I was paralysed by the sight of such grief. I don’t know what I thought, or what I dreaded. I could only look at him.
“Ham! Poor good fellow! For Heaven’s sake, tell me what’s the matter!”
“My love, Mas’r Davy—the pride and hope of my ’art—her that I’d have died for, and would die for now—she’s gone!”
“Gone!”
“Em’ly’s run away! Oh, Mas’r Davy, think how she’s run away, when I pray my good and gracious God to kill her (her that is so dear above all things) sooner than let her come to ruin and disgrace!”
The face he turned up to the troubled sky, the quivering of his clasped hands, the agony of his figure, remain associated with the lonely waste, in my remembrance, to this hour. It is always night there, and he is the only object in the scene.
“You’re a scholar,” he said, hurriedly, “and know what’s right and best. What am I to say, indoors? How am I ever to break it to him, Mas’r Davy?”
I saw the door move, and instinctively tried to hold the latch on the outside, to gain a moment’s time. It was too late. Mr. Peggotty thrust forth his face; and never could I forget the change that came upon it when he saw us, if I were to live five hundred years.
I remember a great wail and cry, and the women hanging about him, and we all standing in the room; I with a paper in my hand, which Ham had given me; Mr. Peggotty, with his vest torn open, his hair wild, his face and lips quite white, and blood trickling down his bosom (it had sprung from his mouth, I think), looking fixedly at me.