‘You look very well, Mr. Barkis,’ I said,thinking he would like to know it.
Mr. Barkis rubbed his cheek with his cuff,and then looked at his cuff as if he expected to find some of the bloom upon it; but made no other acknowledgement of the compliment.
‘I gave your message, Mr. Barkis,’ I said:‘I wrote to Peggotty.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis.
Mr. Barkis seemed gruff, and answered drily.
‘Wasn’t it right, Mr. Barkis?’ I asked, after a little hesitation.
‘Why, no,’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘Not the message?’
‘The message was right enough, perhaps,’ said Mr.Barkis; ‘but it come to an end there.’
Not understanding what he meant,I repeated inquisitively: ‘Came to an end, Mr. Barkis?’
‘Nothing come of it,’ he explained,looking at me sideways. ‘No answer.’
‘There was an answer expected, was there, Mr. Barkis?’ said I, opening my eyes.For this was a new light to me.
‘When a man says he’s willin’,’ said Mr. Barkis,turning his glance slowly on me again,‘it’s as much as to say,that man’s a-waitin’ for a answer.’
‘Well, Mr. Barkis?’
‘Well,’ said Mr. Barkis,carrying his eyes back to his horse’s ears;‘that man’s been a-waitin’ for a answer ever since.’
‘Have you told her so, Mr. Barkis?’
‘No--no,’ growled Mr. Barkis, reflecting about it.‘I ain’t got no call to go and tell her so.I never said six words to her myself,I ain’t a-goin’ to tell her so.’
‘Would you like me to do it, Mr. Barkis?’ said I, doubtfully. ‘You might tell her, if you would,’ said Mr. Barkis, with another slow look at me,‘that Barkis was a-waitin’ for a answer.Says you--what name is it?’
‘Her name?’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis, with a nod of his head.
‘Peggotty.’
‘Chrisen name?Or nat’ral name?’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘Oh, it’s not her Christian name.Her Christian name is Clara.’
‘Is it though?’ said Mr. Barkis.
He seemed to find an immense fund of reflection in this circumstance,and sat pondering and inwardly whistling for some time.
‘Well!’ he resumed at length. ‘Says you, “Peggotty!Barkis is waitin’ for a answer.” Says she, perhaps, “Answer to what?” Says you, “To what I told you.” “What is that?” says she. “Barkis is willin’,” says you.’
This extremely artful suggestion Mr.Barkis accompanied with a nudge of his elbow that gave me quite a stitch in my side. After that, he slouched over his horse in his usual manner; and made no other reference to the subject except, half an hour afterwards, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, and writing up, inside the tilt of the cart, ‘Clara Peggotty’--apparently as a private memorandum.
Ah, what a strange feeling it was to be going home when it was not home,and to find that every object I looked at,reminded me of the happy old home,which was like a dream I could never dream again!The days when my mother and I and Peggotty were all in all to one another,and there was no one to come between us,rose up before me so sorrowfully on the road,that I am not sure I was glad to be there--not sure but that I would rather have remained away, and forgotten it in Steerforth’s company. But there I was; and soon I was at our house, where the bare old elm-trees wrung their many hands in the bleak wintry air, and shreds of the old rooks’-nests drifted away upon the wind.
The carrier put my box down at the garden-gate,and left me. I walked along the path towards the house,glancing at the windows,and fearing at every step to see Mr.Murdstone or Miss Murdstone lowering out of one of them.No face appeared, however; and being come to the house,and knowing how to open the door, before dark,without knocking, I went in with a quiet, timid step.
God knows how infantine the memory may have been,that was awakened within me by the sound of my mother’s voice in the old parlour, when I set foot in the hall. She was singing in a low tone. I think I must have lain in her arms, and heard her singing so to me when I was but a baby. The strain was new to me, and yet it was so old that it filled my heart brim-full; like a friend come back from a long absence.
I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion.
I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out.But seeing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy!and coming half across the room to meet me,kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me,and laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand to my lips.
I wish I had died. I wish I had died then,with that feeling in my heart!I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.
‘He is your brother,’ said my mother, fondling me.‘Davy, my pretty boy!My poor child!’ Then she kissed me more and more,and clasped me round the neck.This she was doing when Peggotty came running in,and bounced down on the ground beside us,and went mad about us both for a quarter of an hour.
It seemed that I had not been expected so soon,the carrier being much before his usual time.It seemed, too, that Mr.and Miss Murdstone had gone out upon a visit in the neighbourhood,and would not return before night.I had never hoped for this.I had never thought it possible that we three could be together undisturbed,once more; and I felt, for the time,as if the old days were come back.
We dined together by the fireside.Peggotty was in attendance to wait upon us,but my mother wouldn’t let her do it,and made her dine with us. I had my own old plate,with a brown view of a man-of-war in full sail upon it,which Peggotty had hoarded somewhere all the time I had been away,and would not have had broken, she said,for a hundred pounds.I had my own old mug with David on it,and my own old little knife and fork that wouldn’t cut.
While we were at table,I thought it a favourable occasion to tell Peggotty about Mr.Barkis, who, before I had finished what I had to tell her,began to laugh, and throw her apron over her face.
‘Peggotty,’ said my mother. ‘What’s the matter?’
Peggotty only laughed the more,and held her apron tight over her face when my mother tried to pull it away,and sat as if her head were in a bag.
‘What are you doing, you stupid creature?’ said my mother, laughing.
‘Oh, drat the man!’ cried Peggotty. ‘He wants to marry me.’
‘It would be a very good match for you; wouldn’t it?’ said my mother.
‘Oh!I don’t know,’ said Peggotty. ‘Don’t ask me.I wouldn’t have him if he was made of gold.Nor I wouldn’t have anybody.’
‘Then, why don’t you tell him so, you ridiculous thing?’ said my mother.
‘Tell him so,’ retorted Peggotty,looking out of her apron.‘He has never said a word to me about it.He knows better. If he was to make so bold as say a word to me,I should slap his face.’
Her own was as red as ever I saw it, or any other face,I think; but she only covered it again,for a few moments at a time,when she was taken with a violent fit of laughter;and after two or three of those attacks,went on with her dinner.
I remarked that my mother,though she smiled when Peggotty looked at her,became more serious and thoughtful.I had seen at first that she was changed.Her face was very pretty still, but it looked careworn,and too delicate; and her hand was so thin and white that it seemed to me to be almost transparent. But the change to which I now refer was superadded to this: it was in her manner, which became anxious and fluttered. At last she said, putting out her hand, and laying it affectionately on the hand of her old servant,
‘Peggotty, dear, you are not going to be married?’
‘Me, ma’am?’ returned Peggotty, staring. ‘Lord bless you, no!’
‘Not just yet?’ said my mother, tenderly.
‘Never!’ cried Peggotty.
My mother took her hand, and said: