I’m a-going to seek her at the post-mark.’
He showed it to me. It was a town on the Upper Rhine.
He had found out, at Yarmouth, some foreign dealers who knew that country, and they had drawn him a rude map on paper, which he could very well understand.
He laid it between us on the table; and, with his chin resting on one hand, tracked his course upon it with the other.
I asked him how Ham was?
He shook his head.
‘He works,’ he said, ‘as bold as a man can. His name’s as good, in all that part, as any man’s is, anywheres in the wureld.
Anyone’s hand is ready to help him, you understand, and his is ready to help them.
He’s never been heerd fur to complain. But my sister’s belief is (‘twixt ourselves) as it has cut him deep.’
‘Poor fellow, I can believe it!’
‘He ain’t no care, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty in a solemn whisper—‘kinder no care no-how for his life.
When a man’s wanted for rough sarvice in rough weather, he’s theer. When there’s hard duty to be done with danger in it, he steps for’ard afore all his mates.
And yet he’s as gentle as any child.
There ain’t a child in Yarmouth that doen’t know him.’
He gathered up the letters thoughtfully, smoothing them with his hand; put them into their little bundle; and placed it tenderly in his breast again.
The face was gone from the door.
I still saw the snow drifting in; but nothing else was there.
‘Well!’ he said, looking to his bag, ‘having seen you tonight, Mas’r Davy (and that doos me good!), I shall away betimes tomorrow morning.
You have seen what I’ve got heer’; putting his hand on where the little packet lay; ‘all that troubles me is, to think that any harm might come to me, afore that money was give back.
If I was to die, and it was lost, or stole, or elseways made away with, and it was never know’d by him but what I’d took it, I believe the t’other wureld wouldn’t hold me!
I believe I must come back!’
He rose, and I rose too; we grasped each other by the hand again, before going out.
‘I’d go ten thousand mile,’ he said, ‘I’d go till I dropped dead, to lay that money down afore him.
If I do that, and find my Em’ly, I’m content.
If I doen’t find her, maybe she’ll come to hear, sometime, as her loving uncle only ended his search for her when he ended his life; and if I know her, even that will turn her home at last!’
As he went out into the rigorous night, I saw the lonely figure flit away before us.
I turned him hastily on some pretence, and held him in conversation until it was gone.
He spoke of a traveller’s house on the Dover Road, where he knew he could find a clean, plain lodging for the night.
I went with him over Westminster Bridge, and parted from him on the Surrey shore.
Everything seemed, to my imagination, to be hushed in reverence for him, as he resumed his solitary journey through the snow.
I returned to the inn yard, and, impressed by my remembrance of the face, looked awfully around for it. It was not there.
The snow had covered our late footprints; my new track was the only one to be seen; and even that began to die away (it snowed so fast) as I looked back over my shoulder.
CHAPTER 41. DORA’S AUNTS
At last, an answer came from the two old ladies.
They presented their compliments to Mr. Copperfield, and informed him that they had given his letter their best consideration, ‘with a view to the happiness of both parties’—which I thought rather an alarming expression, not only because of the use they had made of it in relation to the family difference before-mentioned, but because I had (and have all my life) observed that conventional phrases are a sort of fireworks, easily let off, and liable to take a great variety of shapes and colours not at all suggested by their original form. The Misses Spenlow added that they begged to forbear expressing, ‘through the medium of correspondence’, an opinion on the subject of Mr. Copperfield’s communication; but that if Mr. Copperfield would do them the favour to call, upon a certain day (accompanied, if he thought proper, by a confidential friend), they would be happy to hold some conversation on the subject.
To this favour, Mr. Copperfield immediately replied, with his respectful compliments, that he would have the honour of waiting on the Misses Spenlow, at the time appointed; accompanied, in accordance with their kind permission, by his friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple.
Having dispatched which missive, Mr. Copperfield fell into a condition of strong nervous agitation; and so remained until the day arrived.
It was a great augmentation of my uneasiness to be bereaved, at this eventful crisis, of the inestimable services of Miss Mills.
But Mr. Mills, who was always doing something or other to annoy me—or I felt as if he were, which was the same thing—had brought his conduct to a climax, by taking it into his head that he would go to India.
Why should he go to India, except to harass me? To be sure he had nothing to do with any other part of the world, and had a good deal to do with that part; being entirely in the India trade, whatever that was (I had floating dreams myself concerning golden shawls and elephants’ teeth); having been at Calcutta in his youth; and designing now to go out there again, in the capacity of resident partner. But this was nothing to me. However, it was so much to him that for India he was bound, and Julia with him; and Julia went into the country to take leave of her relations; and the house was put into a perfect suit of bills, announcing that it was to be let or sold, and that the furniture (Mangle and all) was to be taken at a valuation. So, here was another earthquake of which I became the sport, before I had recovered from the shock of its predecessor!
I was in several minds how to dress myself on the important day; being divided between my desire to appear to advantage, and my apprehensions of putting on anything that might impair my severely practical character in the eyes of the Misses Spenlow.
I endeavoured to hit a happy medium between these two extremes; my aunt approved the result; and Mr. Dick threw one of his shoes after Traddles and me, for luck, as we went downstairs.
Excellent fellow as I knew Traddles to be, and warmly attached to him as I was, I could not help wishing, on that delicate occasion, that he had never contracted the habit of brushing his hair so very upright.
It gave him a surprised look—not to say a hearth-broomy kind of expression—which, my apprehensions whispered, might be fatal to us.
I took the liberty of mentioning it to Traddles, as we were walking to Putney; and saying that if he WOULD smooth it down a little—
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, lifting off his hat, and rubbing his hair all kinds of ways, ‘nothing would give me greater pleasure. But it won’t.’
‘Won’t be smoothed down?’ said I.
‘No,’ said Traddles.
‘Nothing will induce it. If I was to carry a half-hundred-weight upon it, all the way to Putney, it would be up again the moment the weight was taken off.
You have no idea what obstinate hair mine is, Copperfield.