 CHAPTER 55 TEMPEST I now approach an event in my life so indelible, so awful, so bound by an infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it in these pages, that from the beginning of my narrative I have seen it growing larger and larger as I advanced, like a great tower in a plain, and throwing its forecast shadow even on the incidents of my childish days. For years after it occurred I dreamed of it often. I have started up so vividly impressed by it that its fury has yet seemed raging in my quiet room in the still night. I dream of it sometimes, though it lengthened in uncertain intervals to this hour. I have an association between it and a stormy wind, or the lightest mention of a seashore as strong as any of which my mind is conscious. As plainly as I behold what happened I will try to write it down. I do not recall it but see it done, for it happens again before me. The time drawing on rapidly for the sailing of the emigrant ship, my good old nurse, almost broken-hearted for me when we first met, came up to London. I was constantly with her and her brother in the macabres, they being very much together, but Emily I never saw. One evening when the time was close at hand I was alone with Peggy and her brother. Our conversation turned on ham. She described to us how tenderly he had taken leave of her and how manfully and quietly he had borne himself. Most of all of late when she believed he was most tried. It was a subject of which the affectionate creature never tired, and our interest in hearing the many examples which she, who was so much with him, had to relate, was equal to hers in relating them. My aunt and I were at that time vacating the two cottages at Highgate. I, intending to go abroad, and she to return to her house at Dover. We had a temporary lodging in Covent Garden. As I walked home to it after this evening's conversation, reflecting on what had passed between Ham and myself when I was last at Yarmouth, I wavered in the original purpose I had formed of leaving a letter for Emily when I should take leave of her uncle on board the ship, and thought it would be better to write to her now. She might desire, I thought, after receiving my communication to send some parting word by me to her unhappy lover. I ought to give her the opportunity. I therefore sat down in my room before going to bed and broke to her. I told her that I had seen him and that he had requested me to tell her what I have already written in its place in these sheets. I faithfully repeated it. I had no need to enlarge upon it if I had had the right. Its deep fidelity and goodness were not to be adorned by me or any man. I left it out to be sent round in the morning with a line to Mr. Pagedy requesting him to give it to her, and went to bed at daybreak. I was weaker than I knew, then, and not falling asleep until the sun was up lay late and unrefreshed next day. I was roused by the silent presence of my aunt at my bedside. I felt it in my sleep as I suppose we all do feel such things. Trot, my dear, she said, when I opened my eyes, I couldn't make up my mind to disturb you. Mr. Pagedy is here. Shall he come up? I replied yes, and he soon appeared. Master Davy, he said, when we had shaken hands, I'd give Emily your letter, sir, and she writ this here, and begged of me for to ask you to read it, and if you see no heard it, to be so kind as take charge on it. Have you read it, said I? He nodded sorrowfully. I opened it, and read as follows. I have got your message. Oh, what can I write to thank you for your good and blessed kindness to me? I have put the words close to my heart. I shall keep them till I die. They are sharp thorns, but they are such comfort. I have prayed over them. Oh, I have prayed so much. When I find what you are, and what Uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to him. Goodbye forever. Now, my dear, my friend, goodbye forever in this world. In another world, if I am forgiven, I may wake a child and come to you. All thanks and blessings farewell evermore. This blotted with tears was the letter. May I tell her as you don't see no heard it, and as you'll be so kind as take charge on it, Master Davy? said Mr. Pagody, when I had read it. Unquestionably, said I, that I am thinking, yes, Master Davy? I am thinking, said I, that I'll go down again to Yarmuth. There's time and to spare for me to go and come back before the ship sails. My mind is constantly running on him in his solitude. To put this letter of her writing in his hand at this time, and to enable you to tell her, in the moment of parting, that he has got it, will be a kindness to both of them. I solemnly accepted his commission, dear good fellow, and cannot discharge it too completely. The journey is nothing to me. I am restless and shall be better in motion. I'll go down to-night. Though he anxiously endeavored to dissuade me, I saw that he was of my mind, and this, if I had required to be confirmed in my intention, would have had the effect. He went round to the coach office at my request, and took the box seat for me on the mail. In the evening I started, by that conveyance, down the road I had traversed under so many vicissitudes. Don't you think that, I asked the coachman in the first stage out of London, a very remarkable sky? I don't remember to have seen one like it. Nor I, not equal to it, he replied. That's wind, sir. There'll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long. It was a murky confusion. Here and there blotted with a color like the color of the smoke from damp fuel, of flying clouds tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moons seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. There had been a wind all day, and it was rising then, with an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much increased, and the sky was more overcast and blue-hard. But as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely overspreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow, harder and harder. It still increased until our horses could scarcely face the wind. Many times in the dark part of the night it was then late in September when the nights were not short. The leaders turned about or came to a dead stop, and we were often in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of steel. And at those times when there was any shelter of trees or lee-walls to be got, we were feigned to stop in a sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle. When the day broke it blew harder and harder. I had been in Yarmus when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never known the like of this or anything approaching to it. We came to Ipswich very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since we were ten miles out of London, and found a cluster of people in the marketplace who had risen from their beds in the night fearful of falling chimneys. Some of these, congregating about the in-yard while we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church-tower and flung into a by-street which they then blocked up. Others had to tell of country people coming in from neighbouring villages who had seen great trees lying torn out of the earth and whole ricks scattered about the roads and fields. Still there was no abatement in the storm but it blew harder. As we struggled on nearer and nearer to the sea from which this mighty wind was blowing dead on shore its force became more and more terrific. Long before we saw the sea its spray was on our lips and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out over miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth, and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks and had its stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came with inside of the sea the waves on the horizon caught at intervals above the rolling abyss were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings. When at last we got into the town the people came out to their doors all as slant and with streaming hair making a wonder of the mail that had come through such a night. I put up at the old inn and went down to look at the sea staggering along the street which was strewn with sand and seaweed and with flying blotches of sea foam afraid of falling slates and tiles and holding by people I met at angry corners. Coming near the beach I saw not only the boatmen but half the people of the town lurking behind the buildings some now and then braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag back. Joining these groups I found bewailing women whose husbands were away in herring or oyster boats which there was too much reason to think might have founded before they could run in anywhere for safety. Grizzled old sailors were among the people shaking their heads as they looked from water to sky and muttering to one another. Ship owners excited and uneasy children huddling together and peering into older faces even stout mariners disturbed and anxious leveling their glasses at the sea from behind places of shelter as if they were surveying an enemy. The tremendous sea itself when I could find sufficient pause to look at it in the agitation of the blinding wind the flying stones and sand and the awful noise confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in and at their highest tumbled into surf they looked as if the least would engulf the town. As the receding waves swept back with a hoarse roar it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land every fragment of the late hole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys. Undulating valleys with a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them were lifted up to hills. Masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming wind, every shape tumultuously rolled on as soon as made, to change its shape and place and beat another shape and place away. The ideal shore on the horizon was its towers and buildings rose and fell, the clouds fell fast and thick, I seemed to see a rending and upheaving of all nature. Not finding ham among the people whom this memorable wind, for it is still remembered down there as the greatest ever known to blow upon that coast, had brought together, I made my way to his house. It was shut, and as no one answered to my knocking, I went by back ways and by lanes to the yard where he worked. I learned there that he had gone to Lohstof to meet some sudden excingency of ship-repairing in which his skill was required, but that he would be back to-morrow morning in good time. I went back to the inn, and when I had washed and dressed and tried to sleep, but in vain, it was five o'clock in the afternoon. I had not set five minutes by the coffee-room fire when the wader, coming to stir it as an excuse for talking, told me that two colliers had gone down with all hands a few miles away, and that some other ships had been seen laboring hard in the roads and trying, in great distress, to keep offshore. Mercy on them and on all poor sailors, said he, if we had another night like the last. I was very much depressed in spirits, very solitary, and felt an uneasiness in Ham's knot being there, disproportionate to the occasion. I was seriously affected without knowing how much by late events, and my long exposure to the fierce wind had confused me. There was that jumble in my thoughts and recollections that I had lost the clear arrangement of time and distance. Thus, if I had gone out into the town, I should not have been surprised, I think, to encounter someone who I knew must be then in London. So to speak there was in these respects a curious inattention in my mind. Yet it was busy, too, with all the remembrances the place naturally awakened, and they were particularly distinct and vivid. In this state the wader's dismal intelligence about the ships immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition, with my uneasiness about Ham. I was persuaded that I had an apprehension of his returning from Lowestoft by sea and being lost. This grew so strong with me that I resolved to go back to the yard before I took my dinner, and asked the boat-builder if he thought his attempting to return by sea at all likely. If he gave me the least reason to think so, I would go over to Lowestoft and prevent it by bringing him with me. I hastily ordered my dinner and went back to the yard. I was none too soon, for the boat-builder, with a lantern in his hand, was locking the yard gate. He quite laughed when I asked him the question, and said there was no fear. No man in his senses or out of them would put off in such a gale of wind, least of all hand-pegody who had been born to seafaring. So sensible of this beforehand that I had really felt ashamed of doing what I was nevertheless impelled to do, I went back to the inn. If such a wind could rise, I think it was rising, the howl and roar, the rattling of the doors and windows, the rumbling and the chimneys, the apparent rocking of the very house that sheltered me, and the prodigious tumult of the sea were more fearful than in the morning. But there was now a great darkness besides, and that invested the storm with new terrors, real and fanciful. I could not eat, I could not sit still, I could not continue steadfast to anything. Something within me, faintly answering to the storm without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a tumult in them. Yet in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running with the thundering sea, the storm and my uneasiness regarding ham were always in the foreground. My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself for the glass or two of wine, in vain. I fell into a dull slumber before the fire without losing my consciousness, either of the uproar out of doors or of the place in which I was. Both became overshadowed by a new and indefinable horror, and when I awoke, or rather when I shook off the lethargy that bound me in my chair, my whole frame thrilled with objectless and unintelligible fear. I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to the awful noises, looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire. At length the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed. It was reassuring on such a night to be told that some of the inservants had agreed together to sit up until morning. I went to bed exceedingly weary and heavy, but on my lying down all such sensations vanished as if by magic, and I was brought awake with every sense refined. For hours I lay there listening to the wind and water, imagining now that I heard shrieks out at sea, now that I distinctly heard the firing of signal guns, and now the fall of houses in the town. I got up several times and looked out but could see nothing, except the reflection in the window panes of the faint candle I had left burning, and on my own haggard face looking in at me from the black void. At length my restlessness attained to such a pitch that I hurried on my clothes and went downstairs. In the large kitchen where I dimly saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams the watchers were clustered together in various attitudes about a table purposely moved away from the great chimney and brought near the door. A pretty girl who had her ears stopped with her apron and her eyes upon the door screamed when I appeared supposing me to be a spirit, but the others had more presence of mind and were glad of an addition to their company. One man, referring to the topic they had been discussing, asked me whether I thought the souls of the Collier crews who had gone down were out in the storm. I remained there, I daresay, two hours. Once I opened the yard gate and looked into the empty street. The sand, the seaweed, and the flakes of foam were driving by, and I was obliged to call for assistance before I could shut the gate again and make it fast against the wind. There was a dark gloom in my solitary chamber when I at length returned to it, but I was tired now, and getting into bed again fell off a tower and down a precipice into the depths of sleep. I have an impression that for a long time, though I dreamed of being elsewhere and in a variety of scenes, it was always blowing in my dream. At length I lost that feeble hold upon reality, and was engaged with two dear friends, but who they were I don't know, at the siege of some town in a roar of cannonading. The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant that I could not hear something I much desired to hear until I made a great exertion and awoke. It was broad day, eight or nine o'clock, the storm raging in lieu of the batteries, and someone knocking and calling at my door. What is the matter? I cried. A wreck! Close by! I sprung out of bed and asked, What wreck? A schooner from Spain or Portugal laden with fruit and wine. They cased sir, if you want to see her. Its thought down on the beach shall go to pieces every moment. The excited voice went clamoring along the staircase, and I wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as I could and ran into the street. Numbers of people were there before me, all running in one direction to the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good many, and soon came facing the wild sea. The wind might by this time have lulled a little, though not more sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of had been diminished by the silencing of half a dozen guns out of hundreds. But the sea, having upon it the additional agitation of the whole night, was infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last. Every appearance it had then presented bore the expression of being swelled, and the height to which the breakers rose, and looking over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in in interminable hosts was most appalling. In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless efforts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the great waves. A half-dressed boatman standing next to me, pointed with his bare arm, a tattooed arrow on it pointing in the same direction, to the left. Then, oh great heaven, I saw it close in upon us. One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging, and all that ruin as the ship rolled and beat, which she did without a moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable, beat the side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being made to cut this portion of the wreck away, for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly described her people at work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair conspicuous among the rest. But a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this moment. The seas, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bullocks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge. The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and a wild confusion of broken cordage flapping to and fro. The ship had struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then lifted in and struck again. I understood him to add that she was parting amid ships, and it could readily suppose so, for the rolling and beating were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long. As he spoke there was another great cry of pity from the beach. Four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining mast, uppermost the active figure with the curling hair. There was a bell on board, and as the ship rolled and dashed, like a desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of her deck as she turned on her bee-men's towards the shore, now nothing but her keel as she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea, the bell rang, and its sound the knell of those unhappy men was born towards us on the wind. Again we lost her, and again she rose. Two men were gone. The agony on the shore increased. Men groaned and clasped their hands. Women shrieked and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly up and down along the beach, crying for help where no help could be. I found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew not to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes. They were making out to me in an agitated way, I don't know how, for the little I could hear I was scarcely composed enough to understand, that the lifeboat had been bravely manned an hour ago and could do nothing, and that as no man would be so desperate as to attempt to wade off with a rope and establish communication with the shore there was nothing left to try. When I noticed that some new sensation moved the people on the beach and saw them part, and ham come breaking through them to the front, I ran to him as well as I know to repeat my appeal for help, but distracted though I was by a sight so new to me and terrible, the determination in his face and his look out to sea, exactly the same look as I remembered in connection with the morning after Emily's flight, awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I held him back with both arms and implored the men with whom I had been speaking, not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him stir from off that sand. Another cry arose on shore, and looking to the wreck we saw the cruel sail was blow on blow beat off the lower of the two men and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast. Against such a sight and against such determination as that of the calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the people present, I might as hopefully have been treated the wind. Master Davy, he said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, if my time has come, just come, if taint I'll bite it. Lord above bless you and bless all, mates make me ready, I'm a going off. I was swept away but not unkindly to some distance where the people around me made me stay, urging as I confusedly perceived that he was bent on going with help or without and that I should endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I don't know what I answered or what they rejoined, but I saw a hurry on the beach and men running with ropes from a cap stand that was there and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then I saw him standing alone in a seamen's frock and trousers, a rope in his hand or slung to his wrist, another round his body, and several of the best men holding at a little distance to the ladder which he laid out himself slack upon the shore at his feet. The wreck, even to my unpracticed eye, was breaking up. I saw that she was parting in the middle and that the life of the solitary man upon the mast hung by a thread. Still he clung to it. He had a singular red cap on, not like a sailor's cap, but of a finer color, and as the few yielding clanks between him and destruction rolled and bulged and his anticipated death knell wrong he was seen by all of us to waive it. I saw him do it now and thought I was going distracted when his action brought an old remembrance to my mind of a once dear friend. Ham watched the sea, standing alone with the silence of suspended breath behind him in the storm before until there was a great retiring wave when, with a backward glance at those who held the rope which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and in a moment was buffeting with the water, rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the foam, then drawn again to land. They hauled in hastily. He was hurt. I saw blood on his face from where I stood, but he took no thought of that. He seemed hurriedly to give them some directions for leaving him more free, or so I judged from the motion of his arm, and was gone as before. And now he made for the wreck, rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, born in towards the shore, born on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the strife deadly. At length he neared the wreck. He was so near there was one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it. When a high green vast hillside of water moving on shoreward from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone. Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cast had been broken in running to the spot where they were hauling in. Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very feet, insensible, dead. He was carried to the nearest house, and no one preventing me now I remained near him busy while every means of restoration were tried. But he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled forever. As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned and all was done, a fisherman who had known me when Emily and I were children and ever since whispered my name at the door. Sir, said he, with tears starting to his weather-beaten face, which with his trembling lips was ashy pale, will you come over yonder? The old remembrance that had been recalled to me was in his look. I asked him, terror-stricken, leaning on the arm he held out to support me. Has a body come ashore? He said yes. Do I know it? I asked then. He answered nothing. But he led me to the shore, and on that part of it where she and I had looked for shells, two children, on that part of it where some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had been scattered by the wind, among the ruins of the home he had wronged. I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school. End of Chapter 55 Chapter 56 of David Copperfield This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Chapter 56 The New Wound and the Old No need o stir forth to have said, when we last spoke together, which I so little deemed to be our parting hour. No need to have said. Think of me at my best. I had done that ever, and could I change now looking on this site? They brought a hand-beer, and laid him on it, and covered him with a flag, and took him up and bore him on towards the houses. All the men who carried him had known him, and gone selling with him, and seen him merry and bold. They carried him through the wild roar, a hush in the midst of all the tumult, and took him to the cottage where death was already. But when they set the beard down on the threshold, they looked at one another, and at me, and whispered, and named why. They felt as if it were not right to lay him down in the same bright room. He went into the town, and took our burden to the inn. So as soon as I could at all collect my thoughts, I sent for Joram, and begged him to provide me a convent in which it could be got to London in the night. I knew that the care of it, and the hard duty of preparing his mother to receive it, could only rest with me. And I was anxious to discharge that duty as faithfully as I could. I chose the night for the journey, that there might be less curiosity when I left the town. But although it was near-limit night when I came out of the yard in a chaise, followed by what I had in charge, there were many people waiting. At intervals, along the town, and even a little way out upon the road, I saw more. But at length only the bleak night and the open country were around me, and the ashes of my useful friendship. Upon a mellow autumn day, about noon, when the ground was perfumed by fallen leaves, and many more, in beautiful tints of yellow, red, and brown, yet hung upon the trees through which the sun was shining, I arrived at Highgate. I walked the last mile, thinking as I went along of what I had to do, and left the carriage that had followed me all through the night, awaiting orders to advance. The house, when I came up to it, looked just the same. Not a blind was raised, no sign of life was in the dull-paved court, with its covered way leading to the diseased door. The wind had quite gone down, and nothing moved. I had not, at first, the courage to ring up the gate, and when I did ring, my errand seemed to me to be expressed in the very sound of the bell. The little parlor-mate came out, with the key in her hand, and looking earnestly at me, she unlocked the gate, said, I beg your pardon, sir. Are you ill? I have been much agitated, and I am fatigued. Is anything the matter, sir? Mr. James, hush, said I. Yes, something has happened, and I have to break to Mrs. Tierforth. She is at home? The girl anxiously replied that her mistress was very anxious now, even in the carriage, that she kept her room, that she saw no company, but would see me. Her mistress was up, she said, and Miss Dirtle was with her. What message should she take upstairs? Giving her a strict charge to be careful of her manner, and only to carry in my cart, and say I waited, and sat down in the drawing-room, which we had now reached, until she should come back. Its former pleasant air of occupation was gone, and the shutters were half-closed. The harp had not been used for many and many a day. His picture, as a boy, was there. The cabinet in which his mother had kept his letters was there. I wondered if she ever read them now, if she would ever read them more. The house was so still, that I heard the girl's light step upstairs. On her return, she brought a message, that the effect with his tear-force was an invalid and could not come down, but that if I would excuse her being in her chamber, she would be glad to see me, in a few moments I stood before her. She was in his room, not in her own. I felt, of course, that she had taken to occupy it in the remembrance of him, and that the many tokens of his old sports and accomplishments by which she was surrounded remained there, just as he had left them for the same reason. She murmured, however, even in the reception of me, that she was out of her own chamber because its aspect was unsuited to her infirmity, and with her stately look, repelled the least suspicion of the truth. At her chair, as usual, was Rosa Dortle. From the first moment of her dark eyes resting on me, I saw she knew I was a bearer of evil tidings. The scars progged to view that instant. She would do herself a step behind the bearer, to keep her own face out of Mrs. Tierforth's observation, and scrutinized me with the piercing gaze that never faltered, never shrunk. I am sorry to observe your in-morning, sir, said Mrs. Tierforth. I am unhappy of your widower, said I. You are very young to know how great a loss she returned. I am grieved to hear it. I am grieved to hear it. I hope time will be good to you. I hope time, said I, looking at her, will be good to all of us. Dear Mrs. Tierforth, we must all trust to that in her heaviest misfortunes. The earnestness of my manner, and the tears in my eyes alarmed her. The whole course of her thoughts appeared to stop and change. I tried to command my voice and gently saying his name, but it trembled. She repeated it to herself, two or three times, in a low tone. Then, addressing me, she said with enforced calmness, my son is ill. Very ill. You have seen him. I have. Are you reconciled? I could not say yes. I could not say no. She slightly turned her head towards the spot where Rosa Dardell had been standing at her elbow. And in that moment I said, by the motion of my lips, that Mrs. Tierforth might not be induced to look behind her, and read, plainly written, that she was not yet prepared to know. I met her look quickly. But I had seen Rosa Dardell throw her hands up in the air with vehemence of despair and horror, and then clasped them on her face. The handsome lady, so like, oh, so like, regarded me with a fixed look and put her hand to her forehead. We sought her to become and prepare herself to bear what I had to tell. But I should rather have entreated her to weep, for she sat like a stone figure. When I was last here, I faltered. Mrs. Dardell told me he was sailing here and there. The night before last was a dreadful one at sea. If you were at sea that night and near a dangerous coast, and it is said he was. And if the vessel that was seen should really be the ship which Rosa said Mrs. Tierforth, come to me. She came. But with no sympathy or gentleness her eyes gleamed like fire as she confronted his mother and broke into a frightful laugh. Now, she said, is your pride appeased, you mad woman? Now has made the atonement to you with his life? Do you hear his life? Mrs. Tierforth fallen back stiffly in her chair and making no sound but a moan, cast her eyes upon her with a wide stare. I, cried Rosa, smiting herself passionately on the breast, look at me, moan and groan and look at me, look here, striking the scar at your dead child's handiwork. The moan the mother uttered, from time to time, went to my heart, always the same, always inarticulate and stifled, always accompanied by an incapable motion of the head, but with no change of face, always proceeding from a rigid mouth and closed teeth as if the jaw were locked and the face frozen up in pain. Do you remember when he did this? She proceeded. Do you remember when in his inheritance of your nature and your pampering of his pride and passion he did this and this figured before life? Look at me, marked until I die with his hideous pleasure moan and groan for what you made him. Miss Dirtle, I entreated her, for heaven's sake, I will speak, she said, turning on me with her lightening eyes. Be silent, you. Look at me, I say, proud mother of a proud, false son. Moan for your nurture of him, moan for your corruption of him, moan for your loss of him, moan for mine. She clenched her hand and trembled through her spare worn figure as if her passion were killing her by inches. Resent his self-will, she exclaimed, you, injured by his haughty temper, you, who opposed to both when your hair was gray, the qualities which made both when you gave him birth, you, who from his cradle reared him to be what he was and stunted what it should have been. Are you rewarded now for your ears of trouble? Oh, Miss Dirtle, shame or cruel. I tell you, she returned, and will speak to her. No power on earth should stop me while I was standing here. Have I been silent all these years and shall I not speak now? I loved him better than you ever loved him, turning on her fiercely. I could have loved him and asked no return. If I had been his wife, I could have been the slave of his caprices for a word of love a year. I should have been. Who knows it better than I? Would have charged your pal to whimpering underfoot. With flashing eyes she stamped upon the ground as if she actually did it. Look here, she said, striking the scar again with her relentless hand. When he grew into the better understanding of what he had done, he saw it and repented of it. I could sing to him and talk to him and show the ardour that I felt in all he did and attain what labour to such knowledge as most interested him. And I attracted him. Yes, he did. Many a time, when you were put off with a slight word, he has taken me to his heart. She said it with a taunting pride in the midst of her frenzy, for it was little less, yet with an eager remembrance of it, in which the smoldering embers of a gentler feeling kindled for the moment. I descended, as I might have known I should, but that he fascinated me with his boyish courtship into a doll, a trifle for the occupation of an idle hour, to be dropped and taken up and trifled with, as the inconstant humour took him. When he grew weary, I grew weary. As his fancy died out, I would no more have tried to strengthen any power I had. Then I would have married him on his being forced to take me for his wife. We fell away from one another without a word. Perhaps you saw it, and were not sorry. Since then, I have been a mere disfigured piece of furniture between you both, having no eyes, no ears, no feelings, no remembrances. Moan? For what you made him, not for your love, I tell you that the time was, when I loved him better than you ever did. She stood with her bright angry eyes confronting the wide stare, and the sad face, and suffered no more, when the moaning was repeated, than if the face had been a picture. Miss Dirtle, said I, if you can be so obdurate as not to feel for disafflicted mother, who feels for me? She sharply retorted. She has sewn this, let her moan for the harvest that she reaps today. I began. False! She cried, bursting into passionate tears. Who dares malign him? He had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he stooped. No one can have loved him better. No one can hold him in dearer remembrance than I, I replied. I meant to say, if you had no compassion for his mother, or if it's false, you have been bitter on them. It's false! She cried, tearing her black hair. I loved him. If it's false cannot, I went on. Be banished from your remembrance. In such an hour, that figure, even as one you have never seen before and rendered some help. All this time, the figure was unchanged, and looked unchangeable. Motionless, rigid, staring, moaning in the same dumb way from time to time, with the same helpless motion of the head, but giving no other sign of life. Miss Dirtle suddenly nailed down before it, and began to loosen the dress. A curse upon you! She said, looking round at me, with a mingled expression of rage and grief, it was an evil hour that you ever came here. A curse upon you! Go! After passing out of the room, I heard back during the bell, the sooner to alarm the servants. She had then taken the impassive figure in her arms, and, still upon her knees, was weeping over it, kissing it, cooling to it, rocking it to and fro upon her bosom like a child, and trying every tender means to rouse the dormant senses. No longer afraid of leaving her, I noiselessly turned back again, and I learned the house as I went out. Later in the day, I returned, and laid him in his mother's room. She was just the same, they told me. Miss Dirtle never left her. Doctors were in attendance. Many things had been tried, but she lay like a statue, except for the low sound now and then. I went through the dreary house, and darkened the windows. The windows of the chamber very lay. I darkened last. I lifted up the leaden hand, and held it to my heart. All the world seemed death and silence, broken only by his mother's moaning. End of Chapter 56. Chapter 57 The Emigrants One more thing I had to do before yielding myself to the shock of these emotions. It was to conceal what had occurred from those who were going away, and to dismiss them on their voyage in happy ignorance. In this no time was to be lost. I took Mr. McCorber aside that same night, and confided to him the task of standing between Mr. Peckety and intelligence of the late catastrophe. He zealously undertook to do so, and to intercept any newspaper through which it might, without such precautions, reach him. If it penetrates to him, sir," said Mr. McCorber, striking himself on the breast, it shall first pass through this body. Mr. McCorber, I must observe, in his adaptation of himself to a new state of society, had acquired a bold buccaneering air, not absolutely lawless, but defensive and prompt. One might have supposed him a child of the wilderness, longer accustomed to live out of the confines of civilisation, and about to return to his native wilds. He had provided himself, among other things, with a complete suit of oil-skin, and a straw hat with a very low crown, pitched or corked on the outside. In this rough clothing, with a common mariner's telescope under his arm, and a shrewd trick of casting up his eye at the sky as looking out for dirty weather, he was far more nautical, after his manner, than Mr. Peckety. His whole family, if I may so express it, were cleared for action. I found Mrs. McCorber in the closest and most uncompromising of bonnets made fast under the chin, and in a shawl which tied her up, as I had been hired up when my father first received me, like a bundle, and was secure behind the waist in a strong knot. Mr. McCorber I found made snug for stormy weather in the same manner, with nothing superfluous about her. Master McCorber was hardly visible in a Guernsey shirt and the shaggiest suit of slops I ever saw, and the children were done up like preserved meats in impervious cases. Both Mr. McCorber and his eldest son wore their sleeves loosely turned back at the risks, as being ready to lend a hand in any direction and to tumble up or sing out yo heave ho on the shortest notice. Thus Trattles and I found them at nightfall, assembled on the wooden steps, at that time known as Hungerford Stairs, watching the departure of a boat with some of their property on board. I told Trattles of the terrible event, and it had greatly shocked him, but there could be no doubt of the kindness of keeping it a secret, and he had come to help me in this last service. It was here that I took Mr. McCorber aside and received his promise. The McCorber family were lodged in a little, dirty, tumbledown public-house, which in those days was close to the stairs, and whose protruding wooden rooms overhung the river. The family, as emigrants, being objects of some interest in and around Hungerford, attracted so many beholders that we were glad to take refuge in their room. It was one of the wooden chambers upstairs, with the tide flowing underneath. My aunt and Agnes were there, busily making some little extra comforts in the way of dress for the children. Pegaty was quietly assisting with the old insensible work-box, yard-measure, and bit of wax candle before her that had now outlived so much. It was not easy to answer her inquiries still less to whisper, Mr. Pegaty, when Mr. McCorber brought him in, that I had given the letter an all was well. But I did both, and made them happy. If I showed any trace of what I felt, my own sorrows were sufficient to account for it. And when does the ship sail, Mr. McCorber? asked my aunt. Mr. McCorber considered it necessary to prepare either my aunt or his wife by degrees, and said, sooner than he had expected yesterday. The boat brought you word, I suppose, said my aunt. It did, ma'am, he returned. Well, said my aunt, and she sails, Madam, he replied, I am informed that we must positively be on board before seven to-morrow morning. Hey, day, said my aunt, that's soon. Is it a sea-going fact, Mr. Pegaty? Tis saw, ma'am, she had dropped down the river without their tide. It must have, Davey, my sister, come to the board of Graveson. Afternoon or next day, they'll see the last on us. And that we shall do, said I, be sure. Until then, and until we are at sea, observed Mr. McCorber, with a glance of intelligence at me, Mr. Pegaty and myself will constantly keep a double look out together on our goods and chattels. Emma, my love, said Mr. McCorber, clearing his throat in his magnificent way. My friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles, is so bliging as to solicit in my ear that he should have the privilege of ordering the ingredients necessary to the composition of a modest portion of that beverage, which is peculiarly associated in our minds with the roast beef of Old England. I allude to, in short, punch. Under ordinary circumstances I should scruple to entreat the indulgence of Miss Trotwood and Miss Wickelfield, but I can only say for myself, said my aunt, that I will drink all happiness and success to you, Mr. McCorber, with the utmost pleasure. And I, too, said Agnes, with a smile. Mr. McCorber immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to be quite at home, and a due course returned with a steaming jug. I could not but observe that he had been peeling the lemons with his own clasp-knife, which, as became the knife of a practical settler, was about a foot long, and which he wiped not wholly without ostentation on the sleeve of his coat. Mrs. McCorber and the two elder members of the family I now found to be provided with similar formidable instruments, while every child had its own wooden spoon attached to its body by a strong line. In a similar anticipation of life afloat, and in the bush, Mr. McCorber, instead of helping Mrs. McCorber and his eldest son and daughter to punch in wine-glasses, which he might easily have done, for there was a shelf full in the room, serving it out to them in a series of vidonous little tin pots. And I never saw him enjoy anything so much as drinking out of his own particular pint pot, and putting it in his pocket at the close of the evening. The luxuries of the old country, said Mr. McCorber, with an intense satisfaction in their renouncements, we abandon. The denizens of the forest cannot, of course, expect to participate in the refinements of the land of the free. Here a boy came in to say that Mr. McCorber was wanted downstairs. I have a presentiment, said Mrs. McCorber, setting down her tin pot, that it is a member of my family. If so, my dear, observe Mr. McCorber with his usual suddenness of warmth on that subject, as the member of your family, whoever he, she, or it may be, has kept us waiting for a considerable period, perhaps the member may now wait my convenience. McCorber, said his wife in a low tone, at such a time as this, it is not meat, said Mr. McCorber, rising that every nice event should bear its comment. Emma, I stand reproved. The loss McCorber, observed his wife, has been my family's, not yours. If my family are at length sensible of the deprivation to which their own contact has in the past exposed them, and now desire to extend the hand of fellowship, let it not be repulsed. My dear, he returned, so be it. If not for their sakes, for mine, McCorber, said his wife. Emma, he returned, that view of the question is, at such a moment, irresistible. I cannot even now distinctly pledge myself to fall upon your family's neck, but the member of your family, who is now in attendance, shall have no genial warmth frozen by me. Mr. McCorber withdrew, and was absent some little time, in the course of which Mrs. McCorber was not wholly free from an apprehension the words might not have arisen between him and the member. At length the same boy reappeared, and presented me with a note written in pencil, and headed in a legal manner, heap v. McCorber. From this document I learned that Mr. McCorber, being again arrested, was in a final paroxysm of despair, and that he begged me to send him his knife and pint-pot by bearer, as they might prove serviceable during the brief remainder of his existence in jail. He also requested, as a last act of friendship, that I would see his family to the parish workhouse, and forget that such a being ever lived. Of course I answered this note by going down with the boy to pay the money, where I found Mr. McCorber, seeking in a corner, looking darkly at the sheriff's officer who had affected the capture. On his release he embraced me with the utmost fervour, and made an entry of the transaction in his pocket-book. Being very particular, I recollect, about a hipney I inadvertently omitted from my statement of the total. This momentous pocket-book was a timely reminder to him of another transaction. On our return to the room upstairs, where he accounted for his absence by saying that he'd been occasioned by circumstances over which he had no control, he took out of it a large sheet of paper folded small and quite covered with long sums carefully worked. From the glimpse I had of them I should say that I never saw such sums out of a school-cyphering-book. These it seemed were calculations of compound interest on what he called the principal amount of forty-one, ten, eleven and a half, for various periods. After a careful consideration of these and an elaborate estimate of his resources, he had come to the conclusion to select that sum which represented the amount which compounded interest to two years, fifteen calendar months and fourteen days from that date. For this he had drawn a note of hand with great neatness, which he handed over to Traddles on the spot, a discharge of his debt in full, as between man and man, with many acknowledgements. I have still a presentiment, said Mrs. McCorber, pensively shaking her head, that my family will appear on board before we finally depart. Mr. McCorber evidently had his presentiment on the subject too, but he put it in his tin pot and swallowed it. If you have any opportunities of sending letters home on your passage, Mrs. McCorber, said my aunt, you must let us hear from you, you know. My dear Miss Trotwood, she replied, I should only be too happy to think that anyone expects to hear from us. I shall not fail to correspond. Mr. Copperfield, I trust, as an old and familiar friend, will not object to receiving occasional intelligence himself from one who knew him when the twins were yet unconscious. I said that I should hope to hear whenever she had an opportunity of writing. Please, heaven, there will be many such opportunities, said Mr. McCorber. The ocean in these times is a perfect fleet of ships, and we can hardly fail to encounter many in running over. It is merely crossing, said Mr. McCorber, trifling with his eyedlass, merely crossing the distances quite imaginary. I think now how odd it was, but how wonderfully like, Mr. McCorber, that when he went from London to Canterbury he should have talked as if he were going to the farthest limits of the earth, and when he went from England to Australia, as if he were going for a little trip across the Channel. On the voyage, I shall endeavour, said Mr. McCorber, occasionally to spin them a yarn, and the melody of my son Wilkins will, I trust, be acceptable at the galley fire. Where Mrs. McCorber has her sea legs on, an expression in which I hope there is no conventional impropriety, she will give them, I dare say, little tafflin. Porpoises and dolphins, I believe, will be frequently observed at Fort Arbaus, and either on the starboard or the lairboard quarter, the interest will be continually described. In short, said Mr. McCorber with the old genteel air, the probability is all will be found so exciting, a-low, and a-loft, that when the look-out, stationed in the main-trop, cries, Land Ho, we shall be very considerably astonished. With that, he flourished off the contents of his little tin pot, as if he had made the voyage at a past of first-class examination before the highest naval authorities. What I chiefly hope, my dear Mr. Copperfield, said Mrs. McCorber, is that in some branches of our family we may live again in the old country. Do not frown, McCorber. I do not now refer to my own family, but to our children's children. However vigorous the sapling, said Mrs. McCorber, shaking her head, I cannot forget the parent's tree, and when our race attains to eminence and fortune, I own I should wish that fortune to flow into the coffers of Britannia. My dear, said Mr. McCorber, Britannia must take her chance. I am bound to say that she has never done much for me, and that I have no particular wish upon the subject. McCorber, returned Mrs. McCorber, there you are wrong. You are going out to McCorber to this distant climb to strengthen, not to weaken, the connection between yourself and Albion. The connection in question, my dear, rejoined Mr. McCorber, has not laid me, I repeat, under that load of personal obligation that I am at all sensitive as to the formation of another connection. McCorber, returned Mrs. McCorber, there I again say you are wrong. You do not know your power, McCorber. It is that which will strengthen even the this step you are about to take, the connection between yourself and Albion. Mr. McCorber sat in his elbow chair with his eyebrows raised, half receiving and half repudiating Mrs. McCorber's views, as they were stated, but very sensible of their foresight. My dear, Mr. Copperfield, said Mrs. McCorber, I wish Mr. McCorber to feel his position. It appears to me highly important that Mr. McCorber should, from the hour of his end-valcation, feel his position. Your old knowledge of me, my dear Mr. Copperfield, will have told you that I have not the sanguine disposition of Mr. McCorber. My disposition is, if I may say so, eminently practical. I know that this is a long voyage. I know that it will involve many privations and inconveniences. I cannot shut my eyes to those facts. But I also know what Mr. McCorber is. I know the latent power of Mr. McCorber. And therefore I consider it vitally important that Mr. McCorber should feel his position. My love, he observed. Perhaps you will allow me to remark that it is barely possible that I do feel my position at the present moment. I think not, McCorber. She rejoined not fully. My dear Mr. Copperfield, Mr. McCorber's is not a common case. Mr. McCorber is going to a distant country expressly in order that he may be fully understood and appreciated for the first time. I wish Mr. McCorber to take his stand upon that vessel's prow and firmly say, this country I am come to conquer. Have you honors? Have you riches? Have you posts of profitable pecuniary emoliment? Let them be brought forward. They are mine. Mr. McCorber, glancing at us all, seemed to think there was a good deal in this idea. Mr. McCorber, if I make myself understood, said Mrs. McCorber in an argumentative tone, to be the Caesar of his own fortunes. That, my dear Mr. McCorberfield, appears to be his true position. From the first moment of this voyage I wish Mr. McCorber to stand upon that vessel's prow and say, enough of delay, enough of disappointment, enough of limited means, that was in the old country. This is the new. Use your reparation. Bring it forward. Mr. McCorber folded his arms in a resolute manner as if he were then stationed on the figurehead. And doing that, said Mrs. McCorber, feeling his position, am I not right in saying that Mr. McCorber will strengthen and not weaken his connection with Britain? An important public character arising in that hemisphere, shall I be told that its influence will not be felt at home? Should I be so weak as to imagine that Mr. McCorber wielding the rod of talent and of power in Australia will be nothing in England? I am but a woman, but I should be unworthy of myself and of my power if I were guilty of such absurd weakness. Mrs. McCorber's conviction that her arguments were unanswerable gave a moral elevation to her tone, which I think I had never heard in it before. And therefore it is, said Mrs. McCorber, that I the more wish that at a future period we may live again on the parent's soil. Mr. McCorber, maybe I cannot disguise for myself what the probability is. Mr. McCorber will be a page of history, and he ought then to be represented in the country which gave him birth and did not give him employment. My love, observed Mr. McCorber, it is impossible for me not to be touched by your affection. Are you always willing to defer to your good sense? What will be? Will be. Heaven forbid that I should grunge my native country any portion of the wealth that may be accumulated by our descendants. That's well, said my aunt, nodding towards Mr. Peckety, and I drink my love to you all and every blessing and success attend you. Mr. Peckety, put down the two children he had been nursing, one on each knee, to join Mr. and Mrs. McCorber to return. And when he and the McCorbers cordially shook hands as comrades, and his brown face brightened with a smile, I felt that he would make his way, establish a good name, and be beloved, go where he would. Even the children were instructed each to dip a wooden spoon into Mr. McCorber's pot and pledge us in its contents. When this was done my aunt and Agnes rose and parted from the emigrants. It was a sorrowful farewell. They were all crying. The children hung about Agnes to the last and we left poor Mrs. McCorber in a very distressed condition, sobbing and weeping by a dim candle, that might have made the room look from the river like a miserable lighthouse. I went down again next morning to see that they were away. They had departed in a boat as early as five o'clock. It was a wonderful instance to me of the gap such partings make that although my association of them with the tumbledown public-house and the wooden stairs dated only from last night, both seemed dreary and deserted now that they were gone. In the afternoon of the next day my old nurse and I went down to Graves End. We found the ship and the river surrounded by a crowd of boats, a favorable wind blowing, the signal for sailing at her masthead. I hurried a boat directly to the river, I hurried a boat directly and we put off to her and getting through the little vortex of confusion of which she was the centre, went on board. Mr. Peckety was waiting for us on deck. He told me that Mr. McCorber had just now been arrested again and for the last time at the suit of Heap and that in compliance with the request I had made to him, he paid the money which I repaid him. He then took us down between decks and there any lingering fears I had of his having heard any rumours of what had happened were dispelled by Mr. McCorber's coming out of the loom taking his arm with an air of friendship and protection and telling me that they had scarcely been asunder for a moment since the night before last. It was such a strange scene to me and so confined and dark that at first I could make out hardly anything, but by degrees it cleared as my eyes became more accustomed to the gloom and I seemed to stand in a picture by our stard. Among the great beams, bulks and ring-bolts of the ship and the emigrant berths and chests and bundles and barrels and heaps of miscellaneous baggage lighted up here and there by dangling lanterns and elsewhere by the yellow daylight straying down a wind-soul or a hatchway were crowded groups of people making new friendships taking leave of one another laughing, crying, eating and drinking. Some already settled down into the possession of their few feet of space with their little households arranged and tiny children established on stools or in dwarf elbow-chairs. Others despairing of a resting place and wandering disconsonantly. From babies who have but a week or two of life behind them to crooked old men and women who seem to have but a week or two of life before them and from ploughmen readily carrying out soil of England on their boots to smiths taking away samples of its soot and smoke upon their skins every age and occupation appeared to be crammed into the narrow compass of the tween decks. As my eye glanced round this place I thought I saw sitting by an open port with one of the McCormick children near her a figure like Emily's. It first attracted my attention by another figure parting from it with a kiss and as it glided calmly away through the disorder reminded me of Agnes. But in the rabbi of motion and confusion and in the unsettlement of my own thoughts I lost it again and any knew that the time was come when all visitors were being warned to leave the ship, that my nurse was crying on a chest beside me and that Mrs. Gummidge assisted by some younger, stooping woman in black was bittersily arranging Mr. Pegaty's goods. Any last word, Mr. Davy," said he, is there any one forgotten thing of four wee parts? One thing said I, Martha. He touched the younger woman I have mentioned on the shoulder, and Martha stood before me. Heaven bless you, you good man, cried I, you take her with you. She answered for him with a burst of tears. I could speak no more at that time but I wrung his hand and if ever I have loved and honoured any man I loved and honoured that man in my soul. The ship was clearing fast of strangers. The greatest trial that I had remained. I told him what the noble spirit that was gone had given me in charge to say at parting. It moved him deeply. But when he charged me in return with many messages of affection and regret for those deaf ears it moved me more. The time was come. I embraced him, took my weeping nurse upon my arm and hurried away. On deck I took leave of poor Mrs. McCorber. She was looking distractedly about her for her family even then, and her last words to me were that she never would desert Mr. McCorber. We went over the side into our boat and laid her little distance in the course. It was then calm, radiant sunset. She lay between us and the red light and every taper lion and spar was visible against the glow. A sight at once so beautiful so mournful and so hopeful as the glorious ship lying still on the flushed water with all the life on board her crowded at the bullocks and there clustering for a moment bare-headed and silent. Mrs. McCorber saw. Silent. Only for a moment. As the sails rose to the wind and the ship began to move their broke from all the boats three resounding cheers which those on board took up and echoed back and which were echoed and re-echoed. My heart burst out when I heard the sound and beheld the waving of the hats then I saw her at her uncle's side and trembling on his shoulder. He pointed to us with an eager hand and she saw us and waved her last goodbye to me. I Emily beautiful and drooping cling to him with the utmost trust of thy bruised heart for he is clung to thee with all the might of his great love surrounded by the rosy light and standing high upon the deck apart together she cling to him and he holding her they solemnly passed away the night had fallen on the Kentish hills when we were rid of shore and fallen darkly upon me. End of Chapter 57 Recording by Simon Evers Chapter 58 Entitled Absence of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Father Ziley of Detroit, Michigan April, 2008 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Chapter 58 Absence It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me haunted by the ghosts of many hopes of many dear remembrances many errors many unavailing sorrows and regrets. I went away from England not knowing even then how great the shock was that I had to bear. I left all who were dear to me and went away and believed that I had born it and it was passed. As a man upon a field of battle will receive a mortal hurt and scarcely know that he has struck so I, when I was left alone with my undisciplined heart had no conception of the wound with which it had to strive. The knowledge came upon me not quickly but little by little and grain by grain. The desolate feeling with which I went abroad deepened and widened hourly. At first it was a heavy sense of loss and sorrow wherein I could distinguish little else. By imperceptible degrees it became a hopeless consciousness of all that I had lost love friendship interest of all that had been shattered my first trust my first affection the whole airy castle of my life of all that remained a ruined blank and waste lying wide around me unbreakable lying wide around me unbroken to the dark horizon if my grief were selfish I did not know it to be so. I mourned for my child wife taken from her blooming world so young I mourned for him who might have won the love and admiration of thousands as he had won mine long ago I mourned for the broken heart that had found rest in the stormy sea and for the wandering remnants of the simple home where I had heard the night wind blowing when I was a child from the accumulated sadness into which I fell I had at length no hope of ever issuing again I roamed from place to place carrying my burden with me everywhere I felt its whole weight now and I drooped beneath it and I said in my heart that it could never be lightened when this despondency was at its worst I believed that I should die sometimes I thought that I would like to die at home and actually turned back on my road that I might get there soon at other times I passed on farther away from city to city seeking I know not what and trying to leave I know not what behind it is not in my power to retrace one by one all the weary phases of distress of mine through which I passed there are some dreams that can only be imperfectly and vaguely described and when I oblige myself to look back on this time of my life I seem to be recalling such a dream I see myself passing on among the novelties of foreign towns palaces, cathedrals temples, pictures castles, tombs fantastic streets the old abiding places of history and fancy as a dreamer might bearing my painful load through all and hardly conscious of the objects as they fade before me listlessness to everything but brooding sorrow was the night that fell on my undisciplined heart let me look up from it as at last I did thank heaven and from its long, sad wretched dream to dawn for many months I traveled with this ever darkening cloud upon my mind some blind reasons that I had for not returning home reasons then struggling within me vainly for more distinct expression kept me on my pilgrimage sometimes I had proceeded restlessly from place to place stopping nowhere I had lingered long in one spot I had had no purpose, no sustaining soul within me anywhere I was in Switzerland I had come out of Italy over one of the great passes of the Alps and had since wandered with a guide among the byways of the mountains if those awful solitudes had spoken to my heart I could not know it I had found sublimity and wonder in the dread heights and precipices in the roaring torrents and the wastes of ice and snow but as yet they had taught me nothing else I came one evening before sunset down into a valley where I was to rest in the course of my descent to it by the winding track along the mountainside from which I saw it shining far below I think some long unwanted sense of beauty and tranquility some softening influence awakened by its peace moved faintly in my breast I remember pausing once with a kind of sorrow that was not all oppressive not quite despairing I remember almost hoping that better change was possible within me I came into the valley as the evening sun was shining on the remote heights of snow that closed it in like eternal clouds the bases of the mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay were richly green and high above this gentler vegetation grew forests of dark fur wedge-like and stemming the avalanche above these were range upon range of craggy steeps gray rock bright ice and smooth verdure specks of pasture all gradually blending with the crowning snow dot here and there on the mountainside each tiny dot a home were lonely wooden cottages so dwarfed by the towering heights that they appeared too small for toys so did even the clustered village in the valley with its wooden bridge across the stream where the stream tumbled over broken rocks and roared away among the trees in the quiet air there was a sound of distant singing shepherd voices but as one bright evening cloud floated midway on the mountainside I could almost have believed it came from there and was not earthly music all at once in this serenity great nature spoke to me and soothed me to lay down my weary head upon the grass and weep as I had not wept yet since Dora died I had found a packet of letters awaiting me but a few minutes before I was strolled out of the village to read them while my supper was making ready other packets had missed me and I had received none for a long time beyond a line or two to say that I was well and had arrived at such a place I had not had fortitude or constancy to write a letter since I left home the packet was in my hand I opened it and read the writing of Agnes she was happy and useful was prospering as she had hoped that was all she told me of herself the rest referred to me she gave me no advice she urged no duty on me she only told me in her own fervent manner what her trust in me was she knew she said how such a nature as mine would turn affliction to good she knew how trial and emotion would exalt and strengthen it she was sure that in my every purpose I should gain a firmer and a higher tendency through the grief I had undergone she who so gloried in my fame and so looked forward to its affliction well knew that I would labor on she knew that in me sorrow could not be weakness but must be strength as the endurance of my childish days had done its part to make me what I was so greater calamities would nerve me on to be yet better than I was and so as they had taught me would I teach others she commended me to God who had taken my innocent darling to his rest and in her sisterly affliction cherished me always and was always at my side go where I would proud of what I had done but infinitely prouder yet of what I was reserved to do I put the letter in my breast and thought what I had been an hour ago when I heard the voices die away and saw the quiet evening cloud grow dim and all the colors in the valley fade and the golden snow upon the mountain tops become a remote part of the pale night sky yet felt that the night was passing from my mind and all its shadows clearing there was no name for the love I bore her dearer to me hence forward than ever until then I read her letter many times I wrote to her before I slept I told her that I had been in sore need of her help that without her I was not and I never had been what she thought me but that she inspired me to be that and I would try I did try in three months more than ever past since the beginning of my sorrow I determined to make no resolutions until the expiration of those three months but to try I lived in that valley and its neighborhood all the time the three months gone I resolved to remain away from home for some time longer to settle myself for the present in Switzerland growing dear to me in the remembrance of that evening to resume my pen to work I resorted humbly whither Agnes had commended me I sought out nature never sought in vain and I admitted to my breast the human interest I had lately shrunk from it was not long before I had almost as many friends in the valley as in Yarmouth I left it before the winter set in for Geneva and came back in the spring their cordial greetings had a homely sound to me although they were not conveyed in English words I worked early and late patiently and hard I wrote a story with a purpose growing not remotely out of my experience and sent it to Trattles its publication very advantageously for me and the tidings of my growing reputation began to reach me from travelers whom I encountered by chance after some rest and change I fell to work in my old ardent way on a new fancy which took strong possession of me as I advanced in the execution of this task I felt it more and more and roused my utmost energies to do it well this was my third work of fiction it was not half written when in an interval of rest I thought of returning home for a long time though studying and working patiently I had accustomed myself to robust exercise my health severely impaired when I left England was quite restored I had seen much I had been in many countries and I hope I had improved my store of knowledge I have now recalled all that I think it needful to recall here of this term of absence with one reservation I have made it thus far with no purpose of suppressing any of my thoughts for as I have elsewhere said this narrative is my written memory I have desired to keep the most secret current of my mind apart and to the last I enter on it now I cannot so completely penetrate the mystery of my own heart as to know when I began to think that I might have set its earliest and brightest hopes on Agnes I cannot say at what stage of my grief it first became associated with the reflection that in my wayward boyhood I had thrown away the treasure of her love I believe I may have heard some whisper of that distant thought in the old unhappy loss or want of something never to be realized of which I had been sensible but the thought came into my mind as a new and new regret when I was left so sad and lonely in the world if at that time I had been much with her I should in the weakness of my desolation have betrayed this it was what I remotely dreaded when I was first impelled to stay away from England I could not have born to lose the smallest portion of her sisterly affection yet in that betrayal I should have set a constraint between us hitherto unknown I could not forget that the feeling with which she now regarded me had grown up in my own free choice and course that if she had ever loved me with another love and I sometimes thought the time was when she might have done so I had cast it away it was nothing now that I had accustomed myself to think of her when we were both mere children as one who was far removed from my wild fancies I had bestowed my passionate tenderness upon another object and what I might have done I had not done and what Agnes was to me I and her own noble heart had made her in the beginning of the change that gradually worked in me when I tried to get a better understanding of myself and be a better man I did glance through some indefinite probation to a period when I might possibly hope to cancel the mistake in past and to be so blessed as to marry her but as time wore on this shadowy prospect faded and departed from me if she had ever loved me then I should hold her the more sacred remembering the confidences I had reposed in her her knowledge of my errant heart the sacrifice she must have made to be my friend and sister and the victory she had won if she had never loved me could I believe that she would love me now I had always felt my weakness in comparison with her constancy and fortitude and now I felt it more and more whatever I might have been to her or she to me if I had been more worthy of her long ago I was not now and she was not the time was past I had let it go by and had deservedly lost her that I suffered much in these contentions that they filled me with unhappiness and remorse and yet that I had a sustaining sense that it was required of me in right and honor to keep away from myself with shame the thought of turning to the dear girl in the withering of my hopes from whom I had frivolously turned when they were bright and fresh which consideration was at the root of every thought I had concerning her is all equally true I made no effort to conceal from myself now that I loved her that I was devoted to her but I brought the assurance home to myself that it was now too late and that our long subsisting relation must be undisturbed I had thought much and often out to me what might have happened in those years that were destined not to try us I had considered how the things that never happened are often as much realities to us in their effects as those that are accomplished the very years she spoke of were realities now for my correction and would have been one day a little later perhaps though we had parted in our earliest folly I endeavored to convert what might have been between myself and Agnes into a means of making me more self-denying more resolved more conscious of myself and my defects and errors thus through the reflection that it might have been I arrived at the conviction that it could never be these with their perplexities and inconsistencies were the shifting quicksands of my mind from the time of my departure to the time of my return home three years afterwards three years had elapsed since the sailing of the immigrant ship when at that same hour of sunset and in the same place I stood on the deck of the packet vessel that brought me home looking on the rosy water where I had seen the image of that ship reflected three years long in the aggregate though short as they went by and home was very dear to me and Agnes too but she was not mine she was never to be mine she might have been she might have been but that was past end of chapter 58 Absence recording by Father Ziley Detroit, Michigan April 2008