The news of what had happened soon spread through the town; insomuch that as I passed along the streets next morning, I overheard the people speaking of it at their doors. Many were hard upon her, some few were hard upon him, but towards her second father and her lover there was but one sentiment. Among all kinds of people a respect for them in their distress prevailed, which was full of gentleness and delicacy. The seafaring men kept apart, when those two were seen early, walking with slow steps on the beach; and stood in knots, talking compassionately among themselves.
It was on the beach, close down by the sea, that I found them. It would have been easy to perceive that they had not slept all last night, even if Peggotty had failed to tell me of their still sitting just as I left them, when it was broad day. They looked worn; and I thought Mr. Peggotty’s head was bowed in one night more than in all the years I had known him. But they were both as grave and steady as the sea itself: then lying beneath a dark sky, waveless—yet with a heavy roll upon it, as if it breathed in its rest—and touched, on the horizon, with a strip of silvery light from the unseen sun.
“We have had a mort of talk, sir,” said Mr. Peggotty to me, when we
had all three walked a little while in silence, “of what we ought and doen’t ought to do. But we see our course now.”
I happened to glance at Ham, then looking out to sea upon the distant light, and a frightful thought came into my mind—not that his face was angry, for it was not; I recal nothing but an expression of stern determination in it—that if ever he encountered Steerforth, he would kill him.
“My dooty here, sir,” said Mr. Peggotty, “is done. I’m a going to seek my—” he stopped, and went on in a firmer voice: “I’m a going to seek her. That’s my dooty evermore.”
He shook his head when I asked him where he would seek her, and inquired if I were going to London to-morrow? I told him I had not gone to-day, fearing to lose the chance of being of any service to him; but that I was ready to go when he would.
“I’ll go along with you, sir,” he rejoined, “if you’re agreeable, to-morrow.”
We walked again, for a while, in silence.
“Ham,” he presently resumed, “he’ll hold to his present work, and go and live along with my sister. The old boat yonder—”