Charles Dickens - The Man Behind the Classics: Autobiographical Novels, Stories, Memoirs, Letters & Biographies. Charles Dickens
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:
‘Don’t leave me, Peggotty. Stay with me. It will not be for long, perhaps. What should I ever do without you!’
‘Me leave you, my precious!’ cried Peggotty. ‘Not for all the world and his wife. Why, what’s put that in your silly little head?’—For Peggotty had been used of old to talk to my mother sometimes like a child.
But my mother made no answer, except to thank her, and Peggotty went running on in her own fashion.
‘Me leave you? I think I see myself. Peggotty go away from you? I should like to catch her at it! No, no, no,’ said Peggotty, shaking her head, and folding her arms; ‘not she, my dear. It isn’t that there ain’t some Cats that would be well enough pleased if she did, but they sha’n’t be pleased. They shall be aggravated. I’ll stay with you till I am a cross cranky old woman. And when I’m too deaf, and too lame, and too blind, and too mumbly for want of teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be found fault with, than I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me in.’
‘And, Peggotty,’ says I, ‘I shall be glad to see you, and I’ll make you as welcome as a queen.’
‘Bless your dear heart!’ cried Peggotty. ‘I know you will!’ And she kissed me beforehand, in grateful acknowledgement of my hospitality. After that, she covered her head up with her apron again and had another laugh about Mr. Barkis. After that, she took the baby out of its little cradle, and nursed it. After that, she cleared the dinner table; after that, came in with another cap on, and her work-box, and the yard-measure, and the bit of wax-candle, all just the same as ever.
We sat round the fire, and talked delightfully. I told them what a hard master Mr. Creakle was, and they pitied me very much. I told them what a fine fellow Steerforth was, and what a patron of mine, and Peggotty said she would walk a score of miles to see him. I took the little baby in my arms when it was awake, and nursed it lovingly. When it was asleep again, I crept close to my mother’s side according to my old custom, broken now a long time, and sat with my arms embracing her waist, and my little red cheek on her shoulder, and once more felt her beautiful hair drooping over me—like an angel’s wing as I used to think, I recollect—and was very happy indeed.
While I sat thus, looking at the fire, and seeing pictures in the red-hot coals, I almost believed that I had never been away; that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were such pictures, and would vanish when the fire got low; and that there was nothing real in all that I remembered, save my mother, Peggotty, and I.
Peggotty darned away at a stocking as long as she could see, and then sat with it drawn on her left hand like a glove, and her needle in her right, ready to take another stitch whenever there was a blaze. I cannot conceive whose stockings they can have been that Peggotty was always darning, or where such an unfailing supply of stockings in want of darning can have come from. From my earliest infancy she seems to have been always employed in that class of needlework, and never by any chance in any other.
‘I wonder,’ said Peggotty, who was sometimes seized with a fit of wondering on some most unexpected topic, ‘what’s become of Davy’s great-aunt?’ ‘Lor, Peggotty!’ observed my mother, rousing herself from a reverie, ‘what nonsense you talk!’
‘Well, but I really do wonder, ma’am,’ said Peggotty.
‘What can have put such a person in your head?’ inquired my mother. ‘Is there nobody else in the world to come there?’
‘I don’t know how it is,’ said Peggotty, ‘unless it’s on account of being stupid, but my head never can pick and choose its people. They come and they go, and they don’t come and they don’t go, just as they like. I wonder what’s become of her?’
‘How absurd you are, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘One would suppose you wanted a second visit from her.’
‘Lord forbid!’ cried Peggotty.
‘Well then, don’t talk about such uncomfortable things, there’s a good soul,’ said my mother. ‘Miss Betsey is shut up in her cottage by the sea, no doubt, and will remain there. At all events, she is not likely ever to trouble us again.’
‘No!’ mused Peggotty. ‘No, that ain’t likely at all.—-I wonder, if she was to die, whether she’d leave Davy anything?’
‘Good gracious me, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, ‘what a nonsensical woman you are! when you know that she took offence at the poor dear boy’s ever being born at all.’
‘I suppose she wouldn’t be inclined to forgive him now,’ hinted Peggotty.
‘Why should she be inclined to forgive him now?’ said my mother, rather sharply.
‘Now that he’s got a brother, I mean,’ said Peggotty.
My mother immediately began to cry, and wondered how Peggotty dared to say such a thing.
‘As if this poor little innocent in its cradle had ever done any harm to you or anybody else, you jealous thing!’ said she. ‘You had much better go and marry Mr. Barkis, the carrier. Why don’t you?’
‘I should make Miss Murdstone happy, if I was to,’ said Peggotty.
‘What a bad disposition you have, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘You are as jealous of Miss Murdstone as it is possible for a ridiculous creature to be. You want to keep the keys yourself, and give out all the things, I suppose? I shouldn’t be surprised if you did. When you know that she only does it out of kindness and the best intentions! You know she does, Peggotty—you know it well.’
Peggotty muttered something to the effect of ‘Bother the best intentions!’ and something else to the effect that there was a little too much of the best intentions going on.
‘I know what you mean, you cross thing,’ said my mother. ‘I understand you, Peggotty, perfectly. You know I do, and I wonder you don’t colour up like fire. But one point at a time. Miss Murdstone is the point now, Peggotty, and you sha’n’t escape from it. Haven’t you heard her say, over and over again, that she thinks I am too thoughtless and too—a—a—’
‘Pretty,’ suggested Peggotty.
‘Well,’ returned my mother, half laughing, ‘and if she is so silly as to say so, can I be blamed for it?’
‘No one says you can,’ said Peggotty.
‘No, I should hope not, indeed!’ returned my mother. ‘Haven’t you heard her say, over and over again, that on this account she wished to spare me a great deal of trouble, which she thinks I am not suited for, and which I really don’t know myself that I AM suited for; and isn’t she up early and late, and going to and fro continually—and doesn’t she do all sorts of things, and grope into all sorts of places, coal-holes and pantries and I don’t know where, that can’t be very agreeable—and do you mean to insinuate that there is not a sort of devotion in that?’
‘I don’t insinuate at all,’ said Peggotty.