mr. Peggotty? ' I gently interposed.

'My station, Mas'r Davy,' he returned, 'ain't there no longer; and if
ever a boat foundered, since there was darkness on the face of the deep,
that one's gone down. But no, sir, no; I doen't mean as it should be
deserted. Fur from that. '

We walked again for a while, as before, until he explained:

'My wishes is, sir, as it shall look, day and night, winter and summer,
as it has always looked, since she fust know'd it. If ever she should
come a wandering back, I wouldn't have the old place seem to cast her
off, you understand, but seem to tempt her to draw nigher to 't, and to
peep in, maybe, like a ghost, out of the wind and rain, through the old
winder, at the old seat by the fire. Then, maybe, Mas'r Davy, seein'
none but Missis Gummidge there, she might take heart to creep in,
trembling; and might come to be laid down in her old bed, and rest her
weary head where it was once so gay. '

I could not speak to him in reply, though I tried.

'Every night,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'as reg'lar as the night comes, the
candle must be stood in its old pane of glass, that if ever she should
see it, it may seem to say "Come back, my child, come back! " If ever
there's a knock, Ham (partic'ler a soft knock), arter dark, at your
aunt's door, doen't you go nigh it. Let it be her--not you--that sees my
fallen child! '

He walked a little in front of us, and kept before us for some minutes.
During this interval, I glanced at Ham again, and observing the same
expression on his face, and his eyes still directed to the distant
light, I touched his arm.

Twice I called him by his name, in the tone in which I might have tried
to rouse a sleeper, before he heeded me.
When I at last inquired on what
his thoughts were so bent, he replied:

'On what's afore me, Mas'r Davy; and over yon. ' 'On the life before you,
do you mean? ' He had pointed confusedly out to sea.

'Ay, Mas'r Davy. I doen't rightly know how 'tis, but from over yon there
seemed to me to come--the end of it like,' looking at me as if he were
waking, but with the same determined face.

'What end? ' I asked, possessed by my former fear.

'I doen't know,'he said, thoughtfully; 'I was calling to mind that the
beginning of it all did take place here--and then the end come. But it's
gone! Mas'r Davy,' he added; answering, as I think, my look; 'you han't
no call to be afeerd of me: but I'm kiender muddled; I don't fare to
feel no matters,'--which was as much as to say that he was not himself,
and quite confounded.

Mr. Peggotty stopping for us to join him: we did so, and said no more.
The remembrance of this, in connexion with my former thought, however,
haunted me at intervals, even until the inexorable end came at its
appointed time.

We insensibly approached the old boat, and entered. Mrs. Gummidge, no
longer moping in her especial corner, was busy preparing breakfast.
She took Mr. Peggotty's hat, and placed his seat for him, and spoke so
comfortably and softly, that I hardly knew her.

'Dan'l, my good man,' said she, 'you must eat and drink, and keep up
your strength, for without it you'll do nowt. Try, that's a dear soul!
An if I disturb you with my clicketten,' she meant her chattering, 'tell
me so, Dan'l, and I won't. '

When she had served us all, she withdrew to the window, where she
sedulously employed herself in repairing some shirts and other clothes
belonging to Mr. Peggotty, and neatly folding and packing them in an old
oilskin bag, such as sailors carry. Meanwhile, she continued talking, in
the same quiet manner:

'All times and seasons, you know, Dan'l,' said Mrs. Gummidge, 'I shall
be allus here, and everythink will look accordin' to your wishes. I'm a
poor scholar, but I shall write to you, odd times, when you're away, and
send my letters to Mas'r Davy. Maybe you'll write to me too, Dan'l, odd
times, and tell me how you fare to feel upon your lone lorn journies. '

'You'll be a solitary woman heer, I'm afeerd! ' said Mr. Peggotty.

'No, no, Dan'l,' she returned, 'I shan't be that. Doen't you mind me. I
shall have enough to do to keep a Beein for you' (Mrs. Gummidge meant a
home), 'again you come back--to keep a Beein here for any that may hap
to come back, Dan'l. In the fine time, I shall set outside the door as I
used to do. If any should come nigh, they shall see the old widder woman
true to 'em, a long way off. '

What a change in Mrs. Gummidge in a little time! She was another woman.
She was so devoted, she had such a quick perception of what it would
be well to say, and what it would be well to leave unsaid; she was so
forgetful of herself, and so regardful of the sorrow about her, that I
held her in a sort of veneration. The work she did that day! There
were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the
outhouse--as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of
ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance
rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but
would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being
asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under
weights that she was quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all
sorts of unnecessary errands. As to deploring her misfortunes, she
appeared to have entirely lost the recollection of ever having had any.
She preserved an equable cheerfulness in the midst of her sympathy,
which was not the least astonishing part of the change that had come
over her. Querulousness was out of the question. I did not even observe
her voice to falter, or a tear to escape from her eyes, the whole day
through, until twilight; when she and I and Mr. Peggotty being alone
together, and he having fallen asleep in perfect exhaustion, she broke
into a half-suppressed fit of sobbing and crying, and taking me to the
door, said, 'Ever bless you, Mas'r Davy, be a friend to him, poor dear! '
Then, she immediately ran out of the house to wash her face, in order
that she might sit quietly beside him, and be found at work there, when
he should awake. In short I left her, when I went away at night, the
prop and staff of Mr. Peggotty's affliction; and I could not meditate
enough upon the lesson that I read in Mrs. Gummidge, and the new
experience she unfolded to me.

It was between nine and ten o'clock when, strolling in a melancholy
manner through the town, I stopped at Mr. Omer's door. Mr. Omer had
taken it so much to heart, his daughter told me, that he had been very
low and poorly all day, and had gone to bed without his pipe.

'A deceitful, bad-hearted girl,' said Mrs. Joram. 'There was no good in
her, ever! '

'Don't say so,' I returned. 'You don't think so. '

'Yes, I do! ' cried Mrs. Joram, angrily.

'No, no,' said I.

Mrs. Joram tossed her head, endeavouring to be very stern and cross; but
she could not command her softer self, and began to cry. I was young,
to be sure; but I thought much the better of her for this sympathy, and
fancied it became her, as a virtuous wife and mother, very well indeed.

'What will she ever do! ' sobbed Minnie. 'Where will she go! What will
become of her! Oh, how could she be so cruel, to herself and him! '

I remembered the time when Minnie was a young and pretty girl; and I was
glad she remembered it too, so feelingly.

'My little Minnie,' said Mrs. Joram, 'has only just now been got to
sleep. Even in her sleep she is sobbing for Em'ly. All day long, little
Minnie has cried for her, and asked me, over and over again, whether
Em'ly was wicked? What can I say to her, when Em'ly tied a ribbon off
her own neck round little Minnie's the last night she was here, and laid
her head down on the pillow beside her till she was fast asleep! The
ribbon's round my little Minnie's neck now. It ought not to be, perhaps,
but what can I do? Em'ly is very bad, but they were fond of one another.
And the child knows nothing! '

Mrs. Joram was so unhappy that her husband came out to take care of
her. Leaving them together, I went home to Peggotty's; more melancholy
myself, if possible, than I had been yet.

That good creature--I mean Peggotty--all untired by her late anxieties
and sleepless nights, was at her brother's, where she meant to stay till
morning. An old woman, who had been employed about the house for some
weeks past, while Peggotty had been unable to attend to it, was the
house's only other occupant besides myself. As I had no occasion for her
services, I sent her to bed, by no means against her will, and sat down
before the kitchen fire a little while, to think about all this.

I was blending it with the deathbed of the late Mr. Barkis, and was
driving out with the tide towards the distance at which Ham had looked
so singularly in the morning, when I was recalled from my wanderings by
a knock at the door. There was a knocker upon the door, but it was not
that which made the sound. The tap was from a hand, and low down upon
the door, as if it were given by a child.

It made me start as much as if it had been the knock of a footman to a
person of distinction. I opened the door; and at first looked down,
to my amazement, on nothing but a great umbrella that appeared to be
walking about of itself. But presently I discovered underneath it, Miss
Mowcher.

I might not have been prepared to give the little creature a very kind
reception, if, on her removing the umbrella, which her utmost efforts
were unable to shut up, she had shown me the 'volatile' expression of
face which had made so great an impression on me at our first and last
meeting. But her face, as she turned it up to mine, was so earnest;
and when I relieved her of the umbrella (which would have been an
inconvenient one for the Irish Giant), she wrung her little hands in
such an afflicted manner; that I rather inclined towards her.

'Miss Mowcher! ' said I, after glancing up and down the empty street,
without distinctly knowing what I expected to see besides; 'how do you
come here? What is the matter? ' She motioned to me with her short right
arm, to shut the umbrella for her; and passing me hurriedly, went into
the kitchen. When I had closed the door, and followed, with the umbrella
in my hand, I found her sitting on the corner of the fender--it was a
low iron one, with two flat bars at top to stand plates upon--in the
shadow of the boiler, swaying herself backwards and forwards, and
chafing her hands upon her knees like a person in pain.

Quite alarmed at being the only recipient of this untimely visit, and
the only spectator of this portentous behaviour, I exclaimed again,
'Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the matter! are you ill? '

'My dear young soul,' returned Miss Mowcher, squeezing her hands upon
her heart one over the other. 'I am ill here, I am very ill. To think
that it should come to this, when I might have known it and perhaps
prevented it, if I hadn't been a thoughtless fool! '

Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to the figure) went
backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her little body to and fro;
while a most gigantic bonnet rocked, in unison with it, upon the wall.

'I am surprised,' I began, 'to see you so distressed and serious'--when
she interrupted me.

'Yes, it's always so! ' she said. 'They are all surprised, these
inconsiderate young people, fairly and full grown, to see any natural
feeling in a little thing like me! They make a plaything of me, use me
for their amusement, throw me away when they are tired, and wonder that
I feel more than a toy horse or a wooden soldier! Yes, yes, that's the
way. The old way! '

'It may be, with others,' I returned, 'but I do assure you it is not
with me. Perhaps I ought not to be at all surprised to see you as you
are now: I know so little of you. I said, without consideration, what I
thought. '

'What can I do? ' returned the little woman, standing up, and holding out
her arms to show herself. 'See! What I am, my father was; and my sister
is; and my brother is. I have worked for sister and brother these many
years--hard, Mr. Copperfield--all day. I must live. I do no harm. If
there are people so unreflecting or so cruel, as to make a jest of
me, what is left for me to do but to make a jest of myself, them, and
everything? If I do so, for the time, whose fault is that? Mine? '

No. Not Miss Mowcher's, I perceived.

'If I had shown myself a sensitive dwarf to your false friend,' pursued
the little woman, shaking her head at me, with reproachful earnestness,
'how much of his help or good will do you think I should ever have had?
If little Mowcher (who had no hand, young gentleman, in the making of
herself) addressed herself to him, or the like of him, because of her
misfortunes, when do you suppose her small voice would have been heard?
Little Mowcher would have as much need to live, if she was the bitterest
and dullest of pigmies; but she couldn't do it. No. She might whistle
for her bread and butter till she died of Air. '

Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her
handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.

'Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,' she
said, 'that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it
all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way
through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return
for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can
throw bubbles back. If I don't brood over all I want, it is the better
for me, and not the worse for anyone. If I am a plaything for you
giants, be gentle with me. '

Miss Mowcher replaced her handkerchief in her pocket, looking at me with
very intent expression all the while, and pursued:

'I saw you in the street just now. You may suppose I am not able to
walk as fast as you, with my short legs and short breath, and I couldn't
overtake you; but I guessed where you came, and came after you. I have
been here before, today, but the good woman wasn't at home. '

'Do you know her? ' I demanded.

'I know of her, and about her,' she replied, 'from Omer and Joram. I
was there at seven o'clock this morning. Do you remember what Steerforth
said to me about this unfortunate girl, that time when I saw you both at
the inn? '

The great bonnet on Miss Mowcher's head, and the greater bonnet on
the wall, began to go backwards and forwards again when she asked this
question.

I remembered very well what she referred to, having had it in my
thoughts many times that day. I told her so.

'May the Father of all Evil confound him,' said the little woman,
holding up her forefinger between me and her sparkling eyes, 'and ten
times more confound that wicked servant; but I believed it was YOU who
had a boyish passion for her! '

'I? ' I repeated.

'Child, child! In the name of blind ill-fortune,' cried Miss Mowcher,
wringing her hands impatiently, as she went to and fro again upon the
fender, 'why did you praise her so, and blush, and look disturbed? '

I could not conceal from myself that I had done this, though for a
reason very different from her supposition.

'What did I know? ' said Miss Mowcher, taking out her handkerchief again,
and giving one little stamp on the ground whenever, at short intervals,
she applied it to her eyes with both hands at once. 'He was crossing you
and wheedling you, I saw; and you were soft wax in his hands, I saw. Had
I left the room a minute, when his man told me that "Young Innocence"
(so he called you, and you may call him "Old Guilt" all the days of your
life) had set his heart upon her, and she was giddy and liked him, but
his master was resolved that no harm should come of it--more for your
sake than for hers--and that that was their business here? How could I
BUT believe him? I saw Steerforth soothe and please you by his praise
of her! You were the first to mention her name. You owned to an old
admiration of her. You were hot and cold, and red and white, all at once
when I spoke to you of her. What could I think--what DID I think--but
that you were a young libertine in everything but experience, and had
fallen into hands that had experience enough, and could manage you
(having the fancy) for your own good? Oh! oh! oh! They were afraid of my
finding out the truth,' exclaimed Miss Mowcher, getting off the
fender, and trotting up and down the kitchen with her two short arms
distressfully lifted up, 'because I am a sharp little thing--I need be,
to get through the world at all! --and they deceived me altogether, and
I gave the poor unfortunate girl a letter, which I fully believe was
the beginning of her ever speaking to Littimer, who was left behind on
purpose! '

I stood amazed at the revelation of all this perfidy, looking at Miss
Mowcher as she walked up and down the kitchen until she was out of
breath: when she sat upon the fender again, and, drying her face with
her handkerchief, shook her head for a long time, without otherwise
moving, and without breaking silence.

'My country rounds,' she added at length, 'brought me to Norwich, Mr.
Copperfield, the night before last. What I happened to find there,
about their secret way of coming and going, without you--which was
strange--led to my suspecting something wrong. I got into the coach
from London last night, as it came through Norwich, and was here this
morning. Oh, oh, oh! too late! '

Poor little Mowcher turned so chilly after all her crying and fretting,
that she turned round on the fender, putting her poor little wet feet in
among the ashes to warm them, and sat looking at the fire, like a large
doll. I sat in a chair on the other side of the hearth, lost in unhappy
reflections, and looking at the fire too, and sometimes at her.

'I must go,' she said at last, rising as she spoke. 'It's late. You
don't mistrust me? '

Meeting her sharp glance, which was as sharp as ever when she asked me,
I could not on that short challenge answer no, quite frankly.

'Come! ' said she, accepting the offer of my hand to help her over the
fender, and looking wistfully up into my face, 'you know you wouldn't
mistrust me, if I was a full-sized woman! '

I felt that there was much truth in this; and I felt rather ashamed of
myself.

'You are a young man,' she said, nodding. 'Take a word of advice,
even from three foot nothing. Try not to associate bodily defects with
mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason. '

She had got over the fender now, and I had got over my suspicion. I told
her that I believed she had given me a faithful account of herself,
and that we had both been hapless instruments in designing hands. She
thanked me, and said I was a good fellow.

'Now, mind! ' she exclaimed, turning back on her way to the door, and
looking shrewdly at me, with her forefinger up again. --'I have some
reason to suspect, from what I have heard--my ears are always open; I
can't afford to spare what powers I have--that they are gone abroad. But
if ever they return, if ever any one of them returns, while I am alive,
I am more likely than another, going about as I do, to find it out soon.
Whatever I know, you shall know.