“Dear, if your heart is hard towards me—justly hard, I know—but, Listen, if it is hard, dear, ask him I have wronged the most—him whose wife I was to have been—before you quite decide against my poor poor prayer! If he should be so compassionate as to say that you might write something for me to read—I think he would, oh, I think he would, if you would only ask him, for he always was so brave and so forgiving—tell him then (but not else), that when I hear the wind blowing at night, I feel as if it was passing angrily from seeing him and uncle, and was going up to God against me. Tell him that if I was to die to-morrow (and oh, if I was fit, I would be so glad to die!) I would bless him and uncle with my last words, and pray for his happy home with my last breath!”
Some money was inclosed in this letter also. Five pounds. It was untouched like the previous sum, and he refolded it in the same way. Detailed instructions were added relative to the address of a reply, which, although they betrayed the intervention of several hands, and made it difficult to arrive at any very probable conclusion in reference to her place of concealment, made it at least not unlikely that she had written from that spot where she was stated to have been seen.
“What answer was sent?” I inquired of Mr. Peggotty.
“Missis Gummidge,” he returned, “not being a good scholar, sir, Ham kindly drawed it out, and she made a copy on it. They told her I was gone to seek her, and what my parting words was.”
“Is that another letter in your hand?” said I.
“It’s money, sir,” said Mr. Peggotty, unfolding it a little way. “Ten pound, you see. And wrote inside, ‘From a true friend,’ like the first. But the first was put underneath the door, and this come by the post, day afore yesterday. I’m a going to seek her at the post-mark.”
He showed it to me. It was a town on the Upper Rhine. He had
found out, at Yarmouth, some foreign dealers who knew that country, and they had drawn him a rude map on paper, which he could very well understand. He laid it between us on the table; and, with his chin resting on one hand, tracked his course upon it with the other.
I asked him how Ham was? He shook his head.
“He works,” he said, “as bold as a man can. His name’s as good, in all that part, as any man’s is, anywheres in the wureld. Anyone’s hand is ready to help him, you understand, and his is ready to help them. He’s never been heerd fur to complain. But my sister’s belief is (’twixt ourselves) as it has cut him deep.”