There were great changes in my old home.The ragged nests, so long deserted by the rooks,were gone; and the trees were lopped and topped out of their remembered shapes.The garden had run wild,and half the windows of the house were shut up.It was occupied, but only by a poor lunatic gentleman,and the people who took care of him.He was always sitting at my little window,looking out into the churchyard;and I wondered whether his rambling thoughts ever went upon any of the fancies that used to occupy mine, on the rosy mornings when I peeped out of that same little window in my night-clothes, and saw the sheep quietly feeding in the light of the rising sun.
Our old neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Grayper,were gone to South America,and the rain had made its way through the roof of their empty house,and stained the outer walls. Mr.Chillip was married again to a tall, raw-boned,high-nosed wife; and they had a weazen little baby,with a heavy head that it couldn’t hold up,and two weak staring eyes,with which it seemed to be always wondering why it had ever been born.
It was with a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure that I used to linger about my native place, until the reddening winter sun admonished me that it was time to start on my returning walk. But, when the place was left behind, and especially when Steerforth and I were happily seated over our dinner by a blazing fire, it was delicious to think of having been there. So it was, though in a softened degree, when I went to my neat room at night; and, turning over the leaves of the crocodile-book (which was always there, upon a little table), remembered with a grateful heart how blest I was in having such a friend as Steerforth, such a friend as Peggotty, and such a substitute for what I had lost as my excellent and generous aunt.
My nearest way to Yarmouth,in coming back from these long walks, was by a ferry.It landed me on the flat between the town and the sea,which I could make straight across,and so save myself a considerable circuit by the high road.Mr. Peggotty’s house being on that waste-place,and not a hundred yards out of my track,I always looked in as I went by.Steerforth was pretty sure to be there expecting me,and we went on together through the frosty air and gathering fog towards the twinkling lights of the town.
One dark evening, when I was later than usual--for I had,that day, been making my parting visit to Blunderstone,as we were now about to return home--I found him alone in Mr.Peggotty’s house, sitting thoughtfully before the fire.He was so intent upon his own reflections that he was quite unconscious of my approach. This, indeed, he might easily have been if he had been less absorbed, for footsteps fell noiselessly on the sandy ground outside; but even my entrance failed to rouse him. I was standing close to him, looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he was lost in his meditations.
He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoulder,that he made me start too.
‘You come upon me,’ he said, almost angrily,‘like a reproachful ghost!’
‘I was obliged to announce myself, somehow,’ I replied.‘Have I called you down from the stars?’
‘No,’ he answered. ‘No.’
‘Up from anywhere, then?’ said I, taking my seat near him.
‘I was looking at the pictures in the fire, ’ he returned.
‘But you are spoiling them for me,’ said I,as he stirred it quickly with a piece of burning wood,striking out of it a train of red-hot sparks that went careering up the little chimney, and roaring out into the air.
‘You would not have seen them,’ he returned.‘I detest this mongrel time, neither day nor night. How late you are!Where have you been?’
‘I have been taking leave of my usual walk,’ said I.
‘And I have been sitting here,’ said Steerforth,glancing round the room,‘thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of our coming down,might--to judge from the present wasted air of the place--be dispersed,or dead, or come to I don’t know what harm. David,I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!’
‘My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?’
‘I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!’
There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me.He was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.
‘It would be better to be this poor Peggotty,or his lout of a nephew,’ he said,getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece,with his face towards the fire, ‘than to be myself,twenty times richer and twenty times wiser,and be the torment to myself that I have been,in this Devil’s bark of a boat,within the last half-hour!’
I was so confounded by the alteration in him,that at first I could only observe him in silence,as he stood leaning his head upon his hand,and looking gloomily down at the fire.At length I begged him,with all the earnestness I felt,to tell me what had occurred to cross him so unusually,and to let me sympathize with him,if I could not hope to advise him.Before I had well concluded,he began to laugh--fretfully at first,but soon with returning gaiety.
‘Tut, it’s nothing, Daisy!nothing!’ he replied. ‘I told you at the inn in London,I am heavy company for myself, sometimes.I have been a nightmare to myself,just now--must have had one, I think.At odd dull times, nursery tales come up into the memory,unrecognized for what they are.I believe I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who “didn’t care”,and became food for lions--a grander kind of going to the dogs,I suppose. What old women call the horrors,have been creeping over me from head to foot.I have been afraid of myself.’
‘You are afraid of nothing else, I think,’ said I.
‘Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of too,’ he answered. ‘Well!So it goes by!I am not about to be hipped again, David;but I tell you, my good fellow, once more,that it would have been well for me (and for more than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious father!’
His face was always full of expression,but I never saw it express such a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words, with his glance bent on the fire.