‘Well! I counsels him to speak to Em’ly. He’s big enough, but
he’s bashfuller than a little un, and he don’t like. So I speak.
“What! Him!” says Em’ly. “Him that I’ve know’d so intimate so
many years, and like so much. Oh, Uncle! I never can have him.
He’s such a good fellow!” I gives her a kiss, and I says no more to
her than, “My dear, you’re right to speak out, you’re to choose for
yourself, you’re as free as a little bird.” Then I aways to him, and I
says, “I wish it could have been so, but it can’t. But you can both
be as you was, and wot I say to you is, Be as you was with her, like
a man.” He says to me, a-shaking of my hand, “I will!” he says.
And he was—honourable and manful—for two year going on, and
we was just the same at home here as afore.’
Mr. Peggotty’s face, which had varied in its with the
various stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former
triumphant delight, as he laid a hand upon my knee and a hand
upon Steerforth’s (previously wetting them both, for the greater
emphasis of the action), and divided the following speech between
us:
‘All of a sudden, one evening—as it might be tonight—comes
little Em’ly from her work, and him with her! There ain’t so much
in that, you’ll say. No, because he takes care on her, like a brother,
arter dark, and indeed afore dark, and at all times. But this
tarpaulin chap, he takes hold of her hand, and he cries out to me,
joyful, “Look here! This is to be my little wife!” And she says, half
bold and half shy, and half a laughing and half a crying, “Yes,
Uncle! If you please.”—If I please!’ cried Mr. Peggotty, rolling his
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David Copperfield
head in an ecstasy at the idea; ‘Lord, as if I should do anythink
else!—“If you please, I am steadier now, and I have thought better
of it, and I’ll be as good a little wife as I can to him, for he’s a dear,
good fellow!” Then Missis Gummidge, she claps her hands like a
play, and you come in. Theer! the murder’s out!’ said Mr.
Peggotty—‘You come in! It took place this here present hour; and
here’s the man that’ll marry her, the minute she’s out of her time.’
Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty
dealt him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and
friendship; but feeling called upon to say something to us, he said,
with much faltering and great difficulty:
‘She warn’t no higher than you was, Mas’r Davy—when you
first come—when I thought what she’d grow up to be. I see her
grown up—gent’lmen—like a flower. I’d lay down my life for her—
Mas’r Davy—Oh! most content and cheerful! She’s more to me—
gent’lmen—than—she’s all to me that ever I can want, and more
than ever I—than ever I could say. I—I love her true. There ain’t a
gent’lman in all the land—nor yet sailing upon all the sea—that
can love his lady more than I love her, though there’s many a
common man—would say better—what he meant.’
I thought it affecting to see such a sturdy fellow as Ham was
now, trembling in the strength of what he felt for the pretty little
creature who had won his heart. I thought the simple confidence
reposed in us by Mr. Peggotty and by himself, was, in itself,
affecting. I was affected by the story altogether. How far my
emotions were influenced by the recollections of my childhood, I
don’t know. Whether I had come there with any lingering fancy
that I was still to love little Em’ly, I don’t know. I know that I was
filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first, with an indescribably
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David Copperfield
sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have changed to pain.
Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the prevailing
chord among them with any skill, I should have made a poor hand
of it. But it depended upon Steerforth; and he did it with such
address, that in a few minutes we were all as easy and as happy as
it was possible to be.
‘Mr. Peggotty,’ he said, ‘you are a thoroughly good fellow, and
deserve to be as happy as you are tonight. My hand upon it! Ham,
I give you j"};
