47. CHARLES DICKENS: DAVID COPPERFIELD: CHAPTER 47: MARTHA

We were now down in Westminister.  We had turned back to follow her, having encountered her, coming towards us; and Westminster Abbey was the point at which she passed from the lights and noise of the streets.  She proceeded so quickly, when she got free of two currents of passengers setting towards and from the bridge, that between this and advance she had of us when she struck off, we were in the narrow water-side street by Millbank before we came up with her.  At that moment she crossed the road, as if to avoid foot steps that she heard close behind, and, without looking back, and passed on even more rapidly.

A glimpse of the river through a dull gateway, where some waggons were housed for night, seemed to arrest my feet, I touched my companion without speaking, and we both forebore to cross after her, and both followed on that opposite side of the way, keeping as quietly as we could in the shadow of the houses, but keeping very near her.

There was, and is when I write, at the end of that low-lying street, a dilapidated little wooden building, probably an obsolete old ferry-house.  Its position is just at the point street ceases, and road begins to lie between a row of houses and the river.  As soon as she came here, and saw the water, she stopped as if she came to her destination; and presently went slowly along the bank of the river, looking intently at it.  

All the way here, I had supposed that she was going to some houses; indeed, I had vaguely entertained the hope that the house might be in some way associated with the lost girl.  But that one dark glimpse of the river, through the gateway, instinctly for her going no farther.

The neighborhood was a dreary one at that time; as oppressive, sad, and solitary by night, as any about London.  There were neither wharves nor houses on the melancholy waste of road near the great blank Prison.  A sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls.  Coarse grass and rank weeds straggled over all the marshy land in the vicinity.  In one part carcasses of houses inauspiciously begun and never finished, rotted away.  In another the ground was cumbered with rusty iron monsters of steam boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles, anchors, diving bells, wind-mill sails, and I know what strange objects, accumulated by some sspeculator, and grovelling in the dust, underneath which - having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wey weather - they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves.  The clash and glare of sundry fiery works upon the river side, arose by night, to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that poured out of their chimneys.  Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's hand-bills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above the high water-mark, led down through the ooze and slush of  the ebb-tides.  There was a story that one of the pits dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was here about and a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over the whole place.  Or else it looked as if it had gradually decomposed into that nightmare condition, out of the overflowing of the polluted stream.

As if she were a part of the refuse it had cast out, and left to compulsion and decay, the girl we followed strayed down to the river's bank, and stood in the midst of night-picture, lonley and still, looking at the water.

There were some boats and barges astrand in the mud, and these enabled us to come within a few yards of her without being seen.  I then signed to Mr Peggotty to remain where he was, and emerged from their shade to speak to her.  I did not approach her solitary figure without trembling, for this gloomy end to her determined walk, and the way in which she stood, almost within the cavernous shadow of the iron bridge, looking at the light crookedly reflected in the strong tide, inspired a dread within me.

I think she was talking to herself.  I am sure, although absorbed in gazing at the water, that her shwal was off her shoulders, and that she was muffling her hands in it, in an unsettled and bewildered way, more like the action of a sleep-walker, than a walking person.  I know, and never can forget, that there was that in her wild manner no assurance that she would sink before my eyes, until I had my arms within my grasp.

At the same moment I said, 'Martha!'

She uttered a terrified scream, and struggled with me with such strength that I doubt I could have held her alone.  But a stronger hand than mine was laid upon her;  and when she raised her frightened eyes and saw whose it was, she made but one more effort and dropped down between us.  We carried her away from the water to where there were some dry stones, and there laid her down, crying and moaning.  In a little while she sat among the stones, holding her wretched head with both her hands.

'Oh, the river!' she cried passionately.  'Oh, the river!'

'Hush, hush!' said I.  'Calm yourself.'

But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming, 'Oh, the river!' over and over again.

'I know it's like me!' she exclaimed.  'I know that I belong to it.  I know it's the natural company of such as I am!  It come from country places where there was once no harm in it - and it creeps through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable - and it goes away, like my life, to a great sea that is always troubled - and I feel that, I must go with it!'

I have never known what despair was, except in the tone of those words.

'I can't keep away from it.  I can't forget it.  It haunts me day and night.  It's the only thing in all the world I am fit for, or that's fit for me.  Oh, the dreadful river!'

The thought passed through my mind that in the face of my companion as he looked upon her without speech or motion, I might have read his niece's history, if I had known nothing of it.  I never saw in any painting or reality, horror and compassion so impressively blended.  He shook as if he would have fallen; and his hand - I touched it with my own, for his appearance alarmed me - was deadly cold.

'She is in a state of fancy,' I whispered to him - 'she will speak differently in a little time.'

I don't know what he would have said in answer.  He made some motion with his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken; but he had only pointed to her with his outstretched hand.

A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more had her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of humiliation and ruin.  Knowing that this state must pass, before we could speak to her with any hope, I ventured to restrain him when he would have raised her, and we stood by in silence, until she became more tranquil.

'Martha,' said I then, leaning down, and helping her to rise - she seemed to want to rise as if with the intention of going away, but she was weak, and leaned against a boat.  'Do you know who this is, who is with me?'

She said firmly, 'Yes.'

'Do you know that we have followed you a long way tonight?'

She shooked her head.  She looked neither at him nor at me; but stood in a humble attitude, holding her bonnet and shawl in one hand, without appearing conscious of them, and pressing the other, clenched, against her forehead.

'Are you composed enough?'said I, 'to speak on the subject which so interested you.  I hope Heaven may remember it!- the snowy night?'

Her sobs broke out afresh and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to me for not having driven her away from the door.

'I want to say nothing for myself,' she said after a few moments.  'I am bad, I am lost.  I have no hope at all.  But tell him sir,' she had shrunk away from him, 'if you don't feel too hard to me to do it, that I never was in anyway the cause of his misfortune.'

'It has  never been attributed to you,' I said earnestly, responding to her.

'It was you, if I don't deceive myself,' she said, in a broken voice, 'that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so gentle to me, didn't shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me such help!  Was it you, sir?'

'It was,' said I.

'I should have been in the river long ago,' she said, glancing at it with terrible expression, 'if any wrong to her had been upon my mind.  I never could have kept out it in a single winter's night, if I had been free of any share in that!'

'The cause of her flight is too well understood,' I said.  'You are innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe, - we know.'

'Oh, I might have been much better for her, if I had had a better heart!' exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret; for she was always good to me!  She never spoke a word to me, but what was pleasant and right.  Is it likely I would try to make her what I am myself, knowing that I am myself, so well?  When I lost everything that makes life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was that I was parted for ever from her!

Mr Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunnel of the boat, and his eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.

'And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from some belonging to our town,' cried Martha, 'the bitterest thought in all my mind was, that people would remember she once kept company with me, and would say I had corrupted her!  When Heaven knows, I would have died to have brought back her good name!' 

Long unused to any self control, the piercing agony of her remorse and grief was terrible.

'To have died, would not have been much - what can I say? - I would have lived!' she cried.  'I would have lived to be old, in the wretched streets - and to wander about, avoided, in the dark - and to see the day break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used to shine into my room and wake me once - I would have done even that to save her!'

Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them up, as if she would have ground them.  She writhed into some new posture constantly; stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections.

'What shall I ever do!' she said, fighting thus with her despair, 'How can I go as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to everyone I come near!'  Suddenly she turned to my companion.  'Stamp upon me, kill me!  When she was your pride, you would have thought I had done her harm when I had brushed against her in the street.  You can't believe - why should you? - a syllable that comes out of my lips.  It would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a word.  I don't complain.  I don't say she and I are alike - I know there is a long, long way between us.  I only say, with all my guilt and wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and love her.  Oh, don't think that all the power I had of loving anything is quite worn out!  Throw me away, as all the world does.  Kill me for being what I am, and having  ever known her; but don't think  that of me!'

He looked upon her, while she made the supplication, in a wild distracted manner; and when she was silent gently raised her.

'Martha!' said Mr Peggotty, 'God forbid as I should judge you.  Forbid I as I, of all men, should do that, girl!  You don't know half the change that's come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it likely.  Well!' he paused a moment, then went on, 'you don't understand how this gentleman and me has wished to speak to you, you don't know what it is we have afore us.  Listen now!'

His influence upon her was complete.  She stood, shrinkingly before him, as if she were afraid to meet his eyes, but her passionate sorrow was quite hushed and mute.  'If you heard,' said Mr Peggotty, 'what passed between Master Davy and me, the night when it snew so hard, you know as I have been - where not - to seek my dear niece,' he repeated steadily.  'For she is more dear to me now, Martaha, than she was dear afore.'

She put her hand before her face; but otherwise remained quiet.

'I have heard her tell,' said Mr Peggotty, 'you were early left fatherless and motherless, with no friend to take care, in a rough seafaring way.  May be you can guess you had such a friend, you got fond of him in course of time, and my niece was a kind of daughter to me.'

As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her, taking it up from the ground.

'Whereby,' said he, 'I know, she would go to the world's farthest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she would fly to the world's farthest end to keep off seeing me.  For though she has no cause to doubt my love, there's this shame steps in and keeps between us.'

I read, in every word of his plain impressive delivering himself, now evidence of his having thought of this one topic in every feature it presented.

'According to our reckoning,' he proceeded, 'Master Davy is here, and mine, she is likely, one day, to make her own solitary course to London.  We think, you are innocent of everything that has befell her, as the unborn child.  You spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you.  Bless her, I knew she  was!   She always was to all.  You are thankful to her, and you love her.  Help us all you can to find her, and may Heaven reward you!

She looked at him hastily, and for the first time, as if she were doubtful of what he had said.

'Will you trust me? She asked, in a low voice of astonishment.

'Full and free,' said Mr Peggotty.

'To speak to her, if I should ever find her, shelter her, if I have any shelter to divide with her, and then, without her knowledge, come to you, and bring you to her?  She asked hurriedly.

We both replied together, 'yes.'

She lifted up her eyes, and solemnly declared that she would devote herself to this task fervently and faithfully.  That she would never waver in it, never be diverted in it, never relinquish it, while there was any chance of hope.  This is the new object of her life.  If she is not true to it, she would be left more forlorn and more despairing.  That would render her again upon the river's brink, where no one, huaman or divine would come to her rescue.

She did not raise her voice above her breath, or address us, but said this to the night sky, then stood profoundly quiet, looking at the gloomy water.

We judged it expedient, now, to tell her all we knew, which I recounted at length.  She listened with great attention and with a face that often changed, but had the same purpose in all its variations.  Her eyes occasionally filled with tears, but those she repressed.  It seemed her spirits were quite altered, and she could not be quite.

She asked when all was told, where we were to be communicated with, if occasion should arise.  Under a dull lamp in the road we wrote our two addresses on a leaf of my pocket book, which I tore out and gave to her, and which she put in her bossom.  I asked where she lived herself.  She said, after a pause, in no place long.  It were better not to know.

Mr Peggotty suggesting to me, in a whisper, what had already occurred to myself, I took out my purse, but I could not prevail upon her to accept any money, nor could I exact any promise from her that she would do so at another time. The idea of her engaging in this search, while depending on her own resources shocked us both.  She continued steadfast.  She gratefully thanked him, and said, 'there may work to be got. I'll try.'

'At least take some assistance,' I said, 'until you get something.'

'I could not do what I have promised for money,' she replied.  'I couldn't take it, if I was starving.  To give me money would be to take away your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away the only certain thing that saves me from the river.'

'In the name of the great judge,' said I, before whom all of us must stand at His dread time, dismiss that terrible idea!  We can all do some good, if we will.'

She trembled, and her lip shook, and her face was paler as she answered:

'It has been put into your hearts, perhaps, to save a wretched creature for repentance.  I am afraid to think so; it seems too bold.  If any good should come of me, I might begin to hope; for nothing but harm has ever come of my deeds yet.  I am to be trusted, for the first time in a long while, with my miserable life, on account of what you have given me to try for.  I know no more, and I can say no more.'

Again she repressed the tears, that had begun to flow, and, putting out her trembling hand, and touching Mr Peggotty, as if there was some healing virtue in him, went away along the desolate road.  She had been ill, probably for a long time.  I observed, upon that closer opportunity of observation, that she was worn and haggard, and that her sunken eyes expressed privation and endurance 

We followed her at a short distance, our way lying in the same direction, until we came back into the lighted and populous streets.  I had such implicit confidence in her declaration, that then I put it to Mr Peggotty, whether it would not seem in the onset, like distrusting her, to follow her any farther.  He being of the same mind, and equally reliant on her, we suffered her to take her own road, and took ours, which was towards Highgate.  He accompanied me a good part of the way; and then we parted, with a prayer for the success of the fresh effort, there was a new and thoughtful companion in him that I was at no loss to interpret.

It was midnight when I arrived at home.  I had reached my own gate, and was standing listening for the deep bell of St Paul's the sound of which I thought had been borne towards me among the multitude of striking clocks, when I was rather surprised to see the door of my aunt's cottage was open, and that a faint light in the entry was shining out accross the road.

Thinking that my aunt might have relapsed into one of her old alarms, and might be watching the progress of some imaginary conflagration in the distance, I went to speak to her.  It was with very great surprise that I saw a man standing in her little garden.

He had a glass and a bottle in his hand, and was in the act of drinking.  I stopped short, among the thick foliage outside, for the moon was up now, though obscured: and I recognised the man whom I had once supposed to be a delusion of Mr Dick's, and had once encountered with my aunt in the streets of the city. 

He was eating as well as drinking, and seemed to eat with a hungry appetite.  He seemed curious regarding the cottage, too, as if it were the first time he had seen it.  After stopping to put the bottle on the ground, he looked up at the windows, and looked about, though with a covert and impatient air, as if he was anxious to be gone.

The light in the passage was obscured for a moment, and my aunt came out.  She was agitated, and put some money into his hand.  I heard it chink.

'What's the use of this?' he demanded.

'I can spare no more,' returned my aunt 

'Then I can't go,' said he.  'Here you may take it back!'

'You bad man,' returned my aunt, with great emotion; 'how can you use me so?  But why do I ask?  It is because you know how weak I am!  What have I to do, to free myself for ever of your visits, but to abandon you to your deserts?'

'And why don't you abandon me to my deserts?' said he.

'You ask me why!' returned my aunt.  'What a heart you must have!'

He stood moodily rattling the money, and shaking his head, until at length he said, 'is that all you mean to give me then?'

'It is all I can give you,' said my aunt.  'You know I have had losses, and am poorer than I used to be.  I have told you so.  Having got it, why do you give me the pain of looking at you for another moment, and seeing what you have become?'

'I have become shabby enough, if you mean that,' he said, 'I had the life of an owl.'

'You stripped me of the greater part of all I ever had,' said my aunt, 'you closed my heart against the whole world, years and years. You treated me falsely, ungratefully and cruelly.  Go, and repent of it.  Don't add new injuries to the long, long list of injuries you have done to me!'

'Aye!' he returned.  'It's all very fine - Well I must do the best I can, for the present, I suppose.'

In spite of himself he appeared abashed by my aunt's indignant tears, and came slouching out of the garden.  Taking two or three quick steps, as if he had just come up, I met him at the gate, and went in as he come out.  We eyed one another narrowly in passing, and with no favour.

'Aunt,' said I hurriedly.  'This man alarming you again!  Let me speak to him.  Who is he?'

'Child,' returned my aunt, taking my arm, 'come in, and don't speak to me for ten minutes.'

We sat down in her little parlour.  My aunt retired behind the round green fan of the former days, which was screwd on the back of a chair, and occasionally wiped her eyes, for about a quarter of an hour.  Then she came out and took a seat beside me.

'Trot,' said my aunt, calmly, 'it's my husband.'

'Betsy Trotwood don't look a likely subject for tender passion,' said my aunt, composedly, 'but the time was, Trot, when she believed in that man most entirely.  When she loved him, Trot, right well.  When there was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given him.  He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly breaking her heart.  So she put all that sort of settlement, for once and for ever, in a grave, and filled it up and flattened it down.'

'My dear, good aunt!'

'I left him,' my aunt proceeded, laying her hand as usual on the back of mine, 'generously.  He had been so cruel to me, that I might have effected a separation on easy terms for myself, but I did not.   He soon made ducks and drake's of what I gave him, sank lower and lower, married another woman, I believe, became an adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat.  What he is now, you see.  But he was a fine-looking man when I married him,' said my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone, 'and I believed him - I was a fool!- to be the soul of honour!'

She gave my hand a squeez, and shook her head.

'He is nothing to me now, - Trot, less than nothing.  But sooner than have him punished for his offences (as he would be if he prowled about in this country).  I gave him more money than I can afford, at intervels as he reappears, to go away.  I was a fool when I married him, and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be.  I wouldn't have even the shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with.  For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman was.

My aunt dismissed the matter with a heavy sigh, and smoothed her dress 

'There, my dear!' she said, now you know the beginning, the middle, and end, and all about it.  We won't mention the subject to one another any more; neither ofcourse, will you mention it to anybody else.  This is my grumpy frumpy story, and we will keep it to ourselves, Trot!'

       THE END OF THE CHAPTER