prompt:
Chapter: 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 fore-cast 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 at lengthened
and uncertain intervals, to this hour. I have an association between it
and a stormy wind, or the lightest mention of a sea-shore, 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, and the Micawbers
(they being very much together); but Emily I never saw.

One evening when the time was close at hand, I was alone with Peggotty
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 wrote 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.
Peggotty, 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. Peggotty is here; shall he come up?'

I replied yes, and he soon appeared.

'Mas'r Davy,' he said, when we had shaken hands, 'I giv Em'ly your
letter, sir, and she writ this heer; and begged of me fur to ask you
to read it, and if you see no hurt in't, to be so kind as take charge
on't.'

'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.

'Good-bye for ever. Now, my dear, my friend, good-bye for ever 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 doen't see no hurt in't, and as you'll be so kind
as take charge on't, Mas'r Davy?' said Mr. Peggotty, when I had read it.
'Unquestionably,' said I--'but I am thinking--'

'Yes, Mas'r Davy?'

'I am thinking,' said I, 'that I'll go down again to Yarmouth. 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 tonight.'

Though he anxiously endeavoured 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 colour like the
colour 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 moon 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 blew hard.

But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely
over-spreading 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 fain to stop, in a
sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.

When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been in Yarmouth
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 market-place, who had
risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling chimneys. Some of
these, congregating about the inn-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 within sight 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 aslant, 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
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 foundered 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, levelling 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 wave 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 whole 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
sound; 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, with 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 Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of ship-repairing
in which his skill was required; but that he would be back tomorrow
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 sat
five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the waiter, 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 labouring hard in the Roads, and trying, in great distress, to keep
off shore. 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 not 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 waiter'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 ask 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 Ham Peggotty, 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 in 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
fore-ground.

My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself with
a 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
inn-servants 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 broad 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 of 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 dare say, two hours. Once, I opened the yard-gate,
and looked into the empty street. The sand, the sea-weed, 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. Make
haste, sir, if you want to see her! It's thought, down on the beach,
she'll go to pieces every moment.'

The excited voice went clamouring 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 me, pointed with his
bare arm (a tattoo'd arrow on it, pointing in the same direction) to the
left. Then, O 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 descried 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 sea,
sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men,
spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, 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
amidships, and I 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 beam-ends 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 borne 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 a 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 connexion 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, with 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 entreated the wind. 'Mas'r Davy,'
he said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, 'if my time is come, 'tis
come. If 'tan't, I'll bide 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 hurry on
the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there, and
penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then, I saw
him standing alone, in a seaman'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 latter, which he laid out
himself, slack upon the shore, at his feet.

The wreck, even to my unpractised 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 colour; and as the few
yielding planks between him and destruction rolled and bulged, and his
anticipative death-knell rung, he was seen by all of us to wave 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, and 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, borne in towards the shore,
borne 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, that with one more of his
vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it,--when a high, green, vast
hill-side 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 cask 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 for ever.

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.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Tempest David goes to Yarmouth to deliver a letter from Little Em'ly to Ham so that they may know of each other before Little Em'ly goes to Australia. As David travels, a terrific storm blows into Yarmouth, and the sea and wind rage. A ship from Spain is wrecked off the coast, and David and others go to the beach to watch its fate. The lifeboat has been tried and has failed, and there is no way to help. All the men on board have been killed except one, who is hanging onto a mast in his red cap and waving at the shore. Ham appears out of nowhere, back from a job he has been working on, and insists on going out into the water with a rope around his waist to try to save the last sailor. After a first failed attempt, Ham gets all the way out, but a gigantic wave sweeps the ship under and kills him. The next morning, David is fetched to the beach, where Steerforth's body has rolled in with the morning tide


prompt:
Chapter: No need, O Steerforth, to have said, when we last spoke together, in
that hour 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 sight!

They brought a hand-bier, 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 sailing 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 bier down on the threshold, they looked at one
another, and at me, and whispered. I knew why. They felt as if it were
not right to lay him down in the same quiet room.

We went into the town, and took our burden to the inn. So soon as I
could at all collect my thoughts, I sent for Joram, and begged him to
provide me a conveyance 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 nearly midnight 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 youthful
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 disused door. The wind had quite gone down, and
nothing moved.

I had not, at first, the courage to ring at the gate; and when I did
ring, my errand seemed to me to be expressed in the very sound of the
bell. The little parlour-maid came out, with the key in her hand; and
looking earnestly at me as she unlocked the gate, said:

'I beg your pardon, sir. Are you ill?'

'I have been much agitated, and am fatigued.'

'Is anything the matter, sir?---Mr. James?--' 'Hush!' said I. 'Yes,
something has happened, that I have to break to Mrs. Steerforth. She is
at home?'

The girl anxiously replied that her mistress was very seldom out now,
even in a carriage; that she kept her room; that she saw no company, but
would see me. Her mistress was up, she said, and Miss Dartle 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 card and say I waited, I 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, to the effect that Mrs. Steerforth
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 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 her 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 Dartle. From the first moment of
her dark eyes resting on me, I saw she knew I was the bearer of evil
tidings. The scar sprung into view that instant. She withdrew herself
a step behind the chair, to keep her own face out of Mrs. Steerforth's
observation; and scrutinized me with a piercing gaze that never
faltered, never shrunk.

'I am sorry to observe you are in mourning, sir,' said Mrs. Steerforth.

'I am unhappily a widower,' said I.

'You are very young to know so 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. Steerforth, we must all trust to that, in our 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 in 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 Dartle had been standing at her elbow, and
in that moment I said, by the motion of my lips, to Rosa, 'Dead!'

That Mrs. Steerforth might not be induced to look behind her, and read,
plainly written, what she was not yet prepared to know, I met her look
quickly; but I had seen Rosa Dartle throw her hands up in the air with
vehemence of despair and horror, and then clasp 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. I besought her to be calm, 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, 'Miss Dartle told me he was sailing
here and there. The night before last was a dreadful one at sea. If he
were at sea that night, and near a dangerous coast, as it is said he
was; and if the vessel that was seen should really be the ship which--'

'Rosa!' said Mrs. Steerforth, '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 madwoman? Now has he made
atonement to you--with his life! Do you hear?---His life!'

Mrs. Steerforth, fallen back stiffly in her chair, and making no sound
but a moan, cast her eyes upon her with a wide stare.

'Aye!' 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 with
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 in your pampering of his
pride and passion, he did this, and disfigured me for life? Look at me,
marked until I die with his high displeasure; and moan and groan for
what you made him!'

'Miss Dartle,' I entreated her. 'For Heaven's sake--'

'I WILL speak!' she said, turning on me with her lightning 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.

'You, resent his self-will!' she exclaimed. 'You, injured by his haughty
temper! You, who opposed to both, when your hair was grey, 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 he should have been! Are you
rewarded, now, for your years of trouble?'

'Oh, Miss Dartle, shame! Oh cruel!'

'I tell you,' she returned, 'I 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? You were exacting, proud, punctilious, selfish. My love
would have been devoted--would have trod your paltry whimpering under
foot!'

With flashing eyes, she stamped upon the ground as if she actually did
it.

'Look here!' she said, striking the scar again, with a 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 with labour to such
knowledge as most interested him; and I attracted him. When he was
freshest and truest, he loved me. 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
smouldering 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, than 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? 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
set face; and softened no more, when the moaning was repeated, than if
the face had been a picture.

'Miss Dartle,' said I, 'if you can be so obdurate as not to feel for
this afflicted mother--'

'Who feels for me?' she sharply retorted. 'She has sown this. Let her
moan for the harvest that she reaps today!'

'And if his faults--' I began.

'Faults!' 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 have no
compassion for his mother; or if his faults--you have been bitter on
them--'

'It's false,' she cried, tearing her black hair; 'I loved him!'

'--if his faults cannot,' I went on, 'be banished from your remembrance,
in such an hour; look at that figure, even as one you have never seen
before, and render it 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 Dartle suddenly kneeled 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 in an evil hour that you ever came
here! A curse upon you! Go!'

After passing out of the room, I hurried back to ring 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,
calling 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 alarmed the house
as I went out.

Later in the day, I returned, and we laid him in his mother's room. She
was just the same, they told me; Miss Dartle 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 where he lay, I darkened last. I lifted up the leaden
hand, and held it to my heart; and all the world seemed death and
silence, broken only by his mother's moaning.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The New Wound, and the Old David goes to Mrs. Steerforth and informs her that her son is dead. She is an invalid now and is lying in Steerforth's room. Miss Dartle is present when David relays the news. She lashes out at Mrs. Steerforth, challenging her right to mourn her son, whom she made the monster he was, when she, Miss Dartle, loved Steerforth so much. Mrs. Steerforth becomes completely rigid and does not recover from the shock of learning of the death of her son


prompt:
Chapter: One thing more, 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. Micawber aside that same night, and confided to him the
task of standing between Mr. Peggotty 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. Micawber, striking himself on
the breast, 'it shall first pass through this body!'

Mr. Micawber, 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, long accustomed to live out of the confines of
civilization, and about to return to his native wilds.

He had provided himself, among other things, with a complete suit of
oilskin, and a straw hat with a very low crown, pitched or caulked 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. Peggotty. His whole family, if I may so express it,
were cleared for action. I found Mrs. Micawber 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 tied up, when my aunt first received
me) like a bundle, and was secured behind at the waist, in a strong
knot. Miss Micawber I found made snug for stormy weather, in the same
manner; with nothing superfluous about her. Master Micawber 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. Micawber and his eldest son wore their sleeves loosely
turned back at the wrists, as being ready to lend a hand in any
direction, and to 'tumble up', or sing out, 'Yeo--Heave--Yeo!' on the
shortest notice.

Thus Traddles 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 had told Traddles 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. Micawber aside, and
received his promise.

The Micawber family were lodged in a little, dirty, tumble-down
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 about 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. Peggotty 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.
Peggotty, when Mr. Micawber brought him in, that I had given the letter,
and 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. Micawber?' asked my aunt.

Mr. Micawber 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 tomorrow morning.'

'Heyday!' said my aunt, 'that's soon. Is it a sea-going fact, Mr.
Peggotty?' ''Tis so, ma'am. She'll drop down the river with that theer
tide. If Mas'r Davy and my sister comes aboard at Gravesen', arternoon
o' 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. Micawber, with a
glance of intelligence at me, 'Mr. Peggotty and myself will constantly
keep a double look-out together, on our goods and chattels. Emma, my
love,' said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat in his magnificent way,
'my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles is so obliging as to solicit, in my ear,
that he should have the privilege of ordering the ingredients necessary
to the composition of a moderate 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 Wickfield,
but-'

'I can only say for myself,' said my aunt, 'that I will drink all
happiness and success to you, Mr. Micawber, with the utmost pleasure.'

'And I too!' said Agnes, with a smile.

Mr. Micawber immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to be
quite at home; and in due time 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. Micawber 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. Micawber, instead of helping Mrs. Micawber 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, served it out to them in a
series of villainous 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. Micawber, with an intense
satisfaction in their renouncement, '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. Micawber was wanted downstairs.

'I have a presentiment,' said Mrs. Micawber, setting down her tin pot,
'that it is a member of my family!'

'If so, my dear,' observed Mr. Micawber, 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.'

'Micawber,' said his wife, in a low tone, 'at such a time as this--'

'"It is not meet,"' said Mr. Micawber, rising, '"that every nice offence
should bear its comment!" Emma, I stand reproved.'

'The loss, Micawber,' observed his wife, 'has been my family's, not
yours. If my family are at length sensible of the deprivation to which
their own conduct 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, Micawber,' 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. Micawber withdrew, and was absent some little time; in the course of
which Mrs. Micawber was not wholly free from an apprehension that words
might 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, 'Heep v. Micawber'. From this document, I learned
that Mr. Micawber 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. Micawber sitting in a corner, looking darkly at
the Sheriff 's Officer who had effected 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 halfpenny 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 it had 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 ciphering-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 with compound 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. Micawber, pensively shaking her
head, 'that my family will appear on board, before we finally depart.'

Mr. Micawber evidently had his presentiment on the subject too, but he
put it in his tin pot and swallowed it.

'If you have any opportunity of sending letters home, on your passage,
Mrs. Micawber,' said my aunt, 'you must let us hear from you, you know.'

'My dear Miss Trotwood,' she replied, 'I shall 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 receive 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.
Micawber. '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. Micawber, trifling with his eye-glass, 'merely
crossing. The distance is quite imaginary.'

I think, now, how odd it was, but how wonderfully like Mr. Micawber,
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. Micawber, 'occasionally
to spin them a yarn; and the melody of my son Wilkins will, I trust,
be acceptable at the galley-fire. When Mrs. Micawber 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 athwart our
Bows; and, either on the starboard or the larboard quarter, objects of
interest will be continually descried. In short,' said Mr. Micawber,
with the old genteel air, 'the probability is, all will be found so
exciting, alow and aloft, that when the lookout, stationed in the
main-top, cries Land-oh! 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, and had passed a first-class examination before the
highest naval authorities.

'What I chiefly hope, my dear Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber,
'is, that in some branches of our family we may live again in the old
country. Do not frown, Micawber! I do not now refer to my own family,
but to our children's children. However vigorous the sapling,' said Mrs.
Micawber, shaking her head, 'I cannot forget the parent-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. Micawber, '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.'

'Micawber,' returned Mrs. Micawber, 'there, you are wrong. You are going
out, Micawber, to this distant clime, to strengthen, not to weaken, the
connexion between yourself and Albion.'

'The connexion in question, my love,' rejoined Mr. Micawber, 'has not
laid me, I repeat, under that load of personal obligation, that I am at
all sensitive as to the formation of another connexion.'

'Micawber,' returned Mrs. Micawber. 'There, I again say, you are wrong.
You do not know your power, Micawber. It is that which will strengthen,
even in this step you are about to take, the connexion between yourself
and Albion.'

Mr. Micawber sat in his elbow-chair, with his eyebrows raised; half
receiving and half repudiating Mrs. Micawber's views as they were
stated, but very sensible of their foresight.

'My dear Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'I wish Mr. Micawber to
feel his position. It appears to me highly important that Mr. Micawber
should, from the hour of his embarkation, 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. Micawber. 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. Micawber is.
I know the latent power of Mr. Micawber. And therefore I consider it
vitally important that Mr. Micawber 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, Micawber,' she rejoined. 'Not fully. My dear Mr.
Copperfield, Mr. Micawber's is not a common case. Mr. Micawber is going
to a distant country expressly in order that he may be fully understood
and appreciated for the first time. I wish Mr. Micawber to take his
stand upon that vessel's prow, and firmly say, "This country I am
come to conquer! Have you honours? Have you riches? Have you posts of
profitable pecuniary emolument? Let them be brought forward. They are
mine!"'

Mr. Micawber, glancing at us all, seemed to think there was a good deal
in this idea.

'I wish Mr. Micawber, if I make myself understood,' said Mrs. Micawber,
in her argumentative tone, 'to be the Caesar of his own fortunes. That,
my dear Mr. Copperfield, appears to me to be his true position. From
the first moment of this voyage, I wish Mr. Micawber 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.
Produce your reparation. Bring it forward!"'

Mr. Micawber folded his arms in a resolute manner, as if he were then
stationed on the figure-head.

'And doing that,' said Mrs. Micawber, '--feeling his position--am I not
right in saying that Mr. Micawber will strengthen, and not weaken, his
connexion with Britain? An important public character arising in that
hemisphere, shall I be told that its influence will not be felt at home?
Can I be so weak as to imagine that Mr. Micawber, 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 papa, if I were
guilty of such absurd weakness.'

Mrs. Micawber'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. Micawber, 'that I the more wish, that,
at a future period, we may live again on the parent soil. Mr. Micawber
may be--I cannot disguise from myself that the probability is, Mr.
Micawber 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. Micawber, 'it is impossible for me not to be
touched by your affection. I am always willing to defer to your good
sense. What will be--will be. Heaven forbid that I should grudge my
native country any portion of the wealth that may be accumulated by our
descendants!'

'That's well,' said my aunt, nodding towards Mr. Peggotty, 'and I drink
my love to you all, and every blessing and success attend you!'

Mr. Peggotty put down the two children he had been nursing, one on each
knee, to join Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in drinking to all of us in return;
and when he and the Micawbers 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.
Micawber'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. Micawber in a very distressed condition,
sobbing and weeping by a dim candle, that must have made the room look,
from the river, like a miserable light-house.

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 tumble-down 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
Gravesend. We found the ship in the river, surrounded by a crowd
of boats; a favourable wind blowing; the signal for sailing at her
mast-head. I hired 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. Peggotty was waiting for us on deck. He told me that Mr. Micawber
had just now been arrested again (and for the last time) at the suit of
Heep, and that, in compliance with a request I had made to him, he had
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. Micawber's coming out of the
gloom, 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 OSTADE. Among the great beams, bulks, and ringbolts 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 windsail
or a hatchway--were crowded groups of people, making new friendships,
taking leave of one another, talking, 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 disconsolately. From babies who had but a
week or two of life behind them, to crooked old men and women who seemed
to have but a week or two of life before them; and from ploughmen bodily
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 Micawber 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, reminding
me of--Agnes! But in the rapid motion and confusion, and in the
unsettlement of my own thoughts, I lost it again; and only 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 busily arranging
Mr. Peggotty's goods.

'Is there any last wured, Mas'r Davy?' said he. 'Is there any one
forgotten thing afore we 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, he 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. Micawber. She was
looking distractedly about for her family, even then; and her last words
to me were, that she never would desert Mr. Micawber.

We went over the side into our boat, and lay at a little distance, to
see the ship wafted on her course. It was then calm, radiant sunset.
She lay between us, and the red light; and every taper line 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 bulwarks, and there
clustering, for a moment, bare-headed and silent, I never saw.

Silent, only for a moment. As the sails rose to the wind, and the ship
began to move, there 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 and handkerchiefs--and then I saw her!

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
good-bye to me. Aye, Emily, beautiful and drooping, cling to him with
the utmost trust of thy bruised heart; for he has 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 clinging to him, and he holding her, they solemnly passed
away. The night had fallen on the Kentish hills when we were rowed
ashore--and fallen darkly upon me.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Emigrants The travelers bound for Australia meet with those staying behind. They drink and discuss Mr. Micawber's prospects for success in Australia. David does not tell Mr. Peggotty or Little Em'ly of the tragedy in Yarmouth but instead says that all is well. As they are departing, David asks Mr. Peggotty what should be done about Martha. Mr. Peggotty shows David that Martha is sitting with him on the boat to go with them to Australia


prompt:
Chapter: 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 borne it, and it was past. As a man upon a
field of battle will receive a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he is
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, 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 mind 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 travelled 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; sometimes, 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
by-ways of the mountains. If those awful solitudes had spoken to my
heart, I did 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 mountain-side, from which I saw it shining far below, I think some
long-unwonted sense of beauty and tranquillity, 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 some 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 fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the
avalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey
rock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually
blending with the crowning snow. Dotted here and there on the
mountain's-side, 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 along the mountain's-side, 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,
and had 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 augmentation, well knew that I would labour 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 affection
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 had I been an hour ago!
When I heard the voices die away, and saw the quiet evening cloud grow
dim, and all the colours 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, henceforward,
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, a year would have passed 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 neighbourhood, 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, which was
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: and when 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
Traddles, and he arranged for its publication very advantageously for
me; and the tidings of my growing reputation began to reach me from
travellers 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 reproach 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 borne
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 mistaken 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 honour, 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, of my Dora's shadowing 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 happen, 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 endeavoured 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 emigrant 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, but that was past!

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Absence David travels abroad and eventually settles in Switzerland. He mourns the deaths of Dora, Steerforth, and Ham and begins to feel the weight of his sorrows for the first time. David receives a letter from Agnes and reflects how much he loves her. He resolves not to make any decisions about love or marriage until a full year has passed since Dora's death. He decides to try to make himself a better man in the meantime.