--- /dev/null
+DAVID COPPERFIELD
+
+
+By Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+ AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO
+ THE HON. Mr. AND Mrs. RICHARD WATSON,
+ OF ROCKINGHAM, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ I. I Am Born
+ II. I Observe
+ III. I Have a Change
+ IV. I Fall into Disgrace
+ V. I Am Sent Away
+ VI. I Enlarge My Circle of Acquaintance
+ VII. My ‘First Half’ at Salem House
+ VIII. My Holidays. Especially One Happy Afternoon
+ IX. I Have a Memorable Birthday
+ X. I Become Neglected, and Am Provided For
+ XI. I Begin Life on My Own Account, and Don’t Like It
+ XII. Liking Life on My Own Account No Better, I Form a Great Resolution
+ XIII. The Sequel of My Resolution
+ XIV. My Aunt Makes up Her Mind About Me
+ XV. I Make Another Beginning
+ XVI. I Am a New Boy in More Senses Than One
+ XVII. Somebody Turns Up
+ XVIII. A Retrospect
+ XIX. I Look About Me and Make a Discovery
+ XX. Steerforth’s Home
+ XXI. Little Em’ly
+ XXII. Some Old Scenes, and Some New People
+ XXIII. I Corroborate Mr. Dick, and Choose a Profession
+ XXIV. My First Dissipation
+ XXV. Good and Bad Angels
+ XXVI. I Fall into Captivity
+ XXVII. Tommy Traddles
+ XXVIII. Mr. Micawber’s Gauntlet
+ XXIX. I Visit Steerforth at His Home, Again
+ XXX. A Loss
+ XXXI. A Greater Loss
+ XXXII. The Beginning of a Long Journey
+ XXXIII. Blissful
+ XXXIV. My Aunt Astonishes Me
+ XXXV. Depression
+ XXXVI. Enthusiasm
+ XXXVII. A Little Cold Water
+ XXXVIII. A Dissolution of Partnership
+ XXXIX. Wickfield and Heep
+ XL. The Wanderer
+ XLI. Dora’s Aunts
+ XLII. Mischief
+ XLIII. Another Retrospect
+ XLIV. Our Housekeeping
+ XLV. Mr. Dick Fulfils My Aunt’s Predictions
+ XLVI. Intelligence
+ XLVII. Martha
+ XLVIII. Domestic
+ XLIX. I Am Involved in Mystery
+ L. Mr. Peggotty’s Dream Comes True
+ LI. The Beginning of a Longer Journey
+ LII. I Assist at an Explosion
+ LIII. Another Retrospect
+ LIV. Mr. Micawber’s Transactions
+ LV. Tempest
+ LVI. The New Wound, and the Old
+ LVII. The Emigrants
+ LVIII. Absence
+ LIX. Return
+ LX. Agnes
+ LXI. I Am Shown Two Interesting Penitents
+ LXII. A Light Shines on My Way
+ LXIII. A Visitor
+ LXIV. A Last Retrospect
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO 1850 EDITION
+
+
+I do not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this Book, in
+the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the
+composure which this formal heading would seem to require. My interest
+in it, is so recent and strong; and my mind is so divided between
+pleasure and regret--pleasure in the achievement of a long design,
+regret in the separation from many companions--that I am in danger of
+wearying the reader whom I love, with personal confidences, and private
+emotions.
+
+Besides which, all that I could say of the Story, to any purpose, I have
+endeavoured to say in it.
+
+It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know, how sorrowfully
+the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years’ imaginative task; or
+how an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself
+into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain
+are going from him for ever. Yet, I have nothing else to tell; unless,
+indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment still) that no
+one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I have
+believed it in the writing.
+
+Instead of looking back, therefore, I will look forward. I cannot close
+this Volume more agreeably to myself, than with a hopeful glance towards
+the time when I shall again put forth my two green leaves once a month,
+and with a faithful remembrance of the genial sun and showers that have
+fallen on these leaves of David Copperfield, and made me happy.
+
+ London, October, 1850.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE CHARLES DICKENS EDITION
+
+
+I REMARKED in the original Preface to this Book, that I did not find it
+easy to get sufficiently far away from it, in the first sensations of
+having finished it, to refer to it with the composure which this formal
+heading would seem to require. My interest in it was so recent and
+strong, and my mind was so divided between pleasure and regret--pleasure
+in the achievement of a long design, regret in the separation from many
+companions--that I was in danger of wearying the reader with personal
+confidences and private emotions.
+
+Besides which, all that I could have said of the Story to any purpose, I
+had endeavoured to say in it.
+
+It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how sorrowfully the
+pen is laid down at the close of a two-years’ imaginative task; or how
+an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into
+the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going
+from him for ever. Yet, I had nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I
+were to confess (which might be of less moment still), that no one can
+ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in
+the writing.
+
+So true are these avowals at the present day, that I can now only take
+the reader into one confidence more. Of all my books, I like this the
+best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child
+of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I
+love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a
+favourite child. And his name is
+
+DAVID COPPERFIELD.
+
+ 1869
+
+
+
+
+THE PERSONAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE OF DAVID COPPERFIELD THE YOUNGER
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1. I AM BORN
+
+
+
+Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that
+station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my
+life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have
+been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night.
+It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry,
+simultaneously.
+
+In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by
+the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a
+lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility
+of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be
+unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and
+spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to
+all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a
+Friday night.
+
+I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show
+better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified
+by the result. On the second branch of the question, I will only remark,
+that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still
+a baby, I have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of
+having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in
+the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.
+
+I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the
+newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether sea-going
+people were short of money about that time, or were short of faith and
+preferred cork jackets, I don’t know; all I know is, that there was but
+one solitary bidding, and that was from an attorney connected with the
+bill-broking business, who offered two pounds in cash, and the balance
+in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from drowning on any higher
+bargain. Consequently the advertisement was withdrawn at a dead
+loss--for as to sherry, my poor dear mother’s own sherry was in the
+market then--and ten years afterwards, the caul was put up in a raffle
+down in our part of the country, to fifty members at half-a-crown a
+head, the winner to spend five shillings. I was present myself, and I
+remember to have felt quite uncomfortable and confused, at a part of
+myself being disposed of in that way. The caul was won, I recollect, by
+an old lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it
+the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence halfpenny
+short--as it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to
+endeavour without any effect to prove to her. It is a fact which will
+be long remembered as remarkable down there, that she was never drowned,
+but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two. I have understood that it
+was, to the last, her proudest boast, that she never had been on the
+water in her life, except upon a bridge; and that over her tea (to which
+she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation
+at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the presumption to go
+‘meandering’ about the world. It was in vain to represent to her
+that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this
+objectionable practice. She always returned, with greater emphasis and
+with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, ‘Let us
+have no meandering.’
+
+Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.
+
+I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or ‘there by’, as they say in
+Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father’s eyes had closed upon
+the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it. There is
+something strange to me, even now, in the reflection that he never saw
+me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that I have
+of my first childish associations with his white grave-stone in the
+churchyard, and of the indefinable compassion I used to feel for it
+lying out alone there in the dark night, when our little parlour
+was warm and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house
+were--almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes--bolted and locked
+against it.
+
+An aunt of my father’s, and consequently a great-aunt of mine, of whom
+I shall have more to relate by and by, was the principal magnate of our
+family. Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor mother always called
+her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread of this formidable
+personage to mention her at all (which was seldom), had been married
+to a husband younger than herself, who was very handsome, except in the
+sense of the homely adage, ‘handsome is, that handsome does’--for he
+was strongly suspected of having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having
+once, on a disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined
+arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs’ window. These
+evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey to pay him
+off, and effect a separation by mutual consent. He went to India with
+his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in our family, he was
+once seen riding on an elephant, in company with a Baboon; but I think
+it must have been a Baboo--or a Begum. Anyhow, from India tidings of his
+death reached home, within ten years. How they affected my aunt, nobody
+knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name
+again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off,
+established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and
+was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible
+retirement.
+
+My father had once been a favourite of hers, I believe; but she was
+mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground that my mother was ‘a
+wax doll’. She had never seen my mother, but she knew her to be not
+yet twenty. My father and Miss Betsey never met again. He was double
+my mother’s age when he married, and of but a delicate constitution. He
+died a year afterwards, and, as I have said, six months before I came
+into the world.
+
+This was the state of matters, on the afternoon of, what I may be
+excused for calling, that eventful and important Friday. I can make no
+claim therefore to have known, at that time, how matters stood; or to
+have any remembrance, founded on the evidence of my own senses, of what
+follows.
+
+My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, and very low in
+spirits, looking at it through her tears, and desponding heavily about
+herself and the fatherless little stranger, who was already welcomed by
+some grosses of prophetic pins, in a drawer upstairs, to a world not at
+all excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting
+by the fire, that bright, windy March afternoon, very timid and sad, and
+very doubtful of ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her,
+when, lifting her eyes as she dried them, to the window opposite, she
+saw a strange lady coming up the garden.
+
+My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, that it was
+Miss Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady, over the
+garden-fence, and she came walking up to the door with a fell rigidity
+of figure and composure of countenance that could have belonged to
+nobody else.
+
+When she reached the house, she gave another proof of her identity.
+My father had often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like any
+ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and
+looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of her nose against
+the glass to that extent, that my poor dear mother used to say it became
+perfectly flat and white in a moment.
+
+She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced I am
+indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday.
+
+My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in
+the corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the room, slowly and inquiringly,
+began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like a Saracen’s Head
+in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother. Then she made a frown
+and a gesture to my mother, like one who was accustomed to be obeyed, to
+come and open the door. My mother went.
+
+‘Mrs. David Copperfield, I think,’ said Miss Betsey; the emphasis
+referring, perhaps, to my mother’s mourning weeds, and her condition.
+
+‘Yes,’ said my mother, faintly.
+
+‘Miss Trotwood,’ said the visitor. ‘You have heard of her, I dare say?’
+
+My mother answered she had had that pleasure. And she had a disagreeable
+consciousness of not appearing to imply that it had been an overpowering
+pleasure.
+
+‘Now you see her,’ said Miss Betsey. My mother bent her head, and begged
+her to walk in.
+
+They went into the parlour my mother had come from, the fire in the best
+room on the other side of the passage not being lighted--not having
+been lighted, indeed, since my father’s funeral; and when they were both
+seated, and Miss Betsey said nothing, my mother, after vainly trying to
+restrain herself, began to cry. ‘Oh tut, tut, tut!’ said Miss Betsey, in
+a hurry. ‘Don’t do that! Come, come!’
+
+My mother couldn’t help it notwithstanding, so she cried until she had
+had her cry out.
+
+‘Take off your cap, child,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and let me see you.’
+
+My mother was too much afraid of her to refuse compliance with this odd
+request, if she had any disposition to do so. Therefore she did as she
+was told, and did it with such nervous hands that her hair (which was
+luxuriant and beautiful) fell all about her face.
+
+‘Why, bless my heart!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey. ‘You are a very Baby!’
+
+My mother was, no doubt, unusually youthful in appearance even for her
+years; she hung her head, as if it were her fault, poor thing, and said,
+sobbing, that indeed she was afraid she was but a childish widow, and
+would be but a childish mother if she lived. In a short pause which
+ensued, she had a fancy that she felt Miss Betsey touch her hair, and
+that with no ungentle hand; but, looking at her, in her timid hope, she
+found that lady sitting with the skirt of her dress tucked up, her hands
+folded on one knee, and her feet upon the fender, frowning at the fire.
+
+‘In the name of Heaven,’ said Miss Betsey, suddenly, ‘why Rookery?’
+
+‘Do you mean the house, ma’am?’ asked my mother.
+
+‘Why Rookery?’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Cookery would have been more to the
+purpose, if you had had any practical ideas of life, either of you.’
+
+‘The name was Mr. Copperfield’s choice,’ returned my mother. ‘When he
+bought the house, he liked to think that there were rooks about it.’
+
+The evening wind made such a disturbance just now, among some tall old
+elm-trees at the bottom of the garden, that neither my mother nor Miss
+Betsey could forbear glancing that way. As the elms bent to one another,
+like giants who were whispering secrets, and after a few seconds of such
+repose, fell into a violent flurry, tossing their wild arms about, as if
+their late confidences were really too wicked for their peace of mind,
+some weatherbeaten ragged old rooks’-nests, burdening their higher
+branches, swung like wrecks upon a stormy sea.
+
+‘Where are the birds?’ asked Miss Betsey.
+
+‘The--?’ My mother had been thinking of something else.
+
+‘The rooks--what has become of them?’ asked Miss Betsey.
+
+‘There have not been any since we have lived here,’ said my mother. ‘We
+thought--Mr. Copperfield thought--it was quite a large rookery; but
+the nests were very old ones, and the birds have deserted them a long
+while.’
+
+‘David Copperfield all over!’ cried Miss Betsey. ‘David Copperfield from
+head to foot! Calls a house a rookery when there’s not a rook near it,
+and takes the birds on trust, because he sees the nests!’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned my mother, ‘is dead, and if you dare to
+speak unkindly of him to me--’
+
+My poor dear mother, I suppose, had some momentary intention of
+committing an assault and battery upon my aunt, who could easily have
+settled her with one hand, even if my mother had been in far better
+training for such an encounter than she was that evening. But it passed
+with the action of rising from her chair; and she sat down again very
+meekly, and fainted.
+
+When she came to herself, or when Miss Betsey had restored her,
+whichever it was, she found the latter standing at the window. The
+twilight was by this time shading down into darkness; and dimly as they
+saw each other, they could not have done that without the aid of the
+fire.
+
+‘Well?’ said Miss Betsey, coming back to her chair, as if she had only
+been taking a casual look at the prospect; ‘and when do you expect--’
+
+‘I am all in a tremble,’ faltered my mother. ‘I don’t know what’s the
+matter. I shall die, I am sure!’
+
+‘No, no, no,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Have some tea.’
+
+‘Oh dear me, dear me, do you think it will do me any good?’ cried my
+mother in a helpless manner.
+
+‘Of course it will,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘It’s nothing but fancy. What do
+you call your girl?’
+
+‘I don’t know that it will be a girl, yet, ma’am,’ said my mother
+innocently.
+
+‘Bless the Baby!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, unconsciously quoting the
+second sentiment of the pincushion in the drawer upstairs, but
+applying it to my mother instead of me, ‘I don’t mean that. I mean your
+servant-girl.’
+
+‘Peggotty,’ said my mother.
+
+‘Peggotty!’ repeated Miss Betsey, with some indignation. ‘Do you mean to
+say, child, that any human being has gone into a Christian church,
+and got herself named Peggotty?’ ‘It’s her surname,’ said my mother,
+faintly. ‘Mr. Copperfield called her by it, because her Christian name
+was the same as mine.’
+
+‘Here! Peggotty!’ cried Miss Betsey, opening the parlour door. ‘Tea.
+Your mistress is a little unwell. Don’t dawdle.’
+
+Having issued this mandate with as much potentiality as if she had been
+a recognized authority in the house ever since it had been a house,
+and having looked out to confront the amazed Peggotty coming along the
+passage with a candle at the sound of a strange voice, Miss Betsey shut
+the door again, and sat down as before: with her feet on the fender, the
+skirt of her dress tucked up, and her hands folded on one knee.
+
+‘You were speaking about its being a girl,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘I have no
+doubt it will be a girl. I have a presentiment that it must be a girl.
+Now child, from the moment of the birth of this girl--’
+
+‘Perhaps boy,’ my mother took the liberty of putting in.
+
+‘I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl,’ returned Miss
+Betsey. ‘Don’t contradict. From the moment of this girl’s birth, child,
+I intend to be her friend. I intend to be her godmother, and I beg
+you’ll call her Betsey Trotwood Copperfield. There must be no mistakes
+in life with THIS Betsey Trotwood. There must be no trifling with HER
+affections, poor dear. She must be well brought up, and well guarded
+from reposing any foolish confidences where they are not deserved. I
+must make that MY care.’
+
+There was a twitch of Miss Betsey’s head, after each of these sentences,
+as if her own old wrongs were working within her, and she repressed any
+plainer reference to them by strong constraint. So my mother suspected,
+at least, as she observed her by the low glimmer of the fire: too
+much scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in herself, and too subdued and
+bewildered altogether, to observe anything very clearly, or to know what
+to say.
+
+‘And was David good to you, child?’ asked Miss Betsey, when she had been
+silent for a little while, and these motions of her head had gradually
+ceased. ‘Were you comfortable together?’
+
+‘We were very happy,’ said my mother. ‘Mr. Copperfield was only too good
+to me.’
+
+‘What, he spoilt you, I suppose?’ returned Miss Betsey.
+
+‘For being quite alone and dependent on myself in this rough world
+again, yes, I fear he did indeed,’ sobbed my mother.
+
+‘Well! Don’t cry!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘You were not equally matched,
+child--if any two people can be equally matched--and so I asked the
+question. You were an orphan, weren’t you?’ ‘Yes.’
+
+‘And a governess?’
+
+‘I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield came to
+visit. Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, and took a great deal of
+notice of me, and paid me a good deal of attention, and at last proposed
+to me. And I accepted him. And so we were married,’ said my mother
+simply.
+
+‘Ha! Poor Baby!’ mused Miss Betsey, with her frown still bent upon the
+fire. ‘Do you know anything?’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ faltered my mother.
+
+‘About keeping house, for instance,’ said Miss Betsey.
+
+‘Not much, I fear,’ returned my mother. ‘Not so much as I could wish.
+But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me--’
+
+[‘Much he knew about it himself!’) said Miss Betsey in a parenthesis.
+--‘And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious to learn, and
+he very patient to teach me, if the great misfortune of his death’--my
+mother broke down again here, and could get no farther.
+
+‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. --‘I kept my housekeeping-book
+regularly, and balanced it with Mr. Copperfield every night,’ cried my
+mother in another burst of distress, and breaking down again.
+
+‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t cry any more.’ --‘And I am
+sure we never had a word of difference respecting it, except when Mr.
+Copperfield objected to my threes and fives being too much like each
+other, or to my putting curly tails to my sevens and nines,’ resumed my
+mother in another burst, and breaking down again.
+
+‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and you know that will
+not be good either for you or for my god-daughter. Come! You mustn’t do
+it!’
+
+This argument had some share in quieting my mother, though her
+increasing indisposition had a larger one. There was an interval of
+silence, only broken by Miss Betsey’s occasionally ejaculating ‘Ha!’ as
+she sat with her feet upon the fender.
+
+‘David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I know,’ said
+she, by and by. ‘What did he do for you?’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said my mother, answering with some difficulty, ‘was
+so considerate and good as to secure the reversion of a part of it to
+me.’
+
+‘How much?’ asked Miss Betsey.
+
+‘A hundred and five pounds a year,’ said my mother.
+
+‘He might have done worse,’ said my aunt.
+
+The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so much worse
+that Peggotty, coming in with the teaboard and candles, and seeing at a
+glance how ill she was,--as Miss Betsey might have done sooner if there
+had been light enough,--conveyed her upstairs to her own room with all
+speed; and immediately dispatched Ham Peggotty, her nephew, who had been
+for some days past secreted in the house, unknown to my mother, as a
+special messenger in case of emergency, to fetch the nurse and doctor.
+
+Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when they arrived
+within a few minutes of each other, to find an unknown lady of
+portentous appearance, sitting before the fire, with her bonnet tied
+over her left arm, stopping her ears with jewellers’ cotton. Peggotty
+knowing nothing about her, and my mother saying nothing about her,
+she was quite a mystery in the parlour; and the fact of her having a
+magazine of jewellers’ cotton in her pocket, and sticking the article
+in her ears in that way, did not detract from the solemnity of her
+presence.
+
+The doctor having been upstairs and come down again, and having
+satisfied himself, I suppose, that there was a probability of this
+unknown lady and himself having to sit there, face to face, for some
+hours, laid himself out to be polite and social. He was the meekest of
+his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to
+take up the less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet,
+and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest
+depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody
+else. It is nothing to say that he hadn’t a word to throw at a dog. He
+couldn’t have thrown a word at a mad dog. He might have offered him one
+gently, or half a one, or a fragment of one; for he spoke as slowly as
+he walked; but he wouldn’t have been rude to him, and he couldn’t have
+been quick with him, for any earthly consideration.
+
+Mr. Chillip, looking mildly at my aunt with his head on one side, and
+making her a little bow, said, in allusion to the jewellers’ cotton, as
+he softly touched his left ear:
+
+‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’
+
+‘What!’ replied my aunt, pulling the cotton out of one ear like a cork.
+
+Mr. Chillip was so alarmed by her abruptness--as he told my mother
+afterwards--that it was a mercy he didn’t lose his presence of mind. But
+he repeated sweetly:
+
+‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’
+
+‘Nonsense!’ replied my aunt, and corked herself again, at one blow.
+
+Mr. Chillip could do nothing after this, but sit and look at her feebly,
+as she sat and looked at the fire, until he was called upstairs again.
+After some quarter of an hour’s absence, he returned.
+
+‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking the cotton out of the ear nearest to him.
+
+‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are--we are progressing slowly,
+ma’am.’
+
+‘Ba--a--ah!’ said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the contemptuous
+interjection. And corked herself as before.
+
+Really--really--as Mr. Chillip told my mother, he was almost shocked;
+speaking in a professional point of view alone, he was almost shocked.
+But he sat and looked at her, notwithstanding, for nearly two hours,
+as she sat looking at the fire, until he was again called out. After
+another absence, he again returned.
+
+‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking out the cotton on that side again.
+
+‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are--we are progressing slowly,
+ma’am.’
+
+‘Ya--a--ah!’ said my aunt. With such a snarl at him, that Mr. Chillip
+absolutely could not bear it. It was really calculated to break his
+spirit, he said afterwards. He preferred to go and sit upon the stairs,
+in the dark and a strong draught, until he was again sent for.
+
+Ham Peggotty, who went to the national school, and was a very dragon at
+his catechism, and who may therefore be regarded as a credible witness,
+reported next day, that happening to peep in at the parlour-door an hour
+after this, he was instantly descried by Miss Betsey, then walking to
+and fro in a state of agitation, and pounced upon before he could make
+his escape. That there were now occasional sounds of feet and voices
+overhead which he inferred the cotton did not exclude, from the
+circumstance of his evidently being clutched by the lady as a victim on
+whom to expend her superabundant agitation when the sounds were loudest.
+That, marching him constantly up and down by the collar (as if he had
+been taking too much laudanum), she, at those times, shook him, rumpled
+his hair, made light of his linen, stopped his ears as if she confounded
+them with her own, and otherwise tousled and maltreated him. This was
+in part confirmed by his aunt, who saw him at half past twelve o’clock,
+soon after his release, and affirmed that he was then as red as I was.
+
+The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at such a time, if
+at any time. He sidled into the parlour as soon as he was at liberty,
+and said to my aunt in his meekest manner:
+
+‘Well, ma’am, I am happy to congratulate you.’
+
+‘What upon?’ said my aunt, sharply.
+
+Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity of my aunt’s
+manner; so he made her a little bow and gave her a little smile, to
+mollify her.
+
+‘Mercy on the man, what’s he doing!’ cried my aunt, impatiently. ‘Can’t
+he speak?’
+
+‘Be calm, my dear ma’am,’ said Mr. Chillip, in his softest accents.
+
+‘There is no longer any occasion for uneasiness, ma’am. Be calm.’
+
+It has since been considered almost a miracle that my aunt didn’t shake
+him, and shake what he had to say, out of him. She only shook her own
+head at him, but in a way that made him quail.
+
+‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had courage, ‘I am
+happy to congratulate you. All is now over, ma’am, and well over.’
+
+During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the delivery
+of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.
+
+‘How is she?’ said my aunt, folding her arms with her bonnet still tied
+on one of them.
+
+‘Well, ma’am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope,’ returned Mr.
+Chillip. ‘Quite as comfortable as we can expect a young mother to be,
+under these melancholy domestic circumstances. There cannot be any
+objection to your seeing her presently, ma’am. It may do her good.’
+
+‘And SHE. How is SHE?’ said my aunt, sharply.
+
+Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and looked at my
+aunt like an amiable bird.
+
+‘The baby,’ said my aunt. ‘How is she?’
+
+‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘I apprehended you had known. It’s a
+boy.’
+
+My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the
+manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip’s head with it, put it on
+bent, walked out, and never came back. She vanished like a discontented
+fairy; or like one of those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly
+supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any more.
+
+No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey
+Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of dreams and shadows, the
+tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled; and the light upon
+the window of our room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such
+travellers, and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once was he,
+without whom I had never been.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2. I OBSERVE
+
+
+The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look
+far back, into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her pretty
+hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at all, and eyes so
+dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face,
+and cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wondered the birds didn’t
+peck her in preference to apples.
+
+I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart, dwarfed
+to my sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and I going
+unsteadily from the one to the other. I have an impression on my mind
+which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of the touch of
+Peggotty’s forefinger as she used to hold it out to me, and of its being
+roughened by needlework, like a pocket nutmeg-grater.
+
+This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go
+farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe
+the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite
+wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most
+grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety
+be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the
+rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness,
+and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an
+inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.
+
+I might have a misgiving that I am ‘meandering’ in stopping to say this,
+but that it brings me to remark that I build these conclusions, in part
+upon my own experience of myself; and if it should appear from
+anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close
+observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I
+undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics.
+
+Looking back, as I was saying, into the blank of my infancy, the first
+objects I can remember as standing out by themselves from a confusion of
+things, are my mother and Peggotty. What else do I remember? Let me see.
+
+
+There comes out of the cloud, our house--not new to me, but quite
+familiar, in its earliest remembrance. On the ground-floor is Peggotty’s
+kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house on a pole, in
+the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog-kennel in a corner,
+without any dog; and a quantity of fowls that look terribly tall to me,
+walking about, in a menacing and ferocious manner. There is one cock who
+gets upon a post to crow, and seems to take particular notice of me as
+I look at him through the kitchen window, who makes me shiver, he is so
+fierce. Of the geese outside the side-gate who come waddling after
+me with their long necks stretched out when I go that way, I dream at
+night: as a man environed by wild beasts might dream of lions.
+
+Here is a long passage--what an enormous perspective I make of
+it!--leading from Peggotty’s kitchen to the front door. A dark
+store-room opens out of it, and that is a place to be run past at
+night; for I don’t know what may be among those tubs and jars and old
+tea-chests, when there is nobody in there with a dimly-burning light,
+letting a mouldy air come out of the door, in which there is the smell
+of soap, pickles, pepper, candles, and coffee, all at one whiff. Then
+there are the two parlours: the parlour in which we sit of an evening,
+my mother and I and Peggotty--for Peggotty is quite our companion, when
+her work is done and we are alone--and the best parlour where we sit
+on a Sunday; grandly, but not so comfortably. There is something of a
+doleful air about that room to me, for Peggotty has told me--I don’t
+know when, but apparently ages ago--about my father’s funeral, and the
+company having their black cloaks put on. One Sunday night my mother
+reads to Peggotty and me in there, how Lazarus was raised up from the
+dead. And I am so frightened that they are afterwards obliged to take me
+out of bed, and show me the quiet churchyard out of the bedroom window,
+with the dead all lying in their graves at rest, below the solemn moon.
+
+There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the grass of
+that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees; nothing half so
+quiet as its tombstones. The sheep are feeding there, when I kneel up,
+early in the morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother’s
+room, to look out at it; and I see the red light shining on the
+sun-dial, and think within myself, ‘Is the sun-dial glad, I wonder, that
+it can tell the time again?’
+
+Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed pew! With a window
+near it, out of which our house can be seen, and IS seen many times
+during the morning’s service, by Peggotty, who likes to make herself
+as sure as she can that it’s not being robbed, or is not in flames. But
+though Peggotty’s eye wanders, she is much offended if mine does,
+and frowns to me, as I stand upon the seat, that I am to look at the
+clergyman. But I can’t always look at him--I know him without that white
+thing on, and I am afraid of his wondering why I stare so, and perhaps
+stopping the service to inquire--and what am I to do? It’s a dreadful
+thing to gape, but I must do something. I look at my mother, but she
+pretends not to see me. I look at a boy in the aisle, and he makes faces
+at me. I look at the sunlight coming in at the open door through
+the porch, and there I see a stray sheep--I don’t mean a sinner, but
+mutton--half making up his mind to come into the church. I feel that
+if I looked at him any longer, I might be tempted to say something out
+loud; and what would become of me then! I look up at the monumental
+tablets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. Bodgers late of this
+parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. Bodgers must have been, when
+affliction sore, long time Mr. Bodgers bore, and physicians were in
+vain. I wonder whether they called in Mr. Chillip, and he was in vain;
+and if so, how he likes to be reminded of it once a week. I look from
+Mr. Chillip, in his Sunday neckcloth, to the pulpit; and think what a
+good place it would be to play in, and what a castle it would make, with
+another boy coming up the stairs to attack it, and having the velvet
+cushion with the tassels thrown down on his head. In time my eyes
+gradually shut up; and, from seeming to hear the clergyman singing a
+drowsy song in the heat, I hear nothing, until I fall off the seat with
+a crash, and am taken out, more dead than alive, by Peggotty.
+
+And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed
+bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and the
+ragged old rooks’-nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the bottom
+of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back, beyond the
+yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are--a very preserve
+of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate and
+padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than
+fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my
+mother gathers some in a basket, while I stand by, bolting furtive
+gooseberries, and trying to look unmoved. A great wind rises, and the
+summer is gone in a moment. We are playing in the winter twilight,
+dancing about the parlour. When my mother is out of breath and rests
+herself in an elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round
+her fingers, and straitening her waist, and nobody knows better than I
+do that she likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.
+
+That is among my very earliest impressions. That, and a sense that we
+were both a little afraid of Peggotty, and submitted ourselves in most
+things to her direction, were among the first opinions--if they may be
+so called--that I ever derived from what I saw.
+
+Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour fire, alone. I
+had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must have read very
+perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply interested, for I
+remember she had a cloudy impression, after I had done, that they were
+a sort of vegetable. I was tired of reading, and dead sleepy; but
+having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until my mother came home from
+spending the evening at a neighbour’s, I would rather have died upon
+my post (of course) than have gone to bed. I had reached that stage of
+sleepiness when Peggotty seemed to swell and grow immensely large.
+I propped my eyelids open with my two forefingers, and looked
+perseveringly at her as she sat at work; at the little bit of wax-candle
+she kept for her thread--how old it looked, being so wrinkled in
+all directions!--at the little house with a thatched roof, where the
+yard-measure lived; at her work-box with a sliding lid, with a view of
+St. Paul’s Cathedral (with a pink dome) painted on the top; at the brass
+thimble on her finger; at herself, whom I thought lovely. I felt so
+sleepy, that I knew if I lost sight of anything for a moment, I was
+gone.
+
+‘Peggotty,’ says I, suddenly, ‘were you ever married?’
+
+‘Lord, Master Davy,’ replied Peggotty. ‘What’s put marriage in your
+head?’
+
+She answered with such a start, that it quite awoke me. And then she
+stopped in her work, and looked at me, with her needle drawn out to its
+thread’s length.
+
+‘But WERE you ever married, Peggotty?’ says I. ‘You are a very handsome
+woman, an’t you?’
+
+I thought her in a different style from my mother, certainly; but of
+another school of beauty, I considered her a perfect example. There
+was a red velvet footstool in the best parlour, on which my mother
+had painted a nosegay. The ground-work of that stool, and Peggotty’s
+complexion appeared to me to be one and the same thing. The stool was
+smooth, and Peggotty was rough, but that made no difference.
+
+‘Me handsome, Davy!’ said Peggotty. ‘Lawk, no, my dear! But what put
+marriage in your head?’
+
+‘I don’t know!--You mustn’t marry more than one person at a time, may
+you, Peggotty?’
+
+‘Certainly not,’ says Peggotty, with the promptest decision.
+
+‘But if you marry a person, and the person dies, why then you may marry
+another person, mayn’t you, Peggotty?’
+
+‘YOU MAY,’ says Peggotty, ‘if you choose, my dear. That’s a matter of
+opinion.’
+
+‘But what is your opinion, Peggotty?’ said I.
+
+I asked her, and looked curiously at her, because she looked so
+curiously at me.
+
+‘My opinion is,’ said Peggotty, taking her eyes from me, after a little
+indecision and going on with her work, ‘that I never was married myself,
+Master Davy, and that I don’t expect to be. That’s all I know about the
+subject.’
+
+‘You an’t cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you?’ said I, after sitting
+quiet for a minute.
+
+I really thought she was, she had been so short with me; but I was quite
+mistaken: for she laid aside her work (which was a stocking of her own),
+and opening her arms wide, took my curly head within them, and gave it
+a good squeeze. I know it was a good squeeze, because, being very plump,
+whenever she made any little exertion after she was dressed, some of the
+buttons on the back of her gown flew off. And I recollect two bursting
+to the opposite side of the parlour, while she was hugging me.
+
+‘Now let me hear some more about the Crorkindills,’ said Peggotty, who
+was not quite right in the name yet, ‘for I an’t heard half enough.’
+
+I couldn’t quite understand why Peggotty looked so queer, or why she
+was so ready to go back to the crocodiles. However, we returned to those
+monsters, with fresh wakefulness on my part, and we left their eggs in
+the sand for the sun to hatch; and we ran away from them, and baffled
+them by constantly turning, which they were unable to do quickly, on
+account of their unwieldy make; and we went into the water after them,
+as natives, and put sharp pieces of timber down their throats; and in
+short we ran the whole crocodile gauntlet. I did, at least; but I had
+my doubts of Peggotty, who was thoughtfully sticking her needle into
+various parts of her face and arms, all the time.
+
+We had exhausted the crocodiles, and begun with the alligators, when
+the garden-bell rang. We went out to the door; and there was my mother,
+looking unusually pretty, I thought, and with her a gentleman with
+beautiful black hair and whiskers, who had walked home with us from
+church last Sunday.
+
+As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her arms and
+kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged little fellow
+than a monarch--or something like that; for my later understanding
+comes, I am sensible, to my aid here.
+
+‘What does that mean?’ I asked him, over her shoulder.
+
+He patted me on the head; but somehow, I didn’t like him or his deep
+voice, and I was jealous that his hand should touch my mother’s in
+touching me--which it did. I put it away, as well as I could.
+
+‘Oh, Davy!’ remonstrated my mother.
+
+‘Dear boy!’ said the gentleman. ‘I cannot wonder at his devotion!’
+
+I never saw such a beautiful colour on my mother’s face before. She
+gently chid me for being rude; and, keeping me close to her shawl,
+turned to thank the gentleman for taking so much trouble as to bring her
+home. She put out her hand to him as she spoke, and, as he met it with
+his own, she glanced, I thought, at me.
+
+‘Let us say “good night”, my fine boy,’ said the gentleman, when he had
+bent his head--I saw him!--over my mother’s little glove.
+
+‘Good night!’ said I.
+
+‘Come! Let us be the best friends in the world!’ said the gentleman,
+laughing. ‘Shake hands!’
+
+My right hand was in my mother’s left, so I gave him the other.
+
+‘Why, that’s the Wrong hand, Davy!’ laughed the gentleman.
+
+My mother drew my right hand forward, but I was resolved, for my former
+reason, not to give it him, and I did not. I gave him the other, and he
+shook it heartily, and said I was a brave fellow, and went away.
+
+At this minute I see him turn round in the garden, and give us a last
+look with his ill-omened black eyes, before the door was shut.
+
+Peggotty, who had not said a word or moved a finger, secured the
+fastenings instantly, and we all went into the parlour. My mother,
+contrary to her usual habit, instead of coming to the elbow-chair by the
+fire, remained at the other end of the room, and sat singing to herself.
+--‘Hope you have had a pleasant evening, ma’am,’ said Peggotty, standing
+as stiff as a barrel in the centre of the room, with a candlestick in
+her hand.
+
+‘Much obliged to you, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, in a cheerful
+voice, ‘I have had a VERY pleasant evening.’
+
+‘A stranger or so makes an agreeable change,’ suggested Peggotty.
+
+‘A very agreeable change, indeed,’ returned my mother.
+
+Peggotty continuing to stand motionless in the middle of the room, and
+my mother resuming her singing, I fell asleep, though I was not so sound
+asleep but that I could hear voices, without hearing what they said.
+When I half awoke from this uncomfortable doze, I found Peggotty and my
+mother both in tears, and both talking.
+
+‘Not such a one as this, Mr. Copperfield wouldn’t have liked,’ said
+Peggotty. ‘That I say, and that I swear!’
+
+‘Good Heavens!’ cried my mother, ‘you’ll drive me mad! Was ever any
+poor girl so ill-used by her servants as I am! Why do I do myself
+the injustice of calling myself a girl? Have I never been married,
+Peggotty?’
+
+‘God knows you have, ma’am,’ returned Peggotty. ‘Then, how can you
+dare,’ said my mother--‘you know I don’t mean how can you dare,
+Peggotty, but how can you have the heart--to make me so uncomfortable
+and say such bitter things to me, when you are well aware that I
+haven’t, out of this place, a single friend to turn to?’
+
+‘The more’s the reason,’ returned Peggotty, ‘for saying that it won’t
+do. No! That it won’t do. No! No price could make it do. No!’--I thought
+Peggotty would have thrown the candlestick away, she was so emphatic
+with it.
+
+‘How can you be so aggravating,’ said my mother, shedding more tears
+than before, ‘as to talk in such an unjust manner! How can you go on as
+if it was all settled and arranged, Peggotty, when I tell you over
+and over again, you cruel thing, that beyond the commonest civilities
+nothing has passed! You talk of admiration. What am I to do? If people
+are so silly as to indulge the sentiment, is it my fault? What am I to
+do, I ask you? Would you wish me to shave my head and black my face, or
+disfigure myself with a burn, or a scald, or something of that sort? I
+dare say you would, Peggotty. I dare say you’d quite enjoy it.’
+
+Peggotty seemed to take this aspersion very much to heart, I thought.
+
+‘And my dear boy,’ cried my mother, coming to the elbow-chair in which
+I was, and caressing me, ‘my own little Davy! Is it to be hinted to me
+that I am wanting in affection for my precious treasure, the dearest
+little fellow that ever was!’
+
+‘Nobody never went and hinted no such a thing,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘You did, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘You know you did. What else
+was it possible to infer from what you said, you unkind creature,
+when you know as well as I do, that on his account only last quarter I
+wouldn’t buy myself a new parasol, though that old green one is frayed
+the whole way up, and the fringe is perfectly mangy? You know it is,
+Peggotty. You can’t deny it.’ Then, turning affectionately to me, with
+her cheek against mine, ‘Am I a naughty mama to you, Davy? Am I a nasty,
+cruel, selfish, bad mama? Say I am, my child; say “yes”, dear boy, and
+Peggotty will love you; and Peggotty’s love is a great deal better than
+mine, Davy. I don’t love you at all, do I?’
+
+At this, we all fell a-crying together. I think I was the loudest of
+the party, but I am sure we were all sincere about it. I was quite
+heart-broken myself, and am afraid that in the first transports of
+wounded tenderness I called Peggotty a ‘Beast’. That honest creature was
+in deep affliction, I remember, and must have become quite buttonless
+on the occasion; for a little volley of those explosives went off,
+when, after having made it up with my mother, she kneeled down by the
+elbow-chair, and made it up with me.
+
+We went to bed greatly dejected. My sobs kept waking me, for a long
+time; and when one very strong sob quite hoisted me up in bed, I found
+my mother sitting on the coverlet, and leaning over me. I fell asleep in
+her arms, after that, and slept soundly.
+
+Whether it was the following Sunday when I saw the gentleman again,
+or whether there was any greater lapse of time before he reappeared,
+I cannot recall. I don’t profess to be clear about dates. But there he
+was, in church, and he walked home with us afterwards. He came in, too,
+to look at a famous geranium we had, in the parlour-window. It did not
+appear to me that he took much notice of it, but before he went he asked
+my mother to give him a bit of the blossom. She begged him to choose it
+for himself, but he refused to do that--I could not understand why--so
+she plucked it for him, and gave it into his hand. He said he would
+never, never part with it any more; and I thought he must be quite a
+fool not to know that it would fall to pieces in a day or two.
+
+Peggotty began to be less with us, of an evening, than she had always
+been. My mother deferred to her very much--more than usual, it occurred
+to me--and we were all three excellent friends; still we were different
+from what we used to be, and were not so comfortable among ourselves.
+Sometimes I fancied that Peggotty perhaps objected to my mother’s
+wearing all the pretty dresses she had in her drawers, or to her
+going so often to visit at that neighbour’s; but I couldn’t, to my
+satisfaction, make out how it was.
+
+Gradually, I became used to seeing the gentleman with the black
+whiskers. I liked him no better than at first, and had the same uneasy
+jealousy of him; but if I had any reason for it beyond a child’s
+instinctive dislike, and a general idea that Peggotty and I could make
+much of my mother without any help, it certainly was not THE reason that
+I might have found if I had been older. No such thing came into my mind,
+or near it. I could observe, in little pieces, as it were; but as to
+making a net of a number of these pieces, and catching anybody in it,
+that was, as yet, beyond me.
+
+One autumn morning I was with my mother in the front garden, when Mr.
+Murdstone--I knew him by that name now--came by, on horseback. He reined
+up his horse to salute my mother, and said he was going to Lowestoft to
+see some friends who were there with a yacht, and merrily proposed to
+take me on the saddle before him if I would like the ride.
+
+The air was so clear and pleasant, and the horse seemed to like the
+idea of the ride so much himself, as he stood snorting and pawing at the
+garden-gate, that I had a great desire to go. So I was sent upstairs
+to Peggotty to be made spruce; and in the meantime Mr. Murdstone
+dismounted, and, with his horse’s bridle drawn over his arm, walked
+slowly up and down on the outer side of the sweetbriar fence, while my
+mother walked slowly up and down on the inner to keep him company. I
+recollect Peggotty and I peeping out at them from my little window; I
+recollect how closely they seemed to be examining the sweetbriar between
+them, as they strolled along; and how, from being in a perfectly angelic
+temper, Peggotty turned cross in a moment, and brushed my hair the wrong
+way, excessively hard.
+
+Mr. Murdstone and I were soon off, and trotting along on the green turf
+by the side of the road. He held me quite easily with one arm, and I
+don’t think I was restless usually; but I could not make up my mind to
+sit in front of him without turning my head sometimes, and looking up in
+his face. He had that kind of shallow black eye--I want a better word to
+express an eye that has no depth in it to be looked into--which, when
+it is abstracted, seems from some peculiarity of light to be disfigured,
+for a moment at a time, by a cast. Several times when I glanced at him,
+I observed that appearance with a sort of awe, and wondered what he
+was thinking about so closely. His hair and whiskers were blacker and
+thicker, looked at so near, than even I had given them credit for being.
+A squareness about the lower part of his face, and the dotted indication
+of the strong black beard he shaved close every day, reminded me of
+the wax-work that had travelled into our neighbourhood some half-a-year
+before. This, his regular eyebrows, and the rich white, and black, and
+brown, of his complexion--confound his complexion, and his memory!--made
+me think him, in spite of my misgivings, a very handsome man. I have no
+doubt that my poor dear mother thought him so too.
+
+We went to an hotel by the sea, where two gentlemen were smoking cigars
+in a room by themselves. Each of them was lying on at least four chairs,
+and had a large rough jacket on. In a corner was a heap of coats and
+boat-cloaks, and a flag, all bundled up together.
+
+They both rolled on to their feet in an untidy sort of manner, when we
+came in, and said, ‘Halloa, Murdstone! We thought you were dead!’
+
+‘Not yet,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
+
+‘And who’s this shaver?’ said one of the gentlemen, taking hold of me.
+
+‘That’s Davy,’ returned Mr. Murdstone.
+
+‘Davy who?’ said the gentleman. ‘Jones?’
+
+‘Copperfield,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
+
+‘What! Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield’s encumbrance?’ cried the gentleman.
+‘The pretty little widow?’
+
+‘Quinion,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘take care, if you please. Somebody’s
+sharp.’
+
+‘Who is?’ asked the gentleman, laughing. I looked up, quickly; being
+curious to know.
+
+‘Only Brooks of Sheffield,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
+
+I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield; for,
+at first, I really thought it was I.
+
+There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr.
+Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when he
+was mentioned, and Mr. Murdstone was a good deal amused also. After some
+laughing, the gentleman whom he had called Quinion, said:
+
+‘And what is the opinion of Brooks of Sheffield, in reference to the
+projected business?’
+
+‘Why, I don’t know that Brooks understands much about it at present,’
+replied Mr. Murdstone; ‘but he is not generally favourable, I believe.’
+
+There was more laughter at this, and Mr. Quinion said he would ring the
+bell for some sherry in which to drink to Brooks. This he did; and when
+the wine came, he made me have a little, with a biscuit, and, before
+I drank it, stand up and say, ‘Confusion to Brooks of Sheffield!’ The
+toast was received with great applause, and such hearty laughter that
+it made me laugh too; at which they laughed the more. In short, we quite
+enjoyed ourselves.
+
+We walked about on the cliff after that, and sat on the grass, and
+looked at things through a telescope--I could make out nothing myself
+when it was put to my eye, but I pretended I could--and then we came
+back to the hotel to an early dinner. All the time we were out, the two
+gentlemen smoked incessantly--which, I thought, if I might judge from
+the smell of their rough coats, they must have been doing, ever since
+the coats had first come home from the tailor’s. I must not forget that
+we went on board the yacht, where they all three descended into the
+cabin, and were busy with some papers. I saw them quite hard at work,
+when I looked down through the open skylight. They left me, during this
+time, with a very nice man with a very large head of red hair and a very
+small shiny hat upon it, who had got a cross-barred shirt or waistcoat
+on, with ‘Skylark’ in capital letters across the chest. I thought it was
+his name; and that as he lived on board ship and hadn’t a street door
+to put his name on, he put it there instead; but when I called him Mr.
+Skylark, he said it meant the vessel.
+
+I observed all day that Mr. Murdstone was graver and steadier than the
+two gentlemen. They were very gay and careless. They joked freely with
+one another, but seldom with him. It appeared to me that he was
+more clever and cold than they were, and that they regarded him with
+something of my own feeling. I remarked that, once or twice when Mr.
+Quinion was talking, he looked at Mr. Murdstone sideways, as if to make
+sure of his not being displeased; and that once when Mr. Passnidge (the
+other gentleman) was in high spirits, he trod upon his foot, and gave
+him a secret caution with his eyes, to observe Mr. Murdstone, who was
+sitting stern and silent. Nor do I recollect that Mr. Murdstone laughed
+at all that day, except at the Sheffield joke--and that, by the by, was
+his own.
+
+We went home early in the evening. It was a very fine evening, and my
+mother and he had another stroll by the sweetbriar, while I was sent in
+to get my tea. When he was gone, my mother asked me all about the day I
+had had, and what they had said and done. I mentioned what they had said
+about her, and she laughed, and told me they were impudent fellows who
+talked nonsense--but I knew it pleased her. I knew it quite as well as
+I know it now. I took the opportunity of asking if she was at all
+acquainted with Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, but she answered No, only she
+supposed he must be a manufacturer in the knife and fork way.
+
+Can I say of her face--altered as I have reason to remember it, perished
+as I know it is--that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this
+instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look on in a
+crowded street? Can I say of her innocent and girlish beauty, that it
+faded, and was no more, when its breath falls on my cheek now, as it
+fell that night? Can I say she ever changed, when my remembrance brings
+her back to life, thus only; and, truer to its loving youth than I have
+been, or man ever is, still holds fast what it cherished then?
+
+I write of her just as she was when I had gone to bed after this talk,
+and she came to bid me good night. She kneeled down playfully by the
+side of the bed, and laying her chin upon her hands, and laughing, said:
+
+‘What was it they said, Davy? Tell me again. I can’t believe it.’
+
+‘“Bewitching--“’ I began.
+
+My mother put her hands upon my lips to stop me.
+
+‘It was never bewitching,’ she said, laughing. ‘It never could have been
+bewitching, Davy. Now I know it wasn’t!’
+
+‘Yes, it was. “Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield”,’ I repeated stoutly. ‘And,
+“pretty.”’
+
+‘No, no, it was never pretty. Not pretty,’ interposed my mother, laying
+her fingers on my lips again.
+
+‘Yes it was. “Pretty little widow.”’
+
+‘What foolish, impudent creatures!’ cried my mother, laughing and
+covering her face. ‘What ridiculous men! An’t they? Davy dear--’
+
+‘Well, Ma.’
+
+‘Don’t tell Peggotty; she might be angry with them. I am dreadfully
+angry with them myself; but I would rather Peggotty didn’t know.’
+
+I promised, of course; and we kissed one another over and over again,
+and I soon fell fast asleep.
+
+It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if it were the next day
+when Peggotty broached the striking and adventurous proposition I am
+about to mention; but it was probably about two months afterwards.
+
+We were sitting as before, one evening (when my mother was out as
+before), in company with the stocking and the yard-measure, and the bit
+of wax, and the box with St. Paul’s on the lid, and the crocodile book,
+when Peggotty, after looking at me several times, and opening her mouth
+as if she were going to speak, without doing it--which I thought was
+merely gaping, or I should have been rather alarmed--said coaxingly:
+
+‘Master Davy, how should you like to go along with me and spend a
+fortnight at my brother’s at Yarmouth? Wouldn’t that be a treat?’
+
+‘Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?’ I inquired, provisionally.
+
+‘Oh, what an agreeable man he is!’ cried Peggotty, holding up her hands.
+‘Then there’s the sea; and the boats and ships; and the fishermen; and
+the beach; and Am to play with--’
+
+Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned in my first chapter; but she
+spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar.
+
+I was flushed by her summary of delights, and replied that it would
+indeed be a treat, but what would my mother say?
+
+‘Why then I’ll as good as bet a guinea,’ said Peggotty, intent upon my
+face, ‘that she’ll let us go. I’ll ask her, if you like, as soon as ever
+she comes home. There now!’
+
+‘But what’s she to do while we’re away?’ said I, putting my small elbows
+on the table to argue the point. ‘She can’t live by herself.’
+
+If Peggotty were looking for a hole, all of a sudden, in the heel of
+that stocking, it must have been a very little one indeed, and not worth
+darning.
+
+‘I say! Peggotty! She can’t live by herself, you know.’
+
+‘Oh, bless you!’ said Peggotty, looking at me again at last. ‘Don’t
+you know? She’s going to stay for a fortnight with Mrs. Grayper. Mrs.
+Grayper’s going to have a lot of company.’
+
+Oh! If that was it, I was quite ready to go. I waited, in the utmost
+impatience, until my mother came home from Mrs. Grayper’s (for it was
+that identical neighbour), to ascertain if we could get leave to carry
+out this great idea. Without being nearly so much surprised as I had
+expected, my mother entered into it readily; and it was all arranged
+that night, and my board and lodging during the visit were to be paid
+for.
+
+The day soon came for our going. It was such an early day that it came
+soon, even to me, who was in a fever of expectation, and half afraid
+that an earthquake or a fiery mountain, or some other great convulsion
+of nature, might interpose to stop the expedition. We were to go in a
+carrier’s cart, which departed in the morning after breakfast. I would
+have given any money to have been allowed to wrap myself up over-night,
+and sleep in my hat and boots.
+
+It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to recollect how
+eager I was to leave my happy home; to think how little I suspected what
+I did leave for ever.
+
+I am glad to recollect that when the carrier’s cart was at the gate, and
+my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for her and for
+the old place I had never turned my back upon before, made me cry. I am
+glad to know that my mother cried too, and that I felt her heart beat
+against mine.
+
+I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my mother
+ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me
+once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness and love with which
+she lifted up her face to mine, and did so.
+
+As we left her standing in the road, Mr. Murdstone came up to where
+she was, and seemed to expostulate with her for being so moved. I was
+looking back round the awning of the cart, and wondered what business
+it was of his. Peggotty, who was also looking back on the other side,
+seemed anything but satisfied; as the face she brought back in the cart
+denoted.
+
+I sat looking at Peggotty for some time, in a reverie on this
+supposititious case: whether, if she were employed to lose me like the
+boy in the fairy tale, I should be able to track my way home again by
+the buttons she would shed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3. I HAVE A CHANGE
+
+
+The carrier’s horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should hope,
+and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to keep people
+waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied, indeed, that he
+sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said
+he was only troubled with a cough. The carrier had a way of keeping his
+head down, like his horse, and of drooping sleepily forward as he drove,
+with one of his arms on each of his knees. I say ‘drove’, but it struck
+me that the cart would have gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him,
+for the horse did all that; and as to conversation, he had no idea of it
+but whistling.
+
+Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, which would have
+lasted us out handsomely, if we had been going to London by the same
+conveyance. We ate a good deal, and slept a good deal. Peggotty always
+went to sleep with her chin upon the handle of the basket, her hold of
+which never relaxed; and I could not have believed unless I had heard
+her do it, that one defenceless woman could have snored so much.
+
+We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and were such a long time
+delivering a bedstead at a public-house, and calling at other places,
+that I was quite tired, and very glad, when we saw Yarmouth. It looked
+rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great
+dull waste that lay across the river; and I could not help wondering, if
+the world were really as round as my geography book said, how any
+part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth might be
+situated at one of the poles; which would account for it.
+
+As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a
+straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so
+might have improved it; and also that if the land had been a little more
+separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite
+so much mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been nicer. But
+Peggotty said, with greater emphasis than usual, that we must take
+things as we found them, and that, for her part, she was proud to call
+herself a Yarmouth Bloater.
+
+When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me) and smelt
+the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors walking
+about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I
+had done so busy a place an injustice; and said as much to Peggotty, who
+heard my expressions of delight with great complacency, and told me it
+was well known (I suppose to those who had the good fortune to be born
+Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the
+universe.
+
+‘Here’s my Am!’ screamed Peggotty, ‘growed out of knowledge!’
+
+He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house; and asked me how I
+found myself, like an old acquaintance. I did not feel, at first, that
+I knew him as well as he knew me, because he had never come to our house
+since the night I was born, and naturally he had the advantage of me.
+But our intimacy was much advanced by his taking me on his back to carry
+me home. He was, now, a huge, strong fellow of six feet high, broad in
+proportion, and round-shouldered; but with a simpering boy’s face and
+curly light hair that gave him quite a sheepish look. He was dressed in
+a canvas jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they
+would have stood quite as well alone, without any legs in them. And you
+couldn’t so properly have said he wore a hat, as that he was covered in
+a-top, like an old building, with something pitchy.
+
+Ham carrying me on his back and a small box of ours under his arm,
+and Peggotty carrying another small box of ours, we turned down lanes
+bestrewn with bits of chips and little hillocks of sand, and went
+past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders’ yards, shipwrights’ yards,
+ship-breakers’ yards, caulkers’ yards, riggers’ lofts, smiths’ forges,
+and a great litter of such places, until we came out upon the dull waste
+I had already seen at a distance; when Ham said,
+
+‘Yon’s our house, Mas’r Davy!’
+
+I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the wilderness,
+and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no house could I make
+out. There was a black barge, or some other kind of superannuated boat,
+not far off, high and dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking
+out of it for a chimney and smoking very cosily; but nothing else in the
+way of a habitation that was visible to me.
+
+‘That’s not it?’ said I. ‘That ship-looking thing?’
+
+‘That’s it, Mas’r Davy,’ returned Ham.
+
+If it had been Aladdin’s palace, roc’s egg and all, I suppose I could
+not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it. There
+was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there
+were little windows in it; but the wonderful charm of it was, that
+it was a real boat which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of
+times, and which had never been intended to be lived in, on dry land.
+That was the captivation of it to me. If it had ever been meant to be
+lived in, I might have thought it small, or inconvenient, or lonely; but
+never having been designed for any such use, it became a perfect abode.
+
+It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. There was a
+table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and on the chest of
+drawers there was a tea-tray with a painting on it of a lady with a
+parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child who was trundling a
+hoop. The tray was kept from tumbling down, by a bible; and the tray, if
+it had tumbled down, would have smashed a quantity of cups and saucers
+and a teapot that were grouped around the book. On the walls there were
+some common coloured pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects;
+such as I have never seen since in the hands of pedlars, without seeing
+the whole interior of Peggotty’s brother’s house again, at one view.
+Abraham in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow
+cast into a den of green lions, were the most prominent of these. Over
+the little mantelshelf, was a picture of the ‘Sarah Jane’ lugger, built
+at Sunderland, with a real little wooden stern stuck on to it; a work of
+art, combining composition with carpentry, which I considered to be one
+of the most enviable possessions that the world could afford. There
+were some hooks in the beams of the ceiling, the use of which I did not
+divine then; and some lockers and boxes and conveniences of that sort,
+which served for seats and eked out the chairs.
+
+All this I saw in the first glance after I crossed the
+threshold--child-like, according to my theory--and then Peggotty opened
+a little door and showed me my bedroom. It was the completest and most
+desirable bedroom ever seen--in the stern of the vessel; with a little
+window, where the rudder used to go through; a little looking-glass,
+just the right height for me, nailed against the wall, and framed with
+oyster-shells; a little bed, which there was just room enough to get
+into; and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table. The walls
+were whitewashed as white as milk, and the patchwork counterpane made my
+eyes quite ache with its brightness. One thing I particularly noticed
+in this delightful house, was the smell of fish; which was so searching,
+that when I took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it
+smelt exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster. On my imparting this
+discovery in confidence to Peggotty, she informed me that her brother
+dealt in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish; and I afterwards found that a
+heap of these creatures, in a state of wonderful conglomeration with one
+another, and never leaving off pinching whatever they laid hold of,
+were usually to be found in a little wooden outhouse where the pots and
+kettles were kept.
+
+We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white apron, whom I had seen
+curtseying at the door when I was on Ham’s back, about a quarter of a
+mile off. Likewise by a most beautiful little girl (or I thought her so)
+with a necklace of blue beads on, who wouldn’t let me kiss her when I
+offered to, but ran away and hid herself. By and by, when we had dined
+in a sumptuous manner off boiled dabs, melted butter, and potatoes, with
+a chop for me, a hairy man with a very good-natured face came home. As
+he called Peggotty ‘Lass’, and gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I
+had no doubt, from the general propriety of her conduct, that he was her
+brother; and so he turned out--being presently introduced to me as Mr.
+Peggotty, the master of the house.
+
+‘Glad to see you, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You’ll find us rough, sir,
+but you’ll find us ready.’
+
+I thanked him, and replied that I was sure I should be happy in such a
+delightful place.
+
+‘How’s your Ma, sir?’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Did you leave her pretty
+jolly?’
+
+I gave Mr. Peggotty to understand that she was as jolly as I could wish,
+and that she desired her compliments--which was a polite fiction on my
+part.
+
+‘I’m much obleeged to her, I’m sure,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Well, sir,
+if you can make out here, fur a fortnut, ‘long wi’ her,’ nodding at his
+sister, ‘and Ham, and little Em’ly, we shall be proud of your company.’
+
+Having done the honours of his house in this hospitable manner, Mr.
+Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettleful of hot water, remarking
+that ‘cold would never get his muck off’. He soon returned, greatly
+improved in appearance; but so rubicund, that I couldn’t help
+thinking his face had this in common with the lobsters, crabs, and
+crawfish,--that it went into the hot water very black, and came out very
+red.
+
+After tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug (the nights
+being cold and misty now), it seemed to me the most delicious retreat
+that the imagination of man could conceive. To hear the wind getting
+up out at sea, to know that the fog was creeping over the desolate flat
+outside, and to look at the fire, and think that there was no house near
+but this one, and this one a boat, was like enchantment. Little Em’ly
+had overcome her shyness, and was sitting by my side upon the lowest and
+least of the lockers, which was just large enough for us two, and just
+fitted into the chimney corner. Mrs. Peggotty with the white apron, was
+knitting on the opposite side of the fire. Peggotty at her needlework
+was as much at home with St. Paul’s and the bit of wax-candle, as if
+they had never known any other roof. Ham, who had been giving me my
+first lesson in all-fours, was trying to recollect a scheme of telling
+fortunes with the dirty cards, and was printing off fishy impressions of
+his thumb on all the cards he turned. Mr. Peggotty was smoking his pipe.
+I felt it was a time for conversation and confidence.
+
+‘Mr. Peggotty!’ says I.
+
+‘Sir,’ says he.
+
+‘Did you give your son the name of Ham, because you lived in a sort of
+ark?’
+
+Mr. Peggotty seemed to think it a deep idea, but answered:
+
+‘No, sir. I never giv him no name.’
+
+‘Who gave him that name, then?’ said I, putting question number two of
+the catechism to Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Why, sir, his father giv it him,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘I thought you were his father!’
+
+‘My brother Joe was his father,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after a respectful pause.
+
+‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+I was very much surprised that Mr. Peggotty was not Ham’s father, and
+began to wonder whether I was mistaken about his relationship to anybody
+else there. I was so curious to know, that I made up my mind to have it
+out with Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Little Em’ly,’ I said, glancing at her. ‘She is your daughter, isn’t
+she, Mr. Peggotty?’
+
+‘No, sir. My brother-in-law, Tom, was her father.’
+
+I couldn’t help it. ‘--Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after another
+respectful silence.
+
+‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+I felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not got to the
+bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom somehow. So I said:
+
+‘Haven’t you ANY children, Mr. Peggotty?’
+
+‘No, master,’ he answered with a short laugh. ‘I’m a bacheldore.’
+
+‘A bachelor!’ I said, astonished. ‘Why, who’s that, Mr. Peggotty?’
+pointing to the person in the apron who was knitting.
+
+‘That’s Missis Gummidge,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Gummidge, Mr. Peggotty?’
+
+But at this point Peggotty--I mean my own peculiar Peggotty--made such
+impressive motions to me not to ask any more questions, that I could
+only sit and look at all the silent company, until it was time to go to
+bed. Then, in the privacy of my own little cabin, she informed me that
+Ham and Em’ly were an orphan nephew and niece, whom my host had
+at different times adopted in their childhood, when they were left
+destitute: and that Mrs. Gummidge was the widow of his partner in
+a boat, who had died very poor. He was but a poor man himself, said
+Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as steel--those were her
+similes. The only subject, she informed me, on which he ever showed a
+violent temper or swore an oath, was this generosity of his; and if it
+were ever referred to, by any one of them, he struck the table a heavy
+blow with his right hand (had split it on one such occasion), and swore
+a dreadful oath that he would be ‘Gormed’ if he didn’t cut and run
+for good, if it was ever mentioned again. It appeared, in answer to
+my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this
+terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as
+constituting a most solemn imprecation.
+
+I was very sensible of my entertainer’s goodness, and listened to the
+women’s going to bed in another little crib like mine at the opposite
+end of the boat, and to him and Ham hanging up two hammocks for
+themselves on the hooks I had noticed in the roof, in a very luxurious
+state of mind, enhanced by my being sleepy. As slumber gradually stole
+upon me, I heard the wind howling out at sea and coming on across the
+flat so fiercely, that I had a lazy apprehension of the great deep
+rising in the night. But I bethought myself that I was in a boat, after
+all; and that a man like Mr. Peggotty was not a bad person to have on
+board if anything did happen.
+
+Nothing happened, however, worse than morning. Almost as soon as it
+shone upon the oyster-shell frame of my mirror I was out of bed, and out
+with little Em’ly, picking up stones upon the beach.
+
+‘You’re quite a sailor, I suppose?’ I said to Em’ly. I don’t know that I
+supposed anything of the kind, but I felt it an act of gallantry to
+say something; and a shining sail close to us made such a pretty little
+image of itself, at the moment, in her bright eye, that it came into my
+head to say this.
+
+‘No,’ replied Em’ly, shaking her head, ‘I’m afraid of the sea.’
+
+‘Afraid!’ I said, with a becoming air of boldness, and looking very big
+at the mighty ocean. ‘I an’t!’
+
+‘Ah! but it’s cruel,’ said Em’ly. ‘I have seen it very cruel to some of
+our men. I have seen it tear a boat as big as our house, all to pieces.’
+
+‘I hope it wasn’t the boat that--’
+
+‘That father was drownded in?’ said Em’ly. ‘No. Not that one, I never
+see that boat.’
+
+‘Nor him?’ I asked her.
+
+Little Em’ly shook her head. ‘Not to remember!’
+
+Here was a coincidence! I immediately went into an explanation how I had
+never seen my own father; and how my mother and I had always lived
+by ourselves in the happiest state imaginable, and lived so then, and
+always meant to live so; and how my father’s grave was in the churchyard
+near our house, and shaded by a tree, beneath the boughs of which I had
+walked and heard the birds sing many a pleasant morning. But there were
+some differences between Em’ly’s orphanhood and mine, it appeared. She
+had lost her mother before her father; and where her father’s grave was
+no one knew, except that it was somewhere in the depths of the sea.
+
+‘Besides,’ said Em’ly, as she looked about for shells and pebbles, ‘your
+father was a gentleman and your mother is a lady; and my father was a
+fisherman and my mother was a fisherman’s daughter, and my uncle Dan is
+a fisherman.’
+
+‘Dan is Mr. Peggotty, is he?’ said I.
+
+‘Uncle Dan--yonder,’ answered Em’ly, nodding at the boat-house.
+
+‘Yes. I mean him. He must be very good, I should think?’
+
+‘Good?’ said Em’ly. ‘If I was ever to be a lady, I’d give him a sky-blue
+coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a
+cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money.’
+
+I said I had no doubt that Mr. Peggotty well deserved these treasures.
+I must acknowledge that I felt it difficult to picture him quite at his
+ease in the raiment proposed for him by his grateful little niece, and
+that I was particularly doubtful of the policy of the cocked hat; but I
+kept these sentiments to myself.
+
+Little Em’ly had stopped and looked up at the sky in her enumeration
+of these articles, as if they were a glorious vision. We went on again,
+picking up shells and pebbles.
+
+‘You would like to be a lady?’ I said.
+
+Emily looked at me, and laughed and nodded ‘yes’.
+
+‘I should like it very much. We would all be gentlefolks together, then.
+Me, and uncle, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge. We wouldn’t mind then, when
+there comes stormy weather.---Not for our own sakes, I mean. We would
+for the poor fishermen’s, to be sure, and we’d help ‘em with money when
+they come to any hurt.’ This seemed to me to be a very satisfactory and
+therefore not at all improbable picture. I expressed my pleasure in the
+contemplation of it, and little Em’ly was emboldened to say, shyly,
+
+‘Don’t you think you are afraid of the sea, now?’
+
+It was quiet enough to reassure me, but I have no doubt if I had seen a
+moderately large wave come tumbling in, I should have taken to my heels,
+with an awful recollection of her drowned relations. However, I said
+‘No,’ and I added, ‘You don’t seem to be either, though you say you
+are,’--for she was walking much too near the brink of a sort of old
+jetty or wooden causeway we had strolled upon, and I was afraid of her
+falling over.
+
+‘I’m not afraid in this way,’ said little Em’ly. ‘But I wake when it
+blows, and tremble to think of Uncle Dan and Ham and believe I hear ‘em
+crying out for help. That’s why I should like so much to be a lady. But
+I’m not afraid in this way. Not a bit. Look here!’
+
+She started from my side, and ran along a jagged timber which protruded
+from the place we stood upon, and overhung the deep water at some
+height, without the least defence. The incident is so impressed on my
+remembrance, that if I were a draughtsman I could draw its form here,
+I dare say, accurately as it was that day, and little Em’ly springing
+forward to her destruction (as it appeared to me), with a look that I
+have never forgotten, directed far out to sea.
+
+The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came back safe
+to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at the cry I had uttered;
+fruitlessly in any case, for there was no one near. But there have been
+times since, in my manhood, many times there have been, when I have
+thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that
+in the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, there
+was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any tempting her towards
+him permitted on the part of her dead father, that her life might have
+a chance of ending that day? There has been a time since when I have
+wondered whether, if the life before her could have been revealed to me
+at a glance, and so revealed as that a child could fully comprehend it,
+and if her preservation could have depended on a motion of my hand, I
+ought to have held it up to save her. There has been a time since--I do
+not say it lasted long, but it has been--when I have asked myself the
+question, would it have been better for little Em’ly to have had the
+waters close above her head that morning in my sight; and when I have
+answered Yes, it would have been.
+
+This may be premature. I have set it down too soon, perhaps. But let it
+stand.
+
+We strolled a long way, and loaded ourselves with things that we thought
+curious, and put some stranded starfish carefully back into the water--I
+hardly know enough of the race at this moment to be quite certain
+whether they had reason to feel obliged to us for doing so, or the
+reverse--and then made our way home to Mr. Peggotty’s dwelling. We
+stopped under the lee of the lobster-outhouse to exchange an innocent
+kiss, and went in to breakfast glowing with health and pleasure.
+
+‘Like two young mavishes,’ Mr. Peggotty said. I knew this meant, in our
+local dialect, like two young thrushes, and received it as a compliment.
+
+Of course I was in love with little Em’ly. I am sure I loved that
+baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity and more
+disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a later time
+of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy raised up
+something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealized,
+and made a very angel of her. If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread
+a little pair of wings and flown away before my eyes, I don’t think I
+should have regarded it as much more than I had had reason to expect.
+
+We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner,
+hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up
+himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play. I told Em’ly
+I adored her, and that unless she confessed she adored me I should be
+reduced to the necessity of killing myself with a sword. She said she
+did, and I have no doubt she did.
+
+As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty
+in our way, little Em’ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no
+future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for
+growing younger. We were the admiration of Mrs. Gummidge and Peggotty,
+who used to whisper of an evening when we sat, lovingly, on our little
+locker side by side, ‘Lor! wasn’t it beautiful!’ Mr. Peggotty smiled at
+us from behind his pipe, and Ham grinned all the evening and did nothing
+else. They had something of the sort of pleasure in us, I suppose, that
+they might have had in a pretty toy, or a pocket model of the Colosseum.
+
+I soon found out that Mrs. Gummidge did not always make herself so
+agreeable as she might have been expected to do, under the circumstances
+of her residence with Mr. Peggotty. Mrs. Gummidge’s was rather a fretful
+disposition, and she whimpered more sometimes than was comfortable for
+other parties in so small an establishment. I was very sorry for
+her; but there were moments when it would have been more agreeable, I
+thought, if Mrs. Gummidge had had a convenient apartment of her own to
+retire to, and had stopped there until her spirits revived.
+
+Mr. Peggotty went occasionally to a public-house called The Willing
+Mind. I discovered this, by his being out on the second or third evening
+of our visit, and by Mrs. Gummidge’s looking up at the Dutch clock,
+between eight and nine, and saying he was there, and that, what was
+more, she had known in the morning he would go there.
+
+Mrs. Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had burst into tears
+in the forenoon, when the fire smoked. ‘I am a lone lorn creetur’,’ were
+Mrs. Gummidge’s words, when that unpleasant occurrence took place, ‘and
+everythink goes contrary with me.’
+
+‘Oh, it’ll soon leave off,’ said Peggotty--I again mean our
+Peggotty--‘and besides, you know, it’s not more disagreeable to you than
+to us.’
+
+‘I feel it more,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
+
+It was a very cold day, with cutting blasts of wind. Mrs. Gummidge’s
+peculiar corner of the fireside seemed to me to be the warmest and
+snuggest in the place, as her chair was certainly the easiest, but it
+didn’t suit her that day at all. She was constantly complaining of the
+cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her back which she called
+‘the creeps’. At last she shed tears on that subject, and said again
+that she was ‘a lone lorn creetur’ and everythink went contrary with
+her’.
+
+‘It is certainly very cold,’ said Peggotty. ‘Everybody must feel it so.’
+
+‘I feel it more than other people,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
+
+So at dinner; when Mrs. Gummidge was always helped immediately after me,
+to whom the preference was given as a visitor of distinction. The
+fish were small and bony, and the potatoes were a little burnt. We all
+acknowledged that we felt this something of a disappointment; but Mrs.
+Gummidge said she felt it more than we did, and shed tears again, and
+made that former declaration with great bitterness.
+
+Accordingly, when Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o’clock, this
+unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched
+and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had
+been patching up a great pair of waterboots; and I, with little Em’ly
+by my side, had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had never made any
+other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes since
+tea.
+
+‘Well, Mates,’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking his seat, ‘and how are you?’
+
+We all said something, or looked something, to welcome him, except Mrs.
+Gummidge, who only shook her head over her knitting.
+
+‘What’s amiss?’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a clap of his hands. ‘Cheer up,
+old Mawther!’ (Mr. Peggotty meant old girl.)
+
+Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. She took out an old
+black silk handkerchief and wiped her eyes; but instead of putting it
+in her pocket, kept it out, and wiped them again, and still kept it out,
+ready for use.
+
+‘What’s amiss, dame?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Nothing,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge. ‘You’ve come from The Willing Mind,
+Dan’l?’
+
+‘Why yes, I’ve took a short spell at The Willing Mind tonight,’ said Mr.
+Peggotty.
+
+‘I’m sorry I should drive you there,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
+
+‘Drive! I don’t want no driving,’ returned Mr. Peggotty with an honest
+laugh. ‘I only go too ready.’
+
+‘Very ready,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, shaking her head, and wiping her eyes.
+‘Yes, yes, very ready. I am sorry it should be along of me that you’re
+so ready.’
+
+‘Along o’ you! It an’t along o’ you!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Don’t ye
+believe a bit on it.’
+
+‘Yes, yes, it is,’ cried Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I know what I am. I know that I
+am a lone lorn creetur’, and not only that everythink goes contrary with
+me, but that I go contrary with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than
+other people do, and I show it more. It’s my misfortun’.’
+
+I really couldn’t help thinking, as I sat taking in all this, that the
+misfortune extended to some other members of that family besides Mrs.
+Gummidge. But Mr. Peggotty made no such retort, only answering with
+another entreaty to Mrs. Gummidge to cheer up.
+
+‘I an’t what I could wish myself to be,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I am far
+from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrary. I feel my
+troubles, and they make me contrary. I wish I didn’t feel ‘em, but I
+do. I wish I could be hardened to ‘em, but I an’t. I make the house
+uncomfortable. I don’t wonder at it. I’ve made your sister so all day,
+and Master Davy.’
+
+Here I was suddenly melted, and roared out, ‘No, you haven’t, Mrs.
+Gummidge,’ in great mental distress.
+
+‘It’s far from right that I should do it,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘It an’t
+a fit return. I had better go into the house and die. I am a lone lorn
+creetur’, and had much better not make myself contrary here. If thinks
+must go contrary with me, and I must go contrary myself, let me go
+contrary in my parish. Dan’l, I’d better go into the house, and die and
+be a riddance!’
+
+Mrs. Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to bed. When
+she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not exhibited a trace of any feeling
+but the profoundest sympathy, looked round upon us, and nodding his head
+with a lively expression of that sentiment still animating his face,
+said in a whisper:
+
+‘She’s been thinking of the old ‘un!’
+
+I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was supposed to
+have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on seeing me to bed, explained
+that it was the late Mr. Gummidge; and that her brother always took that
+for a received truth on such occasions, and that it always had a moving
+effect upon him. Some time after he was in his hammock that night, I
+heard him myself repeat to Ham, ‘Poor thing! She’s been thinking of the
+old ‘un!’ And whenever Mrs. Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner
+during the remainder of our stay (which happened some few times), he
+always said the same thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and
+always with the tenderest commiseration.
+
+So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the variation of
+the tide, which altered Mr. Peggotty’s times of going out and coming in,
+and altered Ham’s engagements also. When the latter was unemployed, he
+sometimes walked with us to show us the boats and ships, and once
+or twice he took us for a row. I don’t know why one slight set of
+impressions should be more particularly associated with a place than
+another, though I believe this obtains with most people, in reference
+especially to the associations of their childhood. I never hear the
+name, or read the name, of Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain
+Sunday morning on the beach, the bells ringing for church, little Em’ly
+leaning on my shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and
+the sun, away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing
+us the ships, like their own shadows.
+
+At last the day came for going home. I bore up against the separation
+from Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge, but my agony of mind at leaving
+little Em’ly was piercing. We went arm-in-arm to the public-house where
+the carrier put up, and I promised, on the road, to write to her. (I
+redeemed that promise afterwards, in characters larger than those in
+which apartments are usually announced in manuscript, as being to let.)
+We were greatly overcome at parting; and if ever, in my life, I have had
+a void made in my heart, I had one made that day.
+
+Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had been ungrateful to my
+home again, and had thought little or nothing about it. But I was no
+sooner turned towards it, than my reproachful young conscience seemed
+to point that way with a ready finger; and I felt, all the more for the
+sinking of my spirits, that it was my nest, and that my mother was my
+comforter and friend.
+
+This gained upon me as we went along; so that the nearer we drew, the
+more familiar the objects became that we passed, the more excited I was
+to get there, and to run into her arms. But Peggotty, instead of sharing
+in those transports, tried to check them (though very kindly), and
+looked confused and out of sorts.
+
+Blunderstone Rookery would come, however, in spite of her, when the
+carrier’s horse pleased--and did. How well I recollect it, on a cold
+grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain!
+
+The door opened, and I looked, half laughing and half crying in my
+pleasant agitation, for my mother. It was not she, but a strange
+servant.
+
+‘Why, Peggotty!’ I said, ruefully, ‘isn’t she come home?’
+
+‘Yes, yes, Master Davy,’ said Peggotty. ‘She’s come home. Wait a bit,
+Master Davy, and I’ll--I’ll tell you something.’
+
+Between her agitation, and her natural awkwardness in getting out of the
+cart, Peggotty was making a most extraordinary festoon of herself, but
+I felt too blank and strange to tell her so. When she had got down, she
+took me by the hand; led me, wondering, into the kitchen; and shut the
+door.
+
+‘Peggotty!’ said I, quite frightened. ‘What’s the matter?’
+
+‘Nothing’s the matter, bless you, Master Davy dear!’ she answered,
+assuming an air of sprightliness.
+
+‘Something’s the matter, I’m sure. Where’s mama?’
+
+‘Where’s mama, Master Davy?’ repeated Peggotty.
+
+‘Yes. Why hasn’t she come out to the gate, and what have we come in here
+for? Oh, Peggotty!’ My eyes were full, and I felt as if I were going to
+tumble down.
+
+‘Bless the precious boy!’ cried Peggotty, taking hold of me. ‘What is
+it? Speak, my pet!’
+
+‘Not dead, too! Oh, she’s not dead, Peggotty?’
+
+Peggotty cried out No! with an astonishing volume of voice; and then sat
+down, and began to pant, and said I had given her a turn.
+
+I gave her a hug to take away the turn, or to give her another turn
+in the right direction, and then stood before her, looking at her in
+anxious inquiry.
+
+‘You see, dear, I should have told you before now,’ said Peggotty,
+‘but I hadn’t an opportunity. I ought to have made it, perhaps, but
+I couldn’t azackly’--that was always the substitute for exactly, in
+Peggotty’s militia of words--‘bring my mind to it.’
+
+‘Go on, Peggotty,’ said I, more frightened than before.
+
+‘Master Davy,’ said Peggotty, untying her bonnet with a shaking hand,
+and speaking in a breathless sort of way. ‘What do you think? You have
+got a Pa!’
+
+I trembled, and turned white. Something--I don’t know what, or
+how--connected with the grave in the churchyard, and the raising of the
+dead, seemed to strike me like an unwholesome wind.
+
+‘A new one,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘A new one?’ I repeated.
+
+Peggotty gave a gasp, as if she were swallowing something that was very
+hard, and, putting out her hand, said:
+
+‘Come and see him.’
+
+‘I don’t want to see him.’ --‘And your mama,’ said Peggotty.
+
+I ceased to draw back, and we went straight to the best parlour, where
+she left me. On one side of the fire, sat my mother; on the other, Mr.
+Murdstone. My mother dropped her work, and arose hurriedly, but timidly
+I thought.
+
+‘Now, Clara my dear,’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘Recollect! control yourself,
+always control yourself! Davy boy, how do you do?’
+
+I gave him my hand. After a moment of suspense, I went and kissed my
+mother: she kissed me, patted me gently on the shoulder, and sat down
+again to her work. I could not look at her, I could not look at him,
+I knew quite well that he was looking at us both; and I turned to the
+window and looked out there, at some shrubs that were drooping their
+heads in the cold.
+
+As soon as I could creep away, I crept upstairs. My old dear bedroom was
+changed, and I was to lie a long way off. I rambled downstairs to find
+anything that was like itself, so altered it all seemed; and roamed into
+the yard. I very soon started back from there, for the empty dog-kennel
+was filled up with a great dog--deep mouthed and black-haired like
+Him--and he was very angry at the sight of me, and sprang out to get at
+me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4. I FALL INTO DISGRACE
+
+
+If the room to which my bed was removed were a sentient thing that could
+give evidence, I might appeal to it at this day--who sleeps there now,
+I wonder!--to bear witness for me what a heavy heart I carried to it.
+I went up there, hearing the dog in the yard bark after me all the way
+while I climbed the stairs; and, looking as blank and strange upon the
+room as the room looked upon me, sat down with my small hands crossed,
+and thought.
+
+I thought of the oddest things. Of the shape of the room, of the
+cracks in the ceiling, of the paper on the walls, of the flaws in
+the window-glass making ripples and dimples on the prospect, of the
+washing-stand being rickety on its three legs, and having a discontented
+something about it, which reminded me of Mrs. Gummidge under the
+influence of the old one. I was crying all the time, but, except that I
+was conscious of being cold and dejected, I am sure I never thought
+why I cried. At last in my desolation I began to consider that I was
+dreadfully in love with little Em’ly, and had been torn away from her to
+come here where no one seemed to want me, or to care about me, half as
+much as she did. This made such a very miserable piece of business of
+it, that I rolled myself up in a corner of the counterpane, and cried
+myself to sleep.
+
+I was awoke by somebody saying ‘Here he is!’ and uncovering my hot head.
+My mother and Peggotty had come to look for me, and it was one of them
+who had done it.
+
+‘Davy,’ said my mother. ‘What’s the matter?’
+
+I thought it was very strange that she should ask me, and answered,
+‘Nothing.’ I turned over on my face, I recollect, to hide my trembling
+lip, which answered her with greater truth. ‘Davy,’ said my mother.
+‘Davy, my child!’
+
+I dare say no words she could have uttered would have affected me
+so much, then, as her calling me her child. I hid my tears in the
+bedclothes, and pressed her from me with my hand, when she would have
+raised me up.
+
+‘This is your doing, Peggotty, you cruel thing!’ said my mother. ‘I have
+no doubt at all about it. How can you reconcile it to your conscience,
+I wonder, to prejudice my own boy against me, or against anybody who is
+dear to me? What do you mean by it, Peggotty?’
+
+Poor Peggotty lifted up her hands and eyes, and only answered, in a
+sort of paraphrase of the grace I usually repeated after dinner, ‘Lord
+forgive you, Mrs. Copperfield, and for what you have said this minute,
+may you never be truly sorry!’
+
+‘It’s enough to distract me,’ cried my mother. ‘In my honeymoon, too,
+when my most inveterate enemy might relent, one would think, and not
+envy me a little peace of mind and happiness. Davy, you naughty boy!
+Peggotty, you savage creature! Oh, dear me!’ cried my mother, turning
+from one of us to the other, in her pettish wilful manner, ‘what a
+troublesome world this is, when one has the most right to expect it to
+be as agreeable as possible!’
+
+I felt the touch of a hand that I knew was neither hers nor Peggotty’s,
+and slipped to my feet at the bed-side. It was Mr. Murdstone’s hand, and
+he kept it on my arm as he said:
+
+‘What’s this? Clara, my love, have you forgotten?--Firmness, my dear!’
+
+‘I am very sorry, Edward,’ said my mother. ‘I meant to be very good, but
+I am so uncomfortable.’
+
+‘Indeed!’ he answered. ‘That’s a bad hearing, so soon, Clara.’
+
+‘I say it’s very hard I should be made so now,’ returned my mother,
+pouting; ‘and it is--very hard--isn’t it?’
+
+He drew her to him, whispered in her ear, and kissed her. I knew as
+well, when I saw my mother’s head lean down upon his shoulder, and her
+arm touch his neck--I knew as well that he could mould her pliant nature
+into any form he chose, as I know, now, that he did it.
+
+‘Go you below, my love,’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘David and I will come
+down, together. My friend,’ turning a darkening face on Peggotty, when
+he had watched my mother out, and dismissed her with a nod and a smile;
+‘do you know your mistress’s name?’
+
+‘She has been my mistress a long time, sir,’ answered Peggotty, ‘I ought
+to know it.’ ‘That’s true,’ he answered. ‘But I thought I heard you, as
+I came upstairs, address her by a name that is not hers. She has taken
+mine, you know. Will you remember that?’
+
+Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at me, curtseyed herself out of the
+room without replying; seeing, I suppose, that she was expected to go,
+and had no excuse for remaining. When we two were left alone, he shut
+the door, and sitting on a chair, and holding me standing before him,
+looked steadily into my eyes. I felt my own attracted, no less steadily,
+to his. As I recall our being opposed thus, face to face, I seem again
+to hear my heart beat fast and high.
+
+‘David,’ he said, making his lips thin, by pressing them together, ‘if I
+have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, what do you think I do?’
+
+‘I don’t know.’
+
+‘I beat him.’
+
+I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in my
+silence, that my breath was shorter now.
+
+‘I make him wince, and smart. I say to myself, “I’ll conquer that
+fellow”; and if it were to cost him all the blood he had, I should do
+it. What is that upon your face?’
+
+‘Dirt,’ I said.
+
+He knew it was the mark of tears as well as I. But if he had asked the
+question twenty times, each time with twenty blows, I believe my baby
+heart would have burst before I would have told him so.
+
+‘You have a good deal of intelligence for a little fellow,’ he said,
+with a grave smile that belonged to him, ‘and you understood me very
+well, I see. Wash that face, sir, and come down with me.’
+
+He pointed to the washing-stand, which I had made out to be like Mrs.
+Gummidge, and motioned me with his head to obey him directly. I had
+little doubt then, and I have less doubt now, that he would have knocked
+me down without the least compunction, if I had hesitated.
+
+‘Clara, my dear,’ he said, when I had done his bidding, and he walked me
+into the parlour, with his hand still on my arm; ‘you will not be made
+uncomfortable any more, I hope. We shall soon improve our youthful
+humours.’
+
+God help me, I might have been improved for my whole life, I might have
+been made another creature perhaps, for life, by a kind word at that
+season. A word of encouragement and explanation, of pity for my childish
+ignorance, of welcome home, of reassurance to me that it was home, might
+have made me dutiful to him in my heart henceforth, instead of in my
+hypocritical outside, and might have made me respect instead of hate
+him. I thought my mother was sorry to see me standing in the room so
+scared and strange, and that, presently, when I stole to a chair, she
+followed me with her eyes more sorrowfully still--missing, perhaps, some
+freedom in my childish tread--but the word was not spoken, and the time
+for it was gone.
+
+We dined alone, we three together. He seemed to be very fond of my
+mother--I am afraid I liked him none the better for that--and she was
+very fond of him. I gathered from what they said, that an elder sister
+of his was coming to stay with them, and that she was expected that
+evening. I am not certain whether I found out then, or afterwards, that,
+without being actively concerned in any business, he had some share in,
+or some annual charge upon the profits of, a wine-merchant’s house
+in London, with which his family had been connected from his
+great-grandfather’s time, and in which his sister had a similar
+interest; but I may mention it in this place, whether or no.
+
+After dinner, when we were sitting by the fire, and I was meditating an
+escape to Peggotty without having the hardihood to slip away, lest
+it should offend the master of the house, a coach drove up to the
+garden-gate and he went out to receive the visitor. My mother followed
+him. I was timidly following her, when she turned round at the parlour
+door, in the dusk, and taking me in her embrace as she had been used to
+do, whispered me to love my new father and be obedient to him. She did
+this hurriedly and secretly, as if it were wrong, but tenderly; and,
+putting out her hand behind her, held mine in it, until we came near
+to where he was standing in the garden, where she let mine go, and drew
+hers through his arm.
+
+It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she
+was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and
+voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose,
+as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers,
+she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two
+uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard
+brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard
+steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung
+upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at
+that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.
+
+She was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome, and there
+formally recognized my mother as a new and near relation. Then she
+looked at me, and said:
+
+‘Is that your boy, sister-in-law?’
+
+My mother acknowledged me.
+
+‘Generally speaking,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘I don’t like boys. How d’ye
+do, boy?’
+
+Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well,
+and that I hoped she was the same; with such an indifferent grace, that
+Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words:
+
+‘Wants manner!’
+
+Having uttered which, with great distinctness, she begged the favour of
+being shown to her room, which became to me from that time forth a place
+of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes were never seen open or
+known to be left unlocked, and where (for I peeped in once or twice when
+she was out) numerous little steel fetters and rivets, with which Miss
+Murdstone embellished herself when she was dressed, generally hung upon
+the looking-glass in formidable array.
+
+As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no intention
+of ever going again. She began to ‘help’ my mother next morning, and was
+in and out of the store-closet all day, putting things to rights, and
+making havoc in the old arrangements. Almost the first remarkable thing
+I observed in Miss Murdstone was, her being constantly haunted by
+a suspicion that the servants had a man secreted somewhere on the
+premises. Under the influence of this delusion, she dived into the
+coal-cellar at the most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened the
+door of a dark cupboard without clapping it to again, in the belief that
+she had got him.
+
+Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a
+perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe
+to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the house was
+stirring. Peggotty gave it as her opinion that she even slept with one
+eye open; but I could not concur in this idea; for I tried it myself
+after hearing the suggestion thrown out, and found it couldn’t be done.
+
+On the very first morning after her arrival she was up and ringing her
+bell at cock-crow. When my mother came down to breakfast and was going
+to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek,
+which was her nearest approach to a kiss, and said:
+
+‘Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to relieve you of all
+the trouble I can. You’re much too pretty and thoughtless’--my mother
+blushed but laughed, and seemed not to dislike this character--‘to have
+any duties imposed upon you that can be undertaken by me. If you’ll be
+so good as give me your keys, my dear, I’ll attend to all this sort of
+thing in future.’
+
+From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little jail all
+day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no more to do
+with them than I had.
+
+My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her without a shadow
+of protest. One night when Miss Murdstone had been developing certain
+household plans to her brother, of which he signified his approbation,
+my mother suddenly began to cry, and said she thought she might have
+been consulted.
+
+‘Clara!’ said Mr. Murdstone sternly. ‘Clara! I wonder at you.’
+
+‘Oh, it’s very well to say you wonder, Edward!’ cried my mother, ‘and
+it’s very well for you to talk about firmness, but you wouldn’t like it
+yourself.’
+
+Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr. and
+Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I might have expressed
+my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I
+nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was another
+name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil’s humour,
+that was in them both. The creed, as I should state it now, was this.
+Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr.
+Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody
+was to be bent to his firmness. Miss Murdstone was an exception.
+She might be firm, but only by relationship, and in an inferior and
+tributary degree. My mother was another exception. She might be firm,
+and must be; but only in bearing their firmness, and firmly believing
+there was no other firmness upon earth.
+
+‘It’s very hard,’ said my mother, ‘that in my own house--’
+
+‘My own house?’ repeated Mr. Murdstone. ‘Clara!’
+
+‘OUR own house, I mean,’ faltered my mother, evidently frightened--‘I
+hope you must know what I mean, Edward--it’s very hard that in YOUR own
+house I may not have a word to say about domestic matters. I am sure
+I managed very well before we were married. There’s evidence,’ said my
+mother, sobbing; ‘ask Peggotty if I didn’t do very well when I wasn’t
+interfered with!’
+
+‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘let there be an end of this. I go
+tomorrow.’
+
+‘Jane Murdstone,’ said her brother, ‘be silent! How dare you to
+insinuate that you don’t know my character better than your words
+imply?’
+
+‘I am sure,’ my poor mother went on, at a grievous disadvantage, and
+with many tears, ‘I don’t want anybody to go. I should be very
+miserable and unhappy if anybody was to go. I don’t ask much. I am not
+unreasonable. I only want to be consulted sometimes. I am very much
+obliged to anybody who assists me, and I only want to be consulted as a
+mere form, sometimes. I thought you were pleased, once, with my being a
+little inexperienced and girlish, Edward--I am sure you said so--but you
+seem to hate me for it now, you are so severe.’
+
+‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, again, ‘let there be an end of this. I go
+tomorrow.’
+
+‘Jane Murdstone,’ thundered Mr. Murdstone. ‘Will you be silent? How dare
+you?’
+
+Miss Murdstone made a jail-delivery of her pocket-handkerchief, and held
+it before her eyes.
+
+‘Clara,’ he continued, looking at my mother, ‘you surprise me! You
+astound me! Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of marrying
+an inexperienced and artless person, and forming her character, and
+infusing into it some amount of that firmness and decision of which
+it stood in need. But when Jane Murdstone is kind enough to come to my
+assistance in this endeavour, and to assume, for my sake, a condition
+something like a housekeeper’s, and when she meets with a base return--’
+
+‘Oh, pray, pray, Edward,’ cried my mother, ‘don’t accuse me of being
+ungrateful. I am sure I am not ungrateful. No one ever said I was
+before. I have many faults, but not that. Oh, don’t, my dear!’
+
+‘When Jane Murdstone meets, I say,’ he went on, after waiting until my
+mother was silent, ‘with a base return, that feeling of mine is chilled
+and altered.’
+
+‘Don’t, my love, say that!’ implored my mother very piteously.
+‘Oh, don’t, Edward! I can’t bear to hear it. Whatever I am, I am
+affectionate. I know I am affectionate. I wouldn’t say it, if I
+wasn’t sure that I am. Ask Peggotty. I am sure she’ll tell you I’m
+affectionate.’
+
+‘There is no extent of mere weakness, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone in
+reply, ‘that can have the least weight with me. You lose breath.’
+
+‘Pray let us be friends,’ said my mother, ‘I couldn’t live under
+coldness or unkindness. I am so sorry. I have a great many defects, I
+know, and it’s very good of you, Edward, with your strength of mind, to
+endeavour to correct them for me. Jane, I don’t object to anything. I
+should be quite broken-hearted if you thought of leaving--’ My mother
+was too much overcome to go on.
+
+‘Jane Murdstone,’ said Mr. Murdstone to his sister, ‘any harsh words
+between us are, I hope, uncommon. It is not my fault that so unusual an
+occurrence has taken place tonight. I was betrayed into it by another.
+Nor is it your fault. You were betrayed into it by another. Let us both
+try to forget it. And as this,’ he added, after these magnanimous words,
+‘is not a fit scene for the boy--David, go to bed!’
+
+I could hardly find the door, through the tears that stood in my eyes.
+I was so sorry for my mother’s distress; but I groped my way out, and
+groped my way up to my room in the dark, without even having the heart
+to say good night to Peggotty, or to get a candle from her. When her
+coming up to look for me, an hour or so afterwards, awoke me, she said
+that my mother had gone to bed poorly, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone
+were sitting alone.
+
+Going down next morning rather earlier than usual, I paused outside the
+parlour door, on hearing my mother’s voice. She was very earnestly and
+humbly entreating Miss Murdstone’s pardon, which that lady granted, and
+a perfect reconciliation took place. I never knew my mother afterwards
+to give an opinion on any matter, without first appealing to Miss
+Murdstone, or without having first ascertained by some sure means, what
+Miss Murdstone’s opinion was; and I never saw Miss Murdstone, when out
+of temper (she was infirm that way), move her hand towards her bag as
+if she were going to take out the keys and offer to resign them to my
+mother, without seeing that my mother was in a terrible fright.
+
+The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the Murdstone
+religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought, since,
+that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence of Mr.
+Murdstone’s firmness, which wouldn’t allow him to let anybody off from
+the utmost weight of the severest penalties he could find any excuse
+for. Be this as it may, I well remember the tremendous visages with
+which we used to go to church, and the changed air of the place. Again,
+the dreaded Sunday comes round, and I file into the old pew first, like
+a guarded captive brought to a condemned service. Again, Miss Murdstone,
+in a black velvet gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall,
+follows close upon me; then my mother; then her husband. There is no
+Peggotty now, as in the old time. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone
+mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all the dread words with a cruel
+relish. Again, I see her dark eyes roll round the church when she says
+‘miserable sinners’, as if she were calling all the congregation names.
+Again, I catch rare glimpses of my mother, moving her lips timidly
+between the two, with one of them muttering at each ear like low
+thunder. Again, I wonder with a sudden fear whether it is likely that
+our good old clergyman can be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right,
+and that all the angels in Heaven can be destroying angels. Again, if I
+move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, Miss Murdstone pokes me with
+her prayer-book, and makes my side ache.
+
+Yes, and again, as we walk home, I note some neighbours looking at my
+mother and at me, and whispering. Again, as the three go on arm-in-arm,
+and I linger behind alone, I follow some of those looks, and wonder if
+my mother’s step be really not so light as I have seen it, and if the
+gaiety of her beauty be really almost worried away. Again, I wonder
+whether any of the neighbours call to mind, as I do, how we used to
+walk home together, she and I; and I wonder stupidly about that, all the
+dreary dismal day.
+
+There had been some talk on occasions of my going to boarding-school.
+Mr. and Miss Murdstone had originated it, and my mother had of course
+agreed with them. Nothing, however, was concluded on the subject yet.
+In the meantime, I learnt lessons at home. Shall I ever forget those
+lessons! They were presided over nominally by my mother, but really by
+Mr. Murdstone and his sister, who were always present, and found them
+a favourable occasion for giving my mother lessons in that miscalled
+firmness, which was the bane of both our lives. I believe I was kept
+at home for that purpose. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing
+enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly
+remember learning the alphabet at her knee. To this day, when I look
+upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of their
+shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present
+themselves again before me as they used to do. But they recall no
+feeling of disgust or reluctance. On the contrary, I seem to have walked
+along a path of flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to have been
+cheered by the gentleness of my mother’s voice and manner all the
+way. But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I remember as the
+death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily drudgery and misery. They
+were very long, very numerous, very hard--perfectly unintelligible,
+some of them, to me--and I was generally as much bewildered by them as I
+believe my poor mother was herself.
+
+Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morning back again.
+
+I come into the second-best parlour after breakfast, with my books,
+and an exercise-book, and a slate. My mother is ready for me at her
+writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his easy-chair
+by the window (though he pretends to be reading a book), or as Miss
+Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads. The very sight
+of these two has such an influence over me, that I begin to feel the
+words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head, all sliding
+away, and going I don’t know where. I wonder where they do go, by the
+by?
+
+I hand the first book to my mother. Perhaps it is a grammar, perhaps a
+history, or geography. I take a last drowning look at the page as I give
+it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing pace while I have
+got it fresh. I trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone looks up. I trip
+over another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. I redden, tumble over
+half-a-dozen words, and stop. I think my mother would show me the book
+if she dared, but she does not dare, and she says softly:
+
+‘Oh, Davy, Davy!’
+
+‘Now, Clara,’ says Mr. Murdstone, ‘be firm with the boy. Don’t say, “Oh,
+Davy, Davy!” That’s childish. He knows his lesson, or he does not know
+it.’
+
+‘He does NOT know it,’ Miss Murdstone interposes awfully.
+
+‘I am really afraid he does not,’ says my mother.
+
+‘Then, you see, Clara,’ returns Miss Murdstone, ‘you should just give
+him the book back, and make him know it.’
+
+‘Yes, certainly,’ says my mother; ‘that is what I intend to do, my dear
+Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don’t be stupid.’
+
+I obey the first clause of the injunction by trying once more, but am
+not so successful with the second, for I am very stupid. I tumble down
+before I get to the old place, at a point where I was all right before,
+and stop to think. But I can’t think about the lesson. I think of the
+number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone’s cap, or of the price of Mr.
+Murdstone’s dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous problem that I have
+no business with, and don’t want to have anything at all to do with. Mr.
+Murdstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been expecting
+for a long time. Miss Murdstone does the same. My mother glances
+submissively at them, shuts the book, and lays it by as an arrear to be
+worked out when my other tasks are done.
+
+There is a pile of these arrears very soon, and it swells like a rolling
+snowball. The bigger it gets, the more stupid I get. The case is so
+hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of nonsense, that
+I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself to my fate. The
+despairing way in which my mother and I look at each other, as I blunder
+on, is truly melancholy. But the greatest effect in these miserable
+lessons is when my mother (thinking nobody is observing her) tries
+to give me the cue by the motion of her lips. At that instant, Miss
+Murdstone, who has been lying in wait for nothing else all along, says
+in a deep warning voice:
+
+‘Clara!’
+
+My mother starts, colours, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murdstone comes out
+of his chair, takes the book, throws it at me or boxes my ears with it,
+and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.
+
+Even when the lessons are done, the worst is yet to happen, in the shape
+of an appalling sum. This is invented for me, and delivered to me orally
+by Mr. Murdstone, and begins, ‘If I go into a cheesemonger’s shop, and
+buy five thousand double-Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each,
+present payment’--at which I see Miss Murdstone secretly overjoyed.
+I pore over these cheeses without any result or enlightenment until
+dinner-time, when, having made a Mulatto of myself by getting the dirt
+of the slate into the pores of my skin, I have a slice of bread to help
+me out with the cheeses, and am considered in disgrace for the rest of
+the evening.
+
+It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate studies
+generally took this course. I could have done very well if I had been
+without the Murdstones; but the influence of the Murdstones upon me was
+like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird. Even when
+I did get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was not
+much gained but dinner; for Miss Murdstone never could endure to see me
+untasked, and if I rashly made any show of being unemployed, called her
+brother’s attention to me by saying, ‘Clara, my dear, there’s nothing
+like work--give your boy an exercise’; which caused me to be clapped
+down to some new labour, there and then. As to any recreation with other
+children of my age, I had very little of that; for the gloomy theology
+of the Murdstones made all children out to be a swarm of little vipers
+(though there WAS a child once set in the midst of the Disciples), and
+held that they contaminated one another.
+
+The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six
+months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not
+made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and
+alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupefied
+but for one circumstance.
+
+It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little
+room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which
+nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room,
+Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the
+Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came
+out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and
+my hope of something beyond that place and time,--they, and the Arabian
+Nights, and the Tales of the Genii,--and did me no harm; for whatever
+harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It
+is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings
+and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It
+is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my
+small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating my
+favourite characters in them--as I did--and by putting Mr. and Miss
+Murdstone into all the bad ones--which I did too. I have been Tom Jones
+(a child’s Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have
+sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I
+verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages and
+Travels--I forget what, now--that were on those shelves; and for days
+and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house,
+armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees--the perfect
+realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of
+being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price.
+The Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the
+Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in
+despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or
+alive.
+
+This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the
+picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play
+in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life.
+Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every
+foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own, in my mind,
+connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in
+them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple; I have
+watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself
+upon the wicket-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club
+with Mr. Pickle, in the parlour of our little village alehouse.
+
+The reader now understands, as well as I do, what I was when I came to
+that point of my youthful history to which I am now coming again.
+
+One morning when I went into the parlour with my books, I found my
+mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr. Murdstone
+binding something round the bottom of a cane--a lithe and limber cane,
+which he left off binding when I came in, and poised and switched in the
+air.
+
+‘I tell you, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘I have been often flogged
+myself.’
+
+‘To be sure; of course,’ said Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ faltered my mother, meekly. ‘But--but do you
+think it did Edward good?’
+
+‘Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?’ asked Mr. Murdstone, gravely.
+
+‘That’s the point,’ said his sister.
+
+To this my mother returned, ‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ and said no more.
+
+I felt apprehensive that I was personally interested in this dialogue,
+and sought Mr. Murdstone’s eye as it lighted on mine.
+
+‘Now, David,’ he said--and I saw that cast again as he said it--‘you
+must be far more careful today than usual.’ He gave the cane another
+poise, and another switch; and having finished his preparation of it,
+laid it down beside him, with an impressive look, and took up his book.
+
+This was a good freshener to my presence of mind, as a beginning. I felt
+the words of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line,
+but by the entire page; I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed,
+if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me
+with a smoothness there was no checking.
+
+We began badly, and went on worse. I had come in with an idea of
+distinguishing myself rather, conceiving that I was very well prepared;
+but it turned out to be quite a mistake. Book after book was added to
+the heap of failures, Miss Murdstone being firmly watchful of us all the
+time. And when we came at last to the five thousand cheeses (canes he
+made it that day, I remember), my mother burst out crying.
+
+‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning voice.
+
+‘I am not quite well, my dear Jane, I think,’ said my mother.
+
+I saw him wink, solemnly, at his sister, as he rose and said, taking up
+the cane:
+
+‘Why, Jane, we can hardly expect Clara to bear, with perfect firmness,
+the worry and torment that David has occasioned her today. That would be
+stoical. Clara is greatly strengthened and improved, but we can hardly
+expect so much from her. David, you and I will go upstairs, boy.’
+
+As he took me out at the door, my mother ran towards us. Miss Murdstone
+said, ‘Clara! are you a perfect fool?’ and interfered. I saw my mother
+stop her ears then, and I heard her crying.
+
+He walked me up to my room slowly and gravely--I am certain he had a
+delight in that formal parade of executing justice--and when we got
+there, suddenly twisted my head under his arm.
+
+‘Mr. Murdstone! Sir!’ I cried to him. ‘Don’t! Pray don’t beat me! I have
+tried to learn, sir, but I can’t learn while you and Miss Murdstone are
+by. I can’t indeed!’
+
+‘Can’t you, indeed, David?’ he said. ‘We’ll try that.’
+
+He had my head as in a vice, but I twined round him somehow, and stopped
+him for a moment, entreating him not to beat me. It was only a moment
+that I stopped him, for he cut me heavily an instant afterwards, and in
+the same instant I caught the hand with which he held me in my mouth,
+between my teeth, and bit it through. It sets my teeth on edge to think
+of it.
+
+He beat me then, as if he would have beaten me to death. Above all the
+noise we made, I heard them running up the stairs, and crying out--I
+heard my mother crying out--and Peggotty. Then he was gone; and the
+door was locked outside; and I was lying, fevered and hot, and torn, and
+sore, and raging in my puny way, upon the floor.
+
+How well I recollect, when I became quiet, what an unnatural stillness
+seemed to reign through the whole house! How well I remember, when my
+smart and passion began to cool, how wicked I began to feel!
+
+I sat listening for a long while, but there was not a sound. I crawled
+up from the floor, and saw my face in the glass, so swollen, red, and
+ugly that it almost frightened me. My stripes were sore and stiff, and
+made me cry afresh, when I moved; but they were nothing to the guilt I
+felt. It lay heavier on my breast than if I had been a most atrocious
+criminal, I dare say.
+
+It had begun to grow dark, and I had shut the window (I had been lying,
+for the most part, with my head upon the sill, by turns crying, dozing,
+and looking listlessly out), when the key was turned, and Miss Murdstone
+came in with some bread and meat, and milk. These she put down upon the
+table without a word, glaring at me the while with exemplary firmness,
+and then retired, locking the door after her.
+
+Long after it was dark I sat there, wondering whether anybody else would
+come. When this appeared improbable for that night, I undressed, and
+went to bed; and, there, I began to wonder fearfully what would be done
+to me. Whether it was a criminal act that I had committed? Whether I
+should be taken into custody, and sent to prison? Whether I was at all
+in danger of being hanged?
+
+I never shall forget the waking, next morning; the being cheerful and
+fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by the stale
+and dismal oppression of remembrance. Miss Murdstone reappeared before
+I was out of bed; told me, in so many words, that I was free to walk in
+the garden for half an hour and no longer; and retired, leaving the door
+open, that I might avail myself of that permission.
+
+I did so, and did so every morning of my imprisonment, which lasted five
+days. If I could have seen my mother alone, I should have gone down on
+my knees to her and besought her forgiveness; but I saw no one, Miss
+Murdstone excepted, during the whole time--except at evening prayers in
+the parlour; to which I was escorted by Miss Murdstone after everybody
+else was placed; where I was stationed, a young outlaw, all alone by
+myself near the door; and whence I was solemnly conducted by my jailer,
+before any one arose from the devotional posture. I only observed that
+my mother was as far off from me as she could be, and kept her face
+another way so that I never saw it; and that Mr. Murdstone’s hand was
+bound up in a large linen wrapper.
+
+The length of those five days I can convey no idea of to any one. They
+occupy the place of years in my remembrance. The way in which I listened
+to all the incidents of the house that made themselves audible to me;
+the ringing of bells, the opening and shutting of doors, the murmuring
+of voices, the footsteps on the stairs; to any laughing, whistling, or
+singing, outside, which seemed more dismal than anything else to me in
+my solitude and disgrace--the uncertain pace of the hours, especially
+at night, when I would wake thinking it was morning, and find that the
+family were not yet gone to bed, and that all the length of night had
+yet to come--the depressed dreams and nightmares I had--the return of
+day, noon, afternoon, evening, when the boys played in the churchyard,
+and I watched them from a distance within the room, being ashamed to
+show myself at the window lest they should know I was a prisoner--the
+strange sensation of never hearing myself speak--the fleeting intervals
+of something like cheerfulness, which came with eating and drinking,
+and went away with it--the setting in of rain one evening, with a fresh
+smell, and its coming down faster and faster between me and the church,
+until it and gathering night seemed to quench me in gloom, and fear, and
+remorse--all this appears to have gone round and round for years instead
+of days, it is so vividly and strongly stamped on my remembrance. On the
+last night of my restraint, I was awakened by hearing my own name spoken
+in a whisper. I started up in bed, and putting out my arms in the dark,
+said:
+
+‘Is that you, Peggotty?’
+
+There was no immediate answer, but presently I heard my name again, in a
+tone so very mysterious and awful, that I think I should have gone into
+a fit, if it had not occurred to me that it must have come through the
+keyhole.
+
+I groped my way to the door, and putting my own lips to the keyhole,
+whispered: ‘Is that you, Peggotty dear?’
+
+‘Yes, my own precious Davy,’ she replied. ‘Be as soft as a mouse, or the
+Cat’ll hear us.’
+
+I understood this to mean Miss Murdstone, and was sensible of the
+urgency of the case; her room being close by.
+
+‘How’s mama, dear Peggotty? Is she very angry with me?’
+
+I could hear Peggotty crying softly on her side of the keyhole, as I was
+doing on mine, before she answered. ‘No. Not very.’
+
+‘What is going to be done with me, Peggotty dear? Do you know?’
+
+‘School. Near London,’ was Peggotty’s answer. I was obliged to get her
+to repeat it, for she spoke it the first time quite down my throat,
+in consequence of my having forgotten to take my mouth away from the
+keyhole and put my ear there; and though her words tickled me a good
+deal, I didn’t hear them.
+
+‘When, Peggotty?’
+
+‘Tomorrow.’
+
+‘Is that the reason why Miss Murdstone took the clothes out of my
+drawers?’ which she had done, though I have forgotten to mention it.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Peggotty. ‘Box.’
+
+‘Shan’t I see mama?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Peggotty. ‘Morning.’
+
+Then Peggotty fitted her mouth close to the keyhole, and delivered these
+words through it with as much feeling and earnestness as a keyhole
+has ever been the medium of communicating, I will venture to assert:
+shooting in each broken little sentence in a convulsive little burst of
+its own.
+
+‘Davy, dear. If I ain’t been azackly as intimate with you. Lately, as I
+used to be. It ain’t because I don’t love you. Just as well and more, my
+pretty poppet. It’s because I thought it better for you. And for someone
+else besides. Davy, my darling, are you listening? Can you hear?’
+
+‘Ye-ye-ye-yes, Peggotty!’ I sobbed.
+
+‘My own!’ said Peggotty, with infinite compassion. ‘What I want to say,
+is. That you must never forget me. For I’ll never forget you. And I’ll
+take as much care of your mama, Davy. As ever I took of you. And I won’t
+leave her. The day may come when she’ll be glad to lay her poor head.
+On her stupid, cross old Peggotty’s arm again. And I’ll write to you,
+my dear. Though I ain’t no scholar. And I’ll--I’ll--’ Peggotty fell to
+kissing the keyhole, as she couldn’t kiss me.
+
+‘Thank you, dear Peggotty!’ said I. ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you! Will you
+promise me one thing, Peggotty? Will you write and tell Mr. Peggotty and
+little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge and Ham, that I am not so bad as they
+might suppose, and that I sent ‘em all my love--especially to little
+Em’ly? Will you, if you please, Peggotty?’
+
+The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the keyhole with the
+greatest affection--I patted it with my hand, I recollect, as if it had
+been her honest face--and parted. From that night there grew up in my
+breast a feeling for Peggotty which I cannot very well define. She did
+not replace my mother; no one could do that; but she came into a vacancy
+in my heart, which closed upon her, and I felt towards her something
+I have never felt for any other human being. It was a sort of comical
+affection, too; and yet if she had died, I cannot think what I should
+have done, or how I should have acted out the tragedy it would have been
+to me.
+
+In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared as usual, and told me I was going
+to school; which was not altogether such news to me as she supposed. She
+also informed me that when I was dressed, I was to come downstairs into
+the parlour, and have my breakfast. There, I found my mother, very pale
+and with red eyes: into whose arms I ran, and begged her pardon from my
+suffering soul.
+
+‘Oh, Davy!’ she said. ‘That you could hurt anyone I love! Try to be
+better, pray to be better! I forgive you; but I am so grieved, Davy,
+that you should have such bad passions in your heart.’
+
+They had persuaded her that I was a wicked fellow, and she was more
+sorry for that than for my going away. I felt it sorely. I tried to eat
+my parting breakfast, but my tears dropped upon my bread-and-butter,
+and trickled into my tea. I saw my mother look at me sometimes, and then
+glance at the watchful Miss Murdstone, and than look down, or look away.
+
+‘Master Copperfield’s box there!’ said Miss Murdstone, when wheels were
+heard at the gate.
+
+I looked for Peggotty, but it was not she; neither she nor Mr. Murdstone
+appeared. My former acquaintance, the carrier, was at the door. The box
+was taken out to his cart, and lifted in.
+
+‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning note.
+
+‘Ready, my dear Jane,’ returned my mother. ‘Good-bye, Davy. You are
+going for your own good. Good-bye, my child. You will come home in the
+holidays, and be a better boy.’
+
+‘Clara!’ Miss Murdstone repeated.
+
+‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ replied my mother, who was holding me. ‘I
+forgive you, my dear boy. God bless you!’
+
+‘Clara!’ Miss Murdstone repeated.
+
+Miss Murdstone was good enough to take me out to the cart, and to say on
+the way that she hoped I would repent, before I came to a bad end; and
+then I got into the cart, and the lazy horse walked off with it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5. I AM SENT AWAY FROM HOME
+
+
+We might have gone about half a mile, and my pocket-handkerchief was
+quite wet through, when the carrier stopped short. Looking out to
+ascertain for what, I saw, to My amazement, Peggotty burst from a hedge
+and climb into the cart. She took me in both her arms, and squeezed me
+to her stays until the pressure on my nose was extremely painful, though
+I never thought of that till afterwards when I found it very tender. Not
+a single word did Peggotty speak. Releasing one of her arms, she put
+it down in her pocket to the elbow, and brought out some paper bags of
+cakes which she crammed into my pockets, and a purse which she put into
+my hand, but not one word did she say. After another and a final squeeze
+with both arms, she got down from the cart and ran away; and, my belief
+is, and has always been, without a solitary button on her gown. I
+picked up one, of several that were rolling about, and treasured it as a
+keepsake for a long time.
+
+The carrier looked at me, as if to inquire if she were coming back. I
+shook my head, and said I thought not. ‘Then come up,’ said the carrier
+to the lazy horse; who came up accordingly.
+
+Having by this time cried as much as I possibly could, I began to think
+it was of no use crying any more, especially as neither Roderick Random,
+nor that Captain in the Royal British Navy, had ever cried, that I
+could remember, in trying situations. The carrier, seeing me in this
+resolution, proposed that my pocket-handkerchief should be spread upon
+the horse’s back to dry. I thanked him, and assented; and particularly
+small it looked, under those circumstances.
+
+I had now leisure to examine the purse. It was a stiff leather purse,
+with a snap, and had three bright shillings in it, which Peggotty had
+evidently polished up with whitening, for my greater delight. But its
+most precious contents were two half-crowns folded together in a bit
+of paper, on which was written, in my mother’s hand, ‘For Davy. With my
+love.’ I was so overcome by this, that I asked the carrier to be so good
+as to reach me my pocket-handkerchief again; but he said he thought I
+had better do without it, and I thought I really had, so I wiped my eyes
+on my sleeve and stopped myself.
+
+For good, too; though, in consequence of my previous emotions, I was
+still occasionally seized with a stormy sob. After we had jogged on for
+some little time, I asked the carrier if he was going all the way.
+
+‘All the way where?’ inquired the carrier.
+
+‘There,’ I said.
+
+‘Where’s there?’ inquired the carrier.
+
+‘Near London,’ I said.
+
+‘Why that horse,’ said the carrier, jerking the rein to point him out,
+‘would be deader than pork afore he got over half the ground.’
+
+‘Are you only going to Yarmouth then?’ I asked.
+
+‘That’s about it,’ said the carrier. ‘And there I shall take you to the
+stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch that’ll take you to--wherever it is.’
+
+As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr. Barkis)
+to say--he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a phlegmatic
+temperament, and not at all conversational--I offered him a cake as a
+mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp, exactly like an elephant,
+and which made no more impression on his big face than it would have
+done on an elephant’s.
+
+‘Did SHE make ‘em, now?’ said Mr. Barkis, always leaning forward, in his
+slouching way, on the footboard of the cart with an arm on each knee.
+
+‘Peggotty, do you mean, sir?’
+
+‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Her.’
+
+‘Yes. She makes all our pastry, and does all our cooking.’
+
+‘Do she though?’ said Mr. Barkis. He made up his mouth as if to whistle,
+but he didn’t whistle. He sat looking at the horse’s ears, as if he saw
+something new there; and sat so, for a considerable time. By and by, he
+said:
+
+‘No sweethearts, I b’lieve?’
+
+‘Sweetmeats did you say, Mr. Barkis?’ For I thought he wanted
+something else to eat, and had pointedly alluded to that description of
+refreshment.
+
+‘Hearts,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Sweet hearts; no person walks with her!’
+
+‘With Peggotty?’
+
+‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Her.’
+
+‘Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart.’
+
+‘Didn’t she, though!’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and again he didn’t whistle, but
+sat looking at the horse’s ears.
+
+‘So she makes,’ said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of reflection,
+‘all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do she?’
+
+I replied that such was the fact.
+
+‘Well. I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘P’raps you might be
+writin’ to her?’
+
+‘I shall certainly write to her,’ I rejoined.
+
+‘Ah!’ he said, slowly turning his eyes towards me. ‘Well! If you was
+writin’ to her, p’raps you’d recollect to say that Barkis was willin’;
+would you?’
+
+‘That Barkis is willing,’ I repeated, innocently. ‘Is that all the
+message?’
+
+‘Ye-es,’ he said, considering. ‘Ye-es. Barkis is willin’.’
+
+‘But you will be at Blunderstone again tomorrow, Mr. Barkis,’ I said,
+faltering a little at the idea of my being far away from it then, and
+could give your own message so much better.’
+
+As he repudiated this suggestion, however, with a jerk of his head,
+and once more confirmed his previous request by saying, with profound
+gravity, ‘Barkis is willin’. That’s the message,’ I readily undertook
+its transmission. While I was waiting for the coach in the hotel
+at Yarmouth that very afternoon, I procured a sheet of paper and
+an inkstand, and wrote a note to Peggotty, which ran thus: ‘My dear
+Peggotty. I have come here safe. Barkis is willing. My love to mama.
+Yours affectionately. P.S. He says he particularly wants you to
+know--BARKIS IS WILLING.’
+
+When I had taken this commission on myself prospectively, Mr. Barkis
+relapsed into perfect silence; and I, feeling quite worn out by all that
+had happened lately, lay down on a sack in the cart and fell asleep. I
+slept soundly until we got to Yarmouth; which was so entirely new
+and strange to me in the inn-yard to which we drove, that I at once
+abandoned a latent hope I had had of meeting with some of Mr. Peggotty’s
+family there, perhaps even with little Em’ly herself.
+
+The coach was in the yard, shining very much all over, but without any
+horses to it as yet; and it looked in that state as if nothing was
+more unlikely than its ever going to London. I was thinking this, and
+wondering what would ultimately become of my box, which Mr. Barkis had
+put down on the yard-pavement by the pole (he having driven up the yard
+to turn his cart), and also what would ultimately become of me, when a
+lady looked out of a bow-window where some fowls and joints of meat were
+hanging up, and said:
+
+‘Is that the little gentleman from Blunderstone?’
+
+‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said.
+
+‘What name?’ inquired the lady.
+
+‘Copperfield, ma’am,’ I said.
+
+‘That won’t do,’ returned the lady. ‘Nobody’s dinner is paid for here,
+in that name.’
+
+‘Is it Murdstone, ma’am?’ I said.
+
+‘If you’re Master Murdstone,’ said the lady, ‘why do you go and give
+another name, first?’
+
+I explained to the lady how it was, who than rang a bell, and called
+out, ‘William! show the coffee-room!’ upon which a waiter came running
+out of a kitchen on the opposite side of the yard to show it, and seemed
+a good deal surprised when he was only to show it to me.
+
+It was a large long room with some large maps in it. I doubt if I could
+have felt much stranger if the maps had been real foreign countries, and
+I cast away in the middle of them. I felt it was taking a liberty to
+sit down, with my cap in my hand, on the corner of the chair nearest the
+door; and when the waiter laid a cloth on purpose for me, and put a set
+of castors on it, I think I must have turned red all over with modesty.
+
+He brought me some chops, and vegetables, and took the covers off in
+such a bouncing manner that I was afraid I must have given him some
+offence. But he greatly relieved my mind by putting a chair for me at
+the table, and saying, very affably, ‘Now, six-foot! come on!’
+
+I thanked him, and took my seat at the board; but found it extremely
+difficult to handle my knife and fork with anything like dexterity,
+or to avoid splashing myself with the gravy, while he was standing
+opposite, staring so hard, and making me blush in the most dreadful
+manner every time I caught his eye. After watching me into the second
+chop, he said:
+
+‘There’s half a pint of ale for you. Will you have it now?’
+
+I thanked him and said, ‘Yes.’ Upon which he poured it out of a jug
+into a large tumbler, and held it up against the light, and made it look
+beautiful.
+
+‘My eye!’ he said. ‘It seems a good deal, don’t it?’
+
+‘It does seem a good deal,’ I answered with a smile. For it was quite
+delightful to me, to find him so pleasant. He was a twinkling-eyed,
+pimple-faced man, with his hair standing upright all over his head; and
+as he stood with one arm a-kimbo, holding up the glass to the light with
+the other hand, he looked quite friendly.
+
+‘There was a gentleman here, yesterday,’ he said--‘a stout gentleman, by
+the name of Topsawyer--perhaps you know him?’
+
+‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think--’
+
+‘In breeches and gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, grey coat, speckled
+choker,’ said the waiter.
+
+‘No,’ I said bashfully, ‘I haven’t the pleasure--’
+
+‘He came in here,’ said the waiter, looking at the light through the
+tumbler, ‘ordered a glass of this ale--WOULD order it--I told him
+not--drank it, and fell dead. It was too old for him. It oughtn’t to be
+drawn; that’s the fact.’
+
+I was very much shocked to hear of this melancholy accident, and said I
+thought I had better have some water.
+
+‘Why you see,’ said the waiter, still looking at the light through the
+tumbler, with one of his eyes shut up, ‘our people don’t like things
+being ordered and left. It offends ‘em. But I’ll drink it, if you like.
+I’m used to it, and use is everything. I don’t think it’ll hurt me, if I
+throw my head back, and take it off quick. Shall I?’
+
+I replied that he would much oblige me by drinking it, if he thought
+he could do it safely, but by no means otherwise. When he did throw his
+head back, and take it off quick, I had a horrible fear, I confess,
+of seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Mr. Topsawyer, and fall
+lifeless on the carpet. But it didn’t hurt him. On the contrary, I
+thought he seemed the fresher for it.
+
+‘What have we got here?’ he said, putting a fork into my dish. ‘Not
+chops?’
+
+‘Chops,’ I said.
+
+‘Lord bless my soul!’ he exclaimed, ‘I didn’t know they were chops. Why,
+a chop’s the very thing to take off the bad effects of that beer! Ain’t
+it lucky?’
+
+So he took a chop by the bone in one hand, and a potato in the other,
+and ate away with a very good appetite, to my extreme satisfaction.
+He afterwards took another chop, and another potato; and after that,
+another chop and another potato. When we had done, he brought me a
+pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become
+absent in his mind for some moments.
+
+‘How’s the pie?’ he said, rousing himself.
+
+‘It’s a pudding,’ I made answer.
+
+‘Pudding!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, bless me, so it is! What!’ looking at it
+nearer. ‘You don’t mean to say it’s a batter-pudding!’
+
+‘Yes, it is indeed.’
+
+‘Why, a batter-pudding,’ he said, taking up a table-spoon, ‘is my
+favourite pudding! Ain’t that lucky? Come on, little ‘un, and let’s see
+who’ll get most.’
+
+The waiter certainly got most. He entreated me more than once to come in
+and win, but what with his table-spoon to my tea-spoon, his dispatch to
+my dispatch, and his appetite to my appetite, I was left far behind at
+the first mouthful, and had no chance with him. I never saw anyone enjoy
+a pudding so much, I think; and he laughed, when it was all gone, as if
+his enjoyment of it lasted still.
+
+Finding him so very friendly and companionable, it was then that I asked
+for the pen and ink and paper, to write to Peggotty. He not only brought
+it immediately, but was good enough to look over me while I wrote the
+letter. When I had finished it, he asked me where I was going to school.
+
+I said, ‘Near London,’ which was all I knew.
+
+‘Oh! my eye!’ he said, looking very low-spirited, ‘I am sorry for that.’
+
+‘Why?’ I asked him.
+
+‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, shaking his head, ‘that’s the school where they
+broke the boy’s ribs--two ribs--a little boy he was. I should say he
+was--let me see--how old are you, about?’
+
+I told him between eight and nine.
+
+‘That’s just his age,’ he said. ‘He was eight years and six months old
+when they broke his first rib; eight years and eight months old when
+they broke his second, and did for him.’
+
+I could not disguise from myself, or from the waiter, that this was an
+uncomfortable coincidence, and inquired how it was done. His answer was
+not cheering to my spirits, for it consisted of two dismal words, ‘With
+whopping.’
+
+The blowing of the coach-horn in the yard was a seasonable diversion,
+which made me get up and hesitatingly inquire, in the mingled pride and
+diffidence of having a purse (which I took out of my pocket), if there
+were anything to pay.
+
+‘There’s a sheet of letter-paper,’ he returned. ‘Did you ever buy a
+sheet of letter-paper?’
+
+I could not remember that I ever had.
+
+‘It’s dear,’ he said, ‘on account of the duty. Threepence. That’s
+the way we’re taxed in this country. There’s nothing else, except the
+waiter. Never mind the ink. I lose by that.’
+
+‘What should you--what should I--how much ought I to--what would it be
+right to pay the waiter, if you please?’ I stammered, blushing.
+
+‘If I hadn’t a family, and that family hadn’t the cowpock,’ said the
+waiter, ‘I wouldn’t take a sixpence. If I didn’t support a aged pairint,
+and a lovely sister,’--here the waiter was greatly agitated--‘I wouldn’t
+take a farthing. If I had a good place, and was treated well here, I
+should beg acceptance of a trifle, instead of taking of it. But I live
+on broken wittles--and I sleep on the coals’--here the waiter burst into
+tears.
+
+I was very much concerned for his misfortunes, and felt that any
+recognition short of ninepence would be mere brutality and hardness of
+heart. Therefore I gave him one of my three bright shillings, which he
+received with much humility and veneration, and spun up with his thumb,
+directly afterwards, to try the goodness of.
+
+It was a little disconcerting to me, to find, when I was being helped
+up behind the coach, that I was supposed to have eaten all the dinner
+without any assistance. I discovered this, from overhearing the lady in
+the bow-window say to the guard, ‘Take care of that child, George, or
+he’ll burst!’ and from observing that the women-servants who were about
+the place came out to look and giggle at me as a young phenomenon. My
+unfortunate friend the waiter, who had quite recovered his spirits, did
+not appear to be disturbed by this, but joined in the general admiration
+without being at all confused. If I had any doubt of him, I suppose
+this half awakened it; but I am inclined to believe that with the simple
+confidence of a child, and the natural reliance of a child upon superior
+years (qualities I am very sorry any children should prematurely change
+for worldly wisdom), I had no serious mistrust of him on the whole, even
+then.
+
+I felt it rather hard, I must own, to be made, without deserving it, the
+subject of jokes between the coachman and guard as to the coach drawing
+heavy behind, on account of my sitting there, and as to the greater
+expediency of my travelling by waggon. The story of my supposed appetite
+getting wind among the outside passengers, they were merry upon it
+likewise; and asked me whether I was going to be paid for, at school,
+as two brothers or three, and whether I was contracted for, or went upon
+the regular terms; with other pleasant questions. But the worst of
+it was, that I knew I should be ashamed to eat anything, when an
+opportunity offered, and that, after a rather light dinner, I should
+remain hungry all night--for I had left my cakes behind, at the hotel,
+in my hurry. My apprehensions were realized. When we stopped for supper
+I couldn’t muster courage to take any, though I should have liked it
+very much, but sat by the fire and said I didn’t want anything. This did
+not save me from more jokes, either; for a husky-voiced gentleman with
+a rough face, who had been eating out of a sandwich-box nearly all the
+way, except when he had been drinking out of a bottle, said I was like
+a boa-constrictor who took enough at one meal to last him a long time;
+after which, he actually brought a rash out upon himself with boiled
+beef.
+
+We had started from Yarmouth at three o’clock in the afternoon, and we
+were due in London about eight next morning. It was Mid-summer weather,
+and the evening was very pleasant. When we passed through a village, I
+pictured to myself what the insides of the houses were like, and what
+the inhabitants were about; and when boys came running after us, and
+got up behind and swung there for a little way, I wondered whether their
+fathers were alive, and whether they were happy at home. I had plenty to
+think of, therefore, besides my mind running continually on the kind
+of place I was going to--which was an awful speculation. Sometimes, I
+remember, I resigned myself to thoughts of home and Peggotty; and to
+endeavouring, in a confused blind way, to recall how I had felt, and
+what sort of boy I used to be, before I bit Mr. Murdstone: which I
+couldn’t satisfy myself about by any means, I seemed to have bitten him
+in such a remote antiquity.
+
+The night was not so pleasant as the evening, for it got chilly; and
+being put between two gentlemen (the rough-faced one and another) to
+prevent my tumbling off the coach, I was nearly smothered by their
+falling asleep, and completely blocking me up. They squeezed me so hard
+sometimes, that I could not help crying out, ‘Oh! If you please!’--which
+they didn’t like at all, because it woke them. Opposite me was an
+elderly lady in a great fur cloak, who looked in the dark more like a
+haystack than a lady, she was wrapped up to such a degree. This lady had
+a basket with her, and she hadn’t known what to do with it, for a long
+time, until she found that on account of my legs being short, it could
+go underneath me. It cramped and hurt me so, that it made me perfectly
+miserable; but if I moved in the least, and made a glass that was in the
+basket rattle against something else (as it was sure to do), she gave
+me the cruellest poke with her foot, and said, ‘Come, don’t YOU fidget.
+YOUR bones are young enough, I’m sure!’
+
+At last the sun rose, and then my companions seemed to sleep easier.
+The difficulties under which they had laboured all night, and which had
+found utterance in the most terrific gasps and snorts, are not to be
+conceived. As the sun got higher, their sleep became lighter, and so
+they gradually one by one awoke. I recollect being very much surprised
+by the feint everybody made, then, of not having been to sleep at all,
+and by the uncommon indignation with which everyone repelled the
+charge. I labour under the same kind of astonishment to this day, having
+invariably observed that of all human weaknesses, the one to which our
+common nature is the least disposed to confess (I cannot imagine why) is
+the weakness of having gone to sleep in a coach.
+
+What an amazing place London was to me when I saw it in the distance,
+and how I believed all the adventures of all my favourite heroes to be
+constantly enacting and re-enacting there, and how I vaguely made it
+out in my own mind to be fuller of wonders and wickedness than all the
+cities of the earth, I need not stop here to relate. We approached it by
+degrees, and got, in due time, to the inn in the Whitechapel district,
+for which we were bound. I forget whether it was the Blue Bull, or the
+Blue Boar; but I know it was the Blue Something, and that its likeness
+was painted up on the back of the coach.
+
+The guard’s eye lighted on me as he was getting down, and he said at the
+booking-office door:
+
+‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster booked in the name of Murdstone,
+from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, to be left till called for?’
+
+Nobody answered.
+
+‘Try Copperfield, if you please, sir,’ said I, looking helplessly down.
+
+‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster, booked in the name of Murdstone,
+from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, but owning to the name of Copperfield, to
+be left till called for?’ said the guard. ‘Come! IS there anybody?’
+
+No. There was nobody. I looked anxiously around; but the inquiry made no
+impression on any of the bystanders, if I except a man in gaiters, with
+one eye, who suggested that they had better put a brass collar round my
+neck, and tie me up in the stable.
+
+A ladder was brought, and I got down after the lady, who was like a
+haystack: not daring to stir, until her basket was removed. The coach
+was clear of passengers by that time, the luggage was very soon cleared
+out, the horses had been taken out before the luggage, and now the coach
+itself was wheeled and backed off by some hostlers, out of the way.
+Still, nobody appeared, to claim the dusty youngster from Blunderstone,
+Suffolk.
+
+More solitary than Robinson Crusoe, who had nobody to look at him
+and see that he was solitary, I went into the booking-office, and, by
+invitation of the clerk on duty, passed behind the counter, and sat down
+on the scale at which they weighed the luggage. Here, as I sat looking
+at the parcels, packages, and books, and inhaling the smell of stables
+(ever since associated with that morning), a procession of most
+tremendous considerations began to march through my mind. Supposing
+nobody should ever fetch me, how long would they consent to keep me
+there? Would they keep me long enough to spend seven shillings? Should I
+sleep at night in one of those wooden bins, with the other luggage,
+and wash myself at the pump in the yard in the morning; or should I
+be turned out every night, and expected to come again to be left till
+called for, when the office opened next day? Supposing there was no
+mistake in the case, and Mr. Murdstone had devised this plan to get rid
+of me, what should I do? If they allowed me to remain there until my
+seven shillings were spent, I couldn’t hope to remain there when I began
+to starve. That would obviously be inconvenient and unpleasant to the
+customers, besides entailing on the Blue Whatever-it-was, the risk of
+funeral expenses. If I started off at once, and tried to walk back home,
+how could I ever find my way, how could I ever hope to walk so far, how
+could I make sure of anyone but Peggotty, even if I got back? If I
+found out the nearest proper authorities, and offered myself to go for a
+soldier, or a sailor, I was such a little fellow that it was most likely
+they wouldn’t take me in. These thoughts, and a hundred other such
+thoughts, turned me burning hot, and made me giddy with apprehension and
+dismay. I was in the height of my fever when a man entered and whispered
+to the clerk, who presently slanted me off the scale, and pushed me over
+to him, as if I were weighed, bought, delivered, and paid for.
+
+As I went out of the office, hand in hand with this new acquaintance,
+I stole a look at him. He was a gaunt, sallow young man, with hollow
+cheeks, and a chin almost as black as Mr. Murdstone’s; but there the
+likeness ended, for his whiskers were shaved off, and his hair, instead
+of being glossy, was rusty and dry. He was dressed in a suit of black
+clothes which were rather rusty and dry too, and rather short in the
+sleeves and legs; and he had a white neck-kerchief on, that was not
+over-clean. I did not, and do not, suppose that this neck-kerchief was
+all the linen he wore, but it was all he showed or gave any hint of.
+
+‘You’re the new boy?’ he said. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
+
+I supposed I was. I didn’t know.
+
+‘I’m one of the masters at Salem House,’ he said.
+
+I made him a bow and felt very much overawed. I was so ashamed to allude
+to a commonplace thing like my box, to a scholar and a master at Salem
+House, that we had gone some little distance from the yard before I had
+the hardihood to mention it. We turned back, on my humbly insinuating
+that it might be useful to me hereafter; and he told the clerk that the
+carrier had instructions to call for it at noon.
+
+‘If you please, sir,’ I said, when we had accomplished about the same
+distance as before, ‘is it far?’
+
+‘It’s down by Blackheath,’ he said.
+
+‘Is that far, sir?’ I diffidently asked.
+
+‘It’s a good step,’ he said. ‘We shall go by the stage-coach. It’s about
+six miles.’
+
+I was so faint and tired, that the idea of holding out for six miles
+more, was too much for me. I took heart to tell him that I had had
+nothing all night, and that if he would allow me to buy something to
+eat, I should be very much obliged to him. He appeared surprised at
+this--I see him stop and look at me now--and after considering for a few
+moments, said he wanted to call on an old person who lived not far off,
+and that the best way would be for me to buy some bread, or whatever I
+liked best that was wholesome, and make my breakfast at her house, where
+we could get some milk.
+
+Accordingly we looked in at a baker’s window, and after I had made a
+series of proposals to buy everything that was bilious in the shop, and
+he had rejected them one by one, we decided in favour of a nice little
+loaf of brown bread, which cost me threepence. Then, at a grocer’s shop,
+we bought an egg and a slice of streaky bacon; which still left what
+I thought a good deal of change, out of the second of the bright
+shillings, and made me consider London a very cheap place. These
+provisions laid in, we went on through a great noise and uproar that
+confused my weary head beyond description, and over a bridge which, no
+doubt, was London Bridge (indeed I think he told me so, but I was half
+asleep), until we came to the poor person’s house, which was a part of
+some alms-houses, as I knew by their look, and by an inscription on a
+stone over the gate which said they were established for twenty-five
+poor women.
+
+The Master at Salem House lifted the latch of one of a number of little
+black doors that were all alike, and had each a little diamond-paned
+window on one side, and another little diamond--paned window above; and
+we went into the little house of one of these poor old women, who was
+blowing a fire to make a little saucepan boil. On seeing the master
+enter, the old woman stopped with the bellows on her knee, and said
+something that I thought sounded like ‘My Charley!’ but on seeing me
+come in too, she got up, and rubbing her hands made a confused sort of
+half curtsey.
+
+‘Can you cook this young gentleman’s breakfast for him, if you please?’
+said the Master at Salem House.
+
+‘Can I?’ said the old woman. ‘Yes can I, sure!’
+
+‘How’s Mrs. Fibbitson today?’ said the Master, looking at another old
+woman in a large chair by the fire, who was such a bundle of clothes
+that I feel grateful to this hour for not having sat upon her by
+mistake.
+
+‘Ah, she’s poorly,’ said the first old woman. ‘It’s one of her bad days.
+If the fire was to go out, through any accident, I verily believe she’d
+go out too, and never come to life again.’
+
+As they looked at her, I looked at her also. Although it was a warm day,
+she seemed to think of nothing but the fire. I fancied she was jealous
+even of the saucepan on it; and I have reason to know that she took its
+impressment into the service of boiling my egg and broiling my bacon, in
+dudgeon; for I saw her, with my own discomfited eyes, shake her fist at
+me once, when those culinary operations were going on, and no one else
+was looking. The sun streamed in at the little window, but she sat with
+her own back and the back of the large chair towards it, screening the
+fire as if she were sedulously keeping IT warm, instead of it keeping
+her warm, and watching it in a most distrustful manner. The completion
+of the preparations for my breakfast, by relieving the fire, gave her
+such extreme joy that she laughed aloud--and a very unmelodious laugh
+she had, I must say.
+
+I sat down to my brown loaf, my egg, and my rasher of bacon, with a
+basin of milk besides, and made a most delicious meal. While I was yet
+in the full enjoyment of it, the old woman of the house said to the
+Master:
+
+‘Have you got your flute with you?’
+
+‘Yes,’ he returned.
+
+‘Have a blow at it,’ said the old woman, coaxingly. ‘Do!’
+
+The Master, upon this, put his hand underneath the skirts of his coat,
+and brought out his flute in three pieces, which he screwed together,
+and began immediately to play. My impression is, after many years of
+consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who
+played worse. He made the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced
+by any means, natural or artificial. I don’t know what the tunes
+were--if there were such things in the performance at all, which I
+doubt--but the influence of the strain upon me was, first, to make me
+think of all my sorrows until I could hardly keep my tears back; then to
+take away my appetite; and lastly, to make me so sleepy that I couldn’t
+keep my eyes open. They begin to close again, and I begin to nod, as the
+recollection rises fresh upon me. Once more the little room, with its
+open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular
+little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock’s
+feathers displayed over the mantelpiece--I remember wondering when I
+first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what
+his finery was doomed to come to--fades from before me, and I nod, and
+sleep. The flute becomes inaudible, the wheels of the coach are heard
+instead, and I am on my journey. The coach jolts, I wake with a start,
+and the flute has come back again, and the Master at Salem House is
+sitting with his legs crossed, playing it dolefully, while the old woman
+of the house looks on delighted. She fades in her turn, and he fades,
+and all fades, and there is no flute, no Master, no Salem House, no
+David Copperfield, no anything but heavy sleep.
+
+I dreamed, I thought, that once while he was blowing into this dismal
+flute, the old woman of the house, who had gone nearer and nearer to him
+in her ecstatic admiration, leaned over the back of his chair and gave
+him an affectionate squeeze round the neck, which stopped his playing
+for a moment. I was in the middle state between sleeping and waking,
+either then or immediately afterwards; for, as he resumed--it was a real
+fact that he had stopped playing--I saw and heard the same old woman ask
+Mrs. Fibbitson if it wasn’t delicious (meaning the flute), to which Mrs.
+Fibbitson replied, ‘Ay, ay! yes!’ and nodded at the fire: to which, I am
+persuaded, she gave the credit of the whole performance.
+
+When I seemed to have been dozing a long while, the Master at Salem
+House unscrewed his flute into the three pieces, put them up as before,
+and took me away. We found the coach very near at hand, and got upon the
+roof; but I was so dead sleepy, that when we stopped on the road to take
+up somebody else, they put me inside where there were no passengers, and
+where I slept profoundly, until I found the coach going at a footpace up
+a steep hill among green leaves. Presently, it stopped, and had come to
+its destination.
+
+A short walk brought us--I mean the Master and me--to Salem House, which
+was enclosed with a high brick wall, and looked very dull. Over a door
+in this wall was a board with SALEM HOUSE upon it; and through a grating
+in this door we were surveyed when we rang the bell by a surly face,
+which I found, on the door being opened, belonged to a stout man with a
+bull-neck, a wooden leg, overhanging temples, and his hair cut close all
+round his head.
+
+‘The new boy,’ said the Master.
+
+The man with the wooden leg eyed me all over--it didn’t take long, for
+there was not much of me--and locked the gate behind us, and took out
+the key. We were going up to the house, among some dark heavy trees,
+when he called after my conductor. ‘Hallo!’
+
+We looked back, and he was standing at the door of a little lodge, where
+he lived, with a pair of boots in his hand.
+
+‘Here! The cobbler’s been,’ he said, ‘since you’ve been out, Mr. Mell,
+and he says he can’t mend ‘em any more. He says there ain’t a bit of the
+original boot left, and he wonders you expect it.’
+
+With these words he threw the boots towards Mr. Mell, who went back a
+few paces to pick them up, and looked at them (very disconsolately,
+I was afraid), as we went on together. I observed then, for the first
+time, that the boots he had on were a good deal the worse for wear, and
+that his stocking was just breaking out in one place, like a bud.
+
+Salem House was a square brick building with wings; of a bare and
+unfurnished appearance. All about it was so very quiet, that I said to
+Mr. Mell I supposed the boys were out; but he seemed surprised at my
+not knowing that it was holiday-time. That all the boys were at their
+several homes. That Mr. Creakle, the proprietor, was down by the
+sea-side with Mrs. and Miss Creakle; and that I was sent in holiday-time
+as a punishment for my misdoing, all of which he explained to me as we
+went along.
+
+I gazed upon the schoolroom into which he took me, as the most forlorn
+and desolate place I had ever seen. I see it now. A long room with three
+long rows of desks, and six of forms, and bristling all round with pegs
+for hats and slates. Scraps of old copy-books and exercises litter the
+dirty floor. Some silkworms’ houses, made of the same materials, are
+scattered over the desks. Two miserable little white mice, left behind
+by their owner, are running up and down in a fusty castle made of
+pasteboard and wire, looking in all the corners with their red eyes
+for anything to eat. A bird, in a cage very little bigger than himself,
+makes a mournful rattle now and then in hopping on his perch, two inches
+high, or dropping from it; but neither sings nor chirps. There is a
+strange unwholesome smell upon the room, like mildewed corduroys, sweet
+apples wanting air, and rotten books. There could not well be more ink
+splashed about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction,
+and the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the
+varying seasons of the year.
+
+Mr. Mell having left me while he took his irreparable boots upstairs, I
+went softly to the upper end of the room, observing all this as I crept
+along. Suddenly I came upon a pasteboard placard, beautifully written,
+which was lying on the desk, and bore these words: ‘TAKE CARE OF HIM. HE
+BITES.’
+
+I got upon the desk immediately, apprehensive of at least a great dog
+underneath. But, though I looked all round with anxious eyes, I could
+see nothing of him. I was still engaged in peering about, when Mr. Mell
+came back, and asked me what I did up there?
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ says I, ‘if you please, I’m looking for the
+dog.’
+
+‘Dog?’ he says. ‘What dog?’
+
+‘Isn’t it a dog, sir?’
+
+‘Isn’t what a dog?’
+
+‘That’s to be taken care of, sir; that bites.’
+
+‘No, Copperfield,’ says he, gravely, ‘that’s not a dog. That’s a boy.
+My instructions are, Copperfield, to put this placard on your back. I am
+sorry to make such a beginning with you, but I must do it.’ With that he
+took me down, and tied the placard, which was neatly constructed for
+the purpose, on my shoulders like a knapsack; and wherever I went,
+afterwards, I had the consolation of carrying it.
+
+What I suffered from that placard, nobody can imagine. Whether it was
+possible for people to see me or not, I always fancied that somebody was
+reading it. It was no relief to turn round and find nobody; for wherever
+my back was, there I imagined somebody always to be. That cruel man with
+the wooden leg aggravated my sufferings. He was in authority; and if he
+ever saw me leaning against a tree, or a wall, or the house, he roared
+out from his lodge door in a stupendous voice, ‘Hallo, you sir! You
+Copperfield! Show that badge conspicuous, or I’ll report you!’ The
+playground was a bare gravelled yard, open to all the back of the house
+and the offices; and I knew that the servants read it, and the butcher
+read it, and the baker read it; that everybody, in a word, who came
+backwards and forwards to the house, of a morning when I was ordered to
+walk there, read that I was to be taken care of, for I bit, I recollect
+that I positively began to have a dread of myself, as a kind of wild boy
+who did bite.
+
+There was an old door in this playground, on which the boys had a
+custom of carving their names. It was completely covered with such
+inscriptions. In my dread of the end of the vacation and their coming
+back, I could not read a boy’s name, without inquiring in what tone and
+with what emphasis HE would read, ‘Take care of him. He bites.’ There
+was one boy--a certain J. Steerforth--who cut his name very deep and
+very often, who, I conceived, would read it in a rather strong voice,
+and afterwards pull my hair. There was another boy, one Tommy Traddles,
+who I dreaded would make game of it, and pretend to be dreadfully
+frightened of me. There was a third, George Demple, who I fancied would
+sing it. I have looked, a little shrinking creature, at that door, until
+the owners of all the names--there were five-and-forty of them in the
+school then, Mr. Mell said--seemed to send me to Coventry by general
+acclamation, and to cry out, each in his own way, ‘Take care of him. He
+bites!’
+
+It was the same with the places at the desks and forms. It was the same
+with the groves of deserted bedsteads I peeped at, on my way to, and
+when I was in, my own bed. I remember dreaming night after night, of
+being with my mother as she used to be, or of going to a party at Mr.
+Peggotty’s, or of travelling outside the stage-coach, or of dining again
+with my unfortunate friend the waiter, and in all these circumstances
+making people scream and stare, by the unhappy disclosure that I had
+nothing on but my little night-shirt, and that placard.
+
+In the monotony of my life, and in my constant apprehension of the
+re-opening of the school, it was such an insupportable affliction! I had
+long tasks every day to do with Mr. Mell; but I did them, there being
+no Mr. and Miss Murdstone here, and got through them without disgrace.
+Before, and after them, I walked about--supervised, as I have mentioned,
+by the man with the wooden leg. How vividly I call to mind the damp
+about the house, the green cracked flagstones in the court, an old leaky
+water-butt, and the discoloured trunks of some of the grim trees, which
+seemed to have dripped more in the rain than other trees, and to have
+blown less in the sun! At one we dined, Mr. Mell and I, at the upper end
+of a long bare dining-room, full of deal tables, and smelling of fat.
+Then, we had more tasks until tea, which Mr. Mell drank out of a blue
+teacup, and I out of a tin pot. All day long, and until seven or eight
+in the evening, Mr. Mell, at his own detached desk in the schoolroom,
+worked hard with pen, ink, ruler, books, and writing-paper, making out
+the bills (as I found) for last half-year. When he had put up his things
+for the night he took out his flute, and blew at it, until I almost
+thought he would gradually blow his whole being into the large hole at
+the top, and ooze away at the keys.
+
+I picture my small self in the dimly-lighted rooms, sitting with my
+head upon my hand, listening to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell,
+and conning tomorrow’s lessons. I picture myself with my books shut up,
+still listening to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell, and listening
+through it to what used to be at home, and to the blowing of the wind
+on Yarmouth flats, and feeling very sad and solitary. I picture myself
+going up to bed, among the unused rooms, and sitting on my bed-side
+crying for a comfortable word from Peggotty. I picture myself coming
+downstairs in the morning, and looking through a long ghastly gash of a
+staircase window at the school-bell hanging on the top of an out-house
+with a weathercock above it; and dreading the time when it shall ring J.
+Steerforth and the rest to work: which is only second, in my foreboding
+apprehensions, to the time when the man with the wooden leg shall unlock
+the rusty gate to give admission to the awful Mr. Creakle. I cannot
+think I was a very dangerous character in any of these aspects, but in
+all of them I carried the same warning on my back.
+
+Mr. Mell never said much to me, but he was never harsh to me. I suppose
+we were company to each other, without talking. I forgot to mention that
+he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and clench his fist, and
+grind his teeth, and pull his hair in an unaccountable manner. But he
+had these peculiarities: and at first they frightened me, though I soon
+got used to them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6. I ENLARGE MY CIRCLE OF ACQUAINTANCE
+
+
+I HAD led this life about a month, when the man with the wooden leg
+began to stump about with a mop and a bucket of water, from which I
+inferred that preparations were making to receive Mr. Creakle and the
+boys. I was not mistaken; for the mop came into the schoolroom before
+long, and turned out Mr. Mell and me, who lived where we could, and got
+on how we could, for some days, during which we were always in the way
+of two or three young women, who had rarely shown themselves before, and
+were so continually in the midst of dust that I sneezed almost as much
+as if Salem House had been a great snuff-box.
+
+One day I was informed by Mr. Mell that Mr. Creakle would be home that
+evening. In the evening, after tea, I heard that he was come. Before
+bedtime, I was fetched by the man with the wooden leg to appear before
+him.
+
+Mr. Creakle’s part of the house was a good deal more comfortable than
+ours, and he had a snug bit of garden that looked pleasant after the
+dusty playground, which was such a desert in miniature, that I thought
+no one but a camel, or a dromedary, could have felt at home in it. It
+seemed to me a bold thing even to take notice that the passage looked
+comfortable, as I went on my way, trembling, to Mr. Creakle’s presence:
+which so abashed me, when I was ushered into it, that I hardly saw
+Mrs. Creakle or Miss Creakle (who were both there, in the parlour), or
+anything but Mr. Creakle, a stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain
+and seals, in an arm-chair, with a tumbler and bottle beside him.
+
+‘So!’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘This is the young gentleman whose teeth are to
+be filed! Turn him round.’
+
+The wooden-legged man turned me about so as to exhibit the placard; and
+having afforded time for a full survey of it, turned me about again,
+with my face to Mr. Creakle, and posted himself at Mr. Creakle’s side.
+Mr. Creakle’s face was fiery, and his eyes were small, and deep in his
+head; he had thick veins in his forehead, a little nose, and a large
+chin. He was bald on the top of his head; and had some thin wet-looking
+hair that was just turning grey, brushed across each temple, so that
+the two sides interlaced on his forehead. But the circumstance about
+him which impressed me most, was, that he had no voice, but spoke in a
+whisper. The exertion this cost him, or the consciousness of talking in
+that feeble way, made his angry face so much more angry, and his thick
+veins so much thicker, when he spoke, that I am not surprised, on
+looking back, at this peculiarity striking me as his chief one. ‘Now,’
+said Mr. Creakle. ‘What’s the report of this boy?’
+
+‘There’s nothing against him yet,’ returned the man with the wooden leg.
+‘There has been no opportunity.’
+
+I thought Mr. Creakle was disappointed. I thought Mrs. and Miss Creakle
+(at whom I now glanced for the first time, and who were, both, thin and
+quiet) were not disappointed.
+
+‘Come here, sir!’ said Mr. Creakle, beckoning to me.
+
+‘Come here!’ said the man with the wooden leg, repeating the gesture.
+
+‘I have the happiness of knowing your father-in-law,’ whispered Mr.
+Creakle, taking me by the ear; ‘and a worthy man he is, and a man of
+a strong character. He knows me, and I know him. Do YOU know me? Hey?’
+said Mr. Creakle, pinching my ear with ferocious playfulness.
+
+‘Not yet, sir,’ I said, flinching with the pain.
+
+‘Not yet? Hey?’ repeated Mr. Creakle. ‘But you will soon. Hey?’
+
+‘You will soon. Hey?’ repeated the man with the wooden leg. I afterwards
+found that he generally acted, with his strong voice, as Mr. Creakle’s
+interpreter to the boys.
+
+I was very much frightened, and said, I hoped so, if he pleased. I felt,
+all this while, as if my ear were blazing; he pinched it so hard.
+
+‘I’ll tell you what I am,’ whispered Mr. Creakle, letting it go at last,
+with a screw at parting that brought the water into my eyes. ‘I’m a
+Tartar.’
+
+‘A Tartar,’ said the man with the wooden leg.
+
+‘When I say I’ll do a thing, I do it,’ said Mr. Creakle; ‘and when I say
+I will have a thing done, I will have it done.’
+
+‘--Will have a thing done, I will have it done,’ repeated the man with
+the wooden leg.
+
+‘I am a determined character,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘That’s what I am. I
+do my duty. That’s what I do. My flesh and blood’--he looked at Mrs.
+Creakle as he said this--‘when it rises against me, is not my flesh
+and blood. I discard it. Has that fellow’--to the man with the wooden
+leg--‘been here again?’
+
+‘No,’ was the answer.
+
+‘No,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘He knows better. He knows me. Let him keep
+away. I say let him keep away,’ said Mr. Creakle, striking his hand upon
+the table, and looking at Mrs. Creakle, ‘for he knows me. Now you have
+begun to know me too, my young friend, and you may go. Take him away.’
+
+I was very glad to be ordered away, for Mrs. and Miss Creakle were both
+wiping their eyes, and I felt as uncomfortable for them as I did for
+myself. But I had a petition on my mind which concerned me so nearly,
+that I couldn’t help saying, though I wondered at my own courage:
+
+‘If you please, sir--’
+
+Mr. Creakle whispered, ‘Hah! What’s this?’ and bent his eyes upon me, as
+if he would have burnt me up with them.
+
+‘If you please, sir,’ I faltered, ‘if I might be allowed (I am very
+sorry indeed, sir, for what I did) to take this writing off, before the
+boys come back--’
+
+Whether Mr. Creakle was in earnest, or whether he only did it to
+frighten me, I don’t know, but he made a burst out of his chair, before
+which I precipitately retreated, without waiting for the escort of the
+man with the wooden leg, and never once stopped until I reached my own
+bedroom, where, finding I was not pursued, I went to bed, as it was
+time, and lay quaking, for a couple of hours.
+
+Next morning Mr. Sharp came back. Mr. Sharp was the first master, and
+superior to Mr. Mell. Mr. Mell took his meals with the boys, but
+Mr. Sharp dined and supped at Mr. Creakle’s table. He was a limp,
+delicate-looking gentleman, I thought, with a good deal of nose, and a
+way of carrying his head on one side, as if it were a little too heavy
+for him. His hair was very smooth and wavy; but I was informed by the
+very first boy who came back that it was a wig (a second-hand one HE
+said), and that Mr. Sharp went out every Saturday afternoon to get it
+curled.
+
+It was no other than Tommy Traddles who gave me this piece of
+intelligence. He was the first boy who returned. He introduced himself
+by informing me that I should find his name on the right-hand corner of
+the gate, over the top-bolt; upon that I said, ‘Traddles?’ to which he
+replied, ‘The same,’ and then he asked me for a full account of myself
+and family.
+
+It was a happy circumstance for me that Traddles came back first. He
+enjoyed my placard so much, that he saved me from the embarrassment of
+either disclosure or concealment, by presenting me to every other boy
+who came back, great or small, immediately on his arrival, in this form
+of introduction, ‘Look here! Here’s a game!’ Happily, too, the greater
+part of the boys came back low-spirited, and were not so boisterous at
+my expense as I had expected. Some of them certainly did dance about me
+like wild Indians, and the greater part could not resist the temptation
+of pretending that I was a dog, and patting and soothing me, lest I
+should bite, and saying, ‘Lie down, sir!’ and calling me Towzer. This
+was naturally confusing, among so many strangers, and cost me some
+tears, but on the whole it was much better than I had anticipated.
+
+I was not considered as being formally received into the school,
+however, until J. Steerforth arrived. Before this boy, who was
+reputed to be a great scholar, and was very good-looking, and at least
+half-a-dozen years my senior, I was carried as before a magistrate. He
+inquired, under a shed in the playground, into the particulars of my
+punishment, and was pleased to express his opinion that it was ‘a jolly
+shame’; for which I became bound to him ever afterwards.
+
+‘What money have you got, Copperfield?’ he said, walking aside with
+me when he had disposed of my affair in these terms. I told him seven
+shillings.
+
+‘You had better give it to me to take care of,’ he said. ‘At least, you
+can if you like. You needn’t if you don’t like.’
+
+I hastened to comply with his friendly suggestion, and opening
+Peggotty’s purse, turned it upside down into his hand.
+
+‘Do you want to spend anything now?’ he asked me.
+
+‘No thank you,’ I replied.
+
+‘You can, if you like, you know,’ said Steerforth. ‘Say the word.’
+
+‘No, thank you, sir,’ I repeated.
+
+‘Perhaps you’d like to spend a couple of shillings or so, in a bottle of
+currant wine by and by, up in the bedroom?’ said Steerforth. ‘You belong
+to my bedroom, I find.’
+
+It certainly had not occurred to me before, but I said, Yes, I should
+like that.
+
+‘Very good,’ said Steerforth. ‘You’ll be glad to spend another shilling
+or so, in almond cakes, I dare say?’
+
+I said, Yes, I should like that, too.
+
+‘And another shilling or so in biscuits, and another in fruit, eh?’ said
+Steerforth. ‘I say, young Copperfield, you’re going it!’
+
+I smiled because he smiled, but I was a little troubled in my mind, too.
+
+‘Well!’ said Steerforth. ‘We must make it stretch as far as we can;
+that’s all. I’ll do the best in my power for you. I can go out when I
+like, and I’ll smuggle the prog in.’ With these words he put the money
+in his pocket, and kindly told me not to make myself uneasy; he would
+take care it should be all right. He was as good as his word, if that
+were all right which I had a secret misgiving was nearly all wrong--for
+I feared it was a waste of my mother’s two half-crowns--though I had
+preserved the piece of paper they were wrapped in: which was a precious
+saving. When we went upstairs to bed, he produced the whole seven
+shillings’ worth, and laid it out on my bed in the moonlight, saying:
+
+‘There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you’ve got.’
+
+I couldn’t think of doing the honours of the feast, at my time of life,
+while he was by; my hand shook at the very thought of it. I begged him
+to do me the favour of presiding; and my request being seconded by the
+other boys who were in that room, he acceded to it, and sat upon my
+pillow, handing round the viands--with perfect fairness, I must say--and
+dispensing the currant wine in a little glass without a foot, which was
+his own property. As to me, I sat on his left hand, and the rest were
+grouped about us, on the nearest beds and on the floor.
+
+How well I recollect our sitting there, talking in whispers; or their
+talking, and my respectfully listening, I ought rather to say; the
+moonlight falling a little way into the room, through the window,
+painting a pale window on the floor, and the greater part of us in
+shadow, except when Steerforth dipped a match into a phosphorus-box,
+when he wanted to look for anything on the board, and shed a blue glare
+over us that was gone directly! A certain mysterious feeling, consequent
+on the darkness, the secrecy of the revel, and the whisper in which
+everything was said, steals over me again, and I listen to all they tell
+me with a vague feeling of solemnity and awe, which makes me glad that
+they are all so near, and frightens me (though I feign to laugh) when
+Traddles pretends to see a ghost in the corner.
+
+I heard all kinds of things about the school and all belonging to it.
+I heard that Mr. Creakle had not preferred his claim to being a Tartar
+without reason; that he was the sternest and most severe of masters;
+that he laid about him, right and left, every day of his life, charging
+in among the boys like a trooper, and slashing away, unmercifully. That
+he knew nothing himself, but the art of slashing, being more ignorant
+(J. Steerforth said) than the lowest boy in the school; that he had
+been, a good many years ago, a small hop-dealer in the Borough, and had
+taken to the schooling business after being bankrupt in hops, and making
+away with Mrs. Creakle’s money. With a good deal more of that sort,
+which I wondered how they knew.
+
+I heard that the man with the wooden leg, whose name was Tungay, was an
+obstinate barbarian who had formerly assisted in the hop business, but
+had come into the scholastic line with Mr. Creakle, in consequence,
+as was supposed among the boys, of his having broken his leg in Mr.
+Creakle’s service, and having done a deal of dishonest work for him,
+and knowing his secrets. I heard that with the single exception of Mr.
+Creakle, Tungay considered the whole establishment, masters and boys,
+as his natural enemies, and that the only delight of his life was to be
+sour and malicious. I heard that Mr. Creakle had a son, who had not been
+Tungay’s friend, and who, assisting in the school, had once held some
+remonstrance with his father on an occasion when its discipline was very
+cruelly exercised, and was supposed, besides, to have protested against
+his father’s usage of his mother. I heard that Mr. Creakle had turned
+him out of doors, in consequence; and that Mrs. and Miss Creakle had
+been in a sad way, ever since.
+
+But the greatest wonder that I heard of Mr. Creakle was, there being one
+boy in the school on whom he never ventured to lay a hand, and that
+boy being J. Steerforth. Steerforth himself confirmed this when it was
+stated, and said that he should like to begin to see him do it. On being
+asked by a mild boy (not me) how he would proceed if he did begin to see
+him do it, he dipped a match into his phosphorus-box on purpose to shed
+a glare over his reply, and said he would commence by knocking him down
+with a blow on the forehead from the seven-and-sixpenny ink-bottle
+that was always on the mantelpiece. We sat in the dark for some time,
+breathless.
+
+I heard that Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both supposed to be wretchedly
+paid; and that when there was hot and cold meat for dinner at Mr.
+Creakle’s table, Mr. Sharp was always expected to say he preferred cold;
+which was again corroborated by J. Steerforth, the only parlour-boarder.
+I heard that Mr. Sharp’s wig didn’t fit him; and that he needn’t be so
+‘bounceable’--somebody else said ‘bumptious’--about it, because his own
+red hair was very plainly to be seen behind.
+
+I heard that one boy, who was a coal-merchant’s son, came as a set-off
+against the coal-bill, and was called, on that account, ‘Exchange or
+Barter’--a name selected from the arithmetic book as expressing this
+arrangement. I heard that the table beer was a robbery of parents, and
+the pudding an imposition. I heard that Miss Creakle was regarded by the
+school in general as being in love with Steerforth; and I am sure, as I
+sat in the dark, thinking of his nice voice, and his fine face, and his
+easy manner, and his curling hair, I thought it very likely. I heard
+that Mr. Mell was not a bad sort of fellow, but hadn’t a sixpence to
+bless himself with; and that there was no doubt that old Mrs. Mell, his
+mother, was as poor as job. I thought of my breakfast then, and what had
+sounded like ‘My Charley!’ but I was, I am glad to remember, as mute as
+a mouse about it.
+
+The hearing of all this, and a good deal more, outlasted the banquet
+some time. The greater part of the guests had gone to bed as soon as the
+eating and drinking were over; and we, who had remained whispering and
+listening half-undressed, at last betook ourselves to bed, too.
+
+‘Good night, young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth. ‘I’ll take care of
+you.’ ‘You’re very kind,’ I gratefully returned. ‘I am very much obliged
+to you.’
+
+‘You haven’t got a sister, have you?’ said Steerforth, yawning.
+
+‘No,’ I answered.
+
+‘That’s a pity,’ said Steerforth. ‘If you had had one, I should think
+she would have been a pretty, timid, little, bright-eyed sort of girl. I
+should have liked to know her. Good night, young Copperfield.’
+
+‘Good night, sir,’ I replied.
+
+I thought of him very much after I went to bed, and raised myself,
+I recollect, to look at him where he lay in the moonlight, with his
+handsome face turned up, and his head reclining easily on his arm. He
+was a person of great power in my eyes; that was, of course, the reason
+of my mind running on him. No veiled future dimly glanced upon him in
+the moonbeams. There was no shadowy picture of his footsteps, in the
+garden that I dreamed of walking in all night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7. MY ‘FIRST HALF’ AT SALEM HOUSE
+
+
+School began in earnest next day. A profound impression was made
+upon me, I remember, by the roar of voices in the schoolroom suddenly
+becoming hushed as death when Mr. Creakle entered after breakfast, and
+stood in the doorway looking round upon us like a giant in a story-book
+surveying his captives.
+
+Tungay stood at Mr. Creakle’s elbow. He had no occasion, I thought,
+to cry out ‘Silence!’ so ferociously, for the boys were all struck
+speechless and motionless.
+
+Mr. Creakle was seen to speak, and Tungay was heard, to this effect.
+
+‘Now, boys, this is a new half. Take care what you’re about, in this new
+half. Come fresh up to the lessons, I advise you, for I come fresh up
+to the punishment. I won’t flinch. It will be of no use your rubbing
+yourselves; you won’t rub the marks out that I shall give you. Now get
+to work, every boy!’
+
+When this dreadful exordium was over, and Tungay had stumped out again,
+Mr. Creakle came to where I sat, and told me that if I were famous for
+biting, he was famous for biting, too. He then showed me the cane, and
+asked me what I thought of THAT, for a tooth? Was it a sharp tooth, hey?
+Was it a double tooth, hey? Had it a deep prong, hey? Did it bite, hey?
+Did it bite? At every question he gave me a fleshy cut with it that made
+me writhe; so I was very soon made free of Salem House (as Steerforth
+said), and was very soon in tears also.
+
+Not that I mean to say these were special marks of distinction,
+which only I received. On the contrary, a large majority of the boys
+(especially the smaller ones) were visited with similar instances
+of notice, as Mr. Creakle made the round of the schoolroom. Half the
+establishment was writhing and crying, before the day’s work began; and
+how much of it had writhed and cried before the day’s work was over, I
+am really afraid to recollect, lest I should seem to exaggerate.
+
+I should think there never can have been a man who enjoyed his
+profession more than Mr. Creakle did. He had a delight in cutting at
+the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite. I am
+confident that he couldn’t resist a chubby boy, especially; that there
+was a fascination in such a subject, which made him restless in his
+mind, until he had scored and marked him for the day. I was chubby
+myself, and ought to know. I am sure when I think of the fellow now, my
+blood rises against him with the disinterested indignation I should
+feel if I could have known all about him without having ever been in his
+power; but it rises hotly, because I know him to have been an incapable
+brute, who had no more right to be possessed of the great trust he held,
+than to be Lord High Admiral, or Commander-in-Chief--in either of
+which capacities it is probable that he would have done infinitely less
+mischief.
+
+Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless Idol, how abject we were
+to him! What a launch in life I think it now, on looking back, to be so
+mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions!
+
+Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye--humbly watching his eye,
+as he rules a ciphering-book for another victim whose hands have just
+been flattened by that identical ruler, and who is trying to wipe the
+sting out with a pocket-handkerchief. I have plenty to do. I don’t watch
+his eye in idleness, but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a
+dread desire to know what he will do next, and whether it will be my
+turn to suffer, or somebody else’s. A lane of small boys beyond me, with
+the same interest in his eye, watch it too. I think he knows it,
+though he pretends he don’t. He makes dreadful mouths as he rules the
+ciphering-book; and now he throws his eye sideways down our lane, and we
+all droop over our books and tremble. A moment afterwards we are again
+eyeing him. An unhappy culprit, found guilty of imperfect exercise,
+approaches at his command. The culprit falters excuses, and professes a
+determination to do better tomorrow. Mr. Creakle cuts a joke before he
+beats him, and we laugh at it,--miserable little dogs, we laugh, with
+our visages as white as ashes, and our hearts sinking into our boots.
+
+Here I sit at the desk again, on a drowsy summer afternoon. A buzz and
+hum go up around me, as if the boys were so many bluebottles. A cloggy
+sensation of the lukewarm fat of meat is upon me (we dined an hour or
+two ago), and my head is as heavy as so much lead. I would give the
+world to go to sleep. I sit with my eye on Mr. Creakle, blinking at him
+like a young owl; when sleep overpowers me for a minute, he still looms
+through my slumber, ruling those ciphering-books, until he softly comes
+behind me and wakes me to plainer perception of him, with a red ridge
+across my back.
+
+Here I am in the playground, with my eye still fascinated by him, though
+I can’t see him. The window at a little distance from which I know he is
+having his dinner, stands for him, and I eye that instead. If he shows
+his face near it, mine assumes an imploring and submissive expression.
+If he looks out through the glass, the boldest boy (Steerforth excepted)
+stops in the middle of a shout or yell, and becomes contemplative. One
+day, Traddles (the most unfortunate boy in the world) breaks that window
+accidentally, with a ball. I shudder at this moment with the tremendous
+sensation of seeing it done, and feeling that the ball has bounded on to
+Mr. Creakle’s sacred head.
+
+Poor Traddles! In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms and legs like
+German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, he was the merriest and most
+miserable of all the boys. He was always being caned--I think he was
+caned every day that half-year, except one holiday Monday when he was
+only ruler’d on both hands--and was always going to write to his uncle
+about it, and never did. After laying his head on the desk for a little
+while, he would cheer up, somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw
+skeletons all over his slate, before his eyes were dry. I used at first
+to wonder what comfort Traddles found in drawing skeletons; and for some
+time looked upon him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself by those
+symbols of mortality that caning couldn’t last for ever. But I believe
+he only did it because they were easy, and didn’t want any features.
+
+He was very honourable, Traddles was, and held it as a solemn duty
+in the boys to stand by one another. He suffered for this on several
+occasions; and particularly once, when Steerforth laughed in church,
+and the Beadle thought it was Traddles, and took him out. I see him now,
+going away in custody, despised by the congregation. He never said
+who was the real offender, though he smarted for it next day, and was
+imprisoned so many hours that he came forth with a whole churchyard-full
+of skeletons swarming all over his Latin Dictionary. But he had his
+reward. Steerforth said there was nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and
+we all felt that to be the highest praise. For my part, I could have
+gone through a good deal (though I was much less brave than Traddles,
+and nothing like so old) to have won such a recompense.
+
+To see Steerforth walk to church before us, arm-in-arm with Miss
+Creakle, was one of the great sights of my life. I didn’t think Miss
+Creakle equal to little Em’ly in point of beauty, and I didn’t love
+her (I didn’t dare); but I thought her a young lady of extraordinary
+attractions, and in point of gentility not to be surpassed. When
+Steerforth, in white trousers, carried her parasol for her, I felt proud
+to know him; and believed that she could not choose but adore him with
+all her heart. Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both notable personages in my
+eyes; but Steerforth was to them what the sun was to two stars.
+
+Steerforth continued his protection of me, and proved a very useful
+friend; since nobody dared to annoy one whom he honoured with his
+countenance. He couldn’t--or at all events he didn’t--defend me from Mr.
+Creakle, who was very severe with me; but whenever I had been treated
+worse than usual, he always told me that I wanted a little of his pluck,
+and that he wouldn’t have stood it himself; which I felt he intended
+for encouragement, and considered to be very kind of him. There was one
+advantage, and only one that I know of, in Mr. Creakle’s severity. He
+found my placard in his way when he came up or down behind the form on
+which I sat, and wanted to make a cut at me in passing; for this reason
+it was soon taken off, and I saw it no more.
+
+An accidental circumstance cemented the intimacy between Steerforth
+and me, in a manner that inspired me with great pride and satisfaction,
+though it sometimes led to inconvenience. It happened on one occasion,
+when he was doing me the honour of talking to me in the playground, that
+I hazarded the observation that something or somebody--I forget what
+now--was like something or somebody in Peregrine Pickle. He said nothing
+at the time; but when I was going to bed at night, asked me if I had got
+that book?
+
+I told him no, and explained how it was that I had read it, and all
+those other books of which I have made mention.
+
+‘And do you recollect them?’ Steerforth said.
+
+‘Oh yes,’ I replied; I had a good memory, and I believed I recollected
+them very well.
+
+‘Then I tell you what, young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, ‘you
+shall tell ‘em to me. I can’t get to sleep very early at night, and I
+generally wake rather early in the morning. We’ll go over ‘em one after
+another. We’ll make some regular Arabian Nights of it.’
+
+I felt extremely flattered by this arrangement, and we commenced
+carrying it into execution that very evening. What ravages I committed
+on my favourite authors in the course of my interpretation of them, I am
+not in a condition to say, and should be very unwilling to know; but
+I had a profound faith in them, and I had, to the best of my belief,
+a simple, earnest manner of narrating what I did narrate; and these
+qualities went a long way.
+
+The drawback was, that I was often sleepy at night, or out of spirits
+and indisposed to resume the story; and then it was rather hard work,
+and it must be done; for to disappoint or to displease Steerforth was of
+course out of the question. In the morning, too, when I felt weary, and
+should have enjoyed another hour’s repose very much, it was a tiresome
+thing to be roused, like the Sultana Scheherazade, and forced into a
+long story before the getting-up bell rang; but Steerforth was resolute;
+and as he explained to me, in return, my sums and exercises, and
+anything in my tasks that was too hard for me, I was no loser by the
+transaction. Let me do myself justice, however. I was moved by no
+interested or selfish motive, nor was I moved by fear of him. I admired
+and loved him, and his approval was return enough. It was so precious to
+me that I look back on these trifles, now, with an aching heart.
+
+Steerforth was considerate, too; and showed his consideration, in
+one particular instance, in an unflinching manner that was a little
+tantalizing, I suspect, to poor Traddles and the rest. Peggotty’s
+promised letter--what a comfortable letter it was!--arrived before
+‘the half’ was many weeks old; and with it a cake in a perfect nest
+of oranges, and two bottles of cowslip wine. This treasure, as in duty
+bound, I laid at the feet of Steerforth, and begged him to dispense.
+
+‘Now, I’ll tell you what, young Copperfield,’ said he: ‘the wine shall
+be kept to wet your whistle when you are story-telling.’
+
+I blushed at the idea, and begged him, in my modesty, not to think of
+it. But he said he had observed I was sometimes hoarse--a little roopy
+was his exact expression--and it should be, every drop, devoted to the
+purpose he had mentioned. Accordingly, it was locked up in his box, and
+drawn off by himself in a phial, and administered to me through a
+piece of quill in the cork, when I was supposed to be in want of a
+restorative. Sometimes, to make it a more sovereign specific, he was so
+kind as to squeeze orange juice into it, or to stir it up with ginger,
+or dissolve a peppermint drop in it; and although I cannot assert that
+the flavour was improved by these experiments, or that it was exactly
+the compound one would have chosen for a stomachic, the last thing at
+night and the first thing in the morning, I drank it gratefully and was
+very sensible of his attention.
+
+We seem, to me, to have been months over Peregrine, and months more over
+the other stories. The institution never flagged for want of a story, I
+am certain; and the wine lasted out almost as well as the matter. Poor
+Traddles--I never think of that boy but with a strange disposition to
+laugh, and with tears in my eyes--was a sort of chorus, in general;
+and affected to be convulsed with mirth at the comic parts, and to be
+overcome with fear when there was any passage of an alarming character
+in the narrative. This rather put me out, very often. It was a great
+jest of his, I recollect, to pretend that he couldn’t keep his teeth
+from chattering, whenever mention was made of an Alguazill in connexion
+with the adventures of Gil Blas; and I remember that when Gil Blas met
+the captain of the robbers in Madrid, this unlucky joker counterfeited
+such an ague of terror, that he was overheard by Mr. Creakle, who
+was prowling about the passage, and handsomely flogged for disorderly
+conduct in the bedroom. Whatever I had within me that was romantic and
+dreamy, was encouraged by so much story-telling in the dark; and in that
+respect the pursuit may not have been very profitable to me. But the
+being cherished as a kind of plaything in my room, and the consciousness
+that this accomplishment of mine was bruited about among the boys, and
+attracted a good deal of notice to me though I was the youngest there,
+stimulated me to exertion. In a school carried on by sheer cruelty,
+whether it is presided over by a dunce or not, there is not likely to
+be much learnt. I believe our boys were, generally, as ignorant a set
+as any schoolboys in existence; they were too much troubled and knocked
+about to learn; they could no more do that to advantage, than any one
+can do anything to advantage in a life of constant misfortune, torment,
+and worry. But my little vanity, and Steerforth’s help, urged me on
+somehow; and without saving me from much, if anything, in the way of
+punishment, made me, for the time I was there, an exception to the
+general body, insomuch that I did steadily pick up some crumbs of
+knowledge.
+
+In this I was much assisted by Mr. Mell, who had a liking for me that
+I am grateful to remember. It always gave me pain to observe that
+Steerforth treated him with systematic disparagement, and seldom lost
+an occasion of wounding his feelings, or inducing others to do so.
+This troubled me the more for a long time, because I had soon told
+Steerforth, from whom I could no more keep such a secret, than I could
+keep a cake or any other tangible possession, about the two old women
+Mr. Mell had taken me to see; and I was always afraid that Steerforth
+would let it out, and twit him with it.
+
+We little thought, any one of us, I dare say, when I ate my breakfast
+that first morning, and went to sleep under the shadow of the peacock’s
+feathers to the sound of the flute, what consequences would come of the
+introduction into those alms-houses of my insignificant person. But the
+visit had its unforeseen consequences; and of a serious sort, too, in
+their way.
+
+One day when Mr. Creakle kept the house from indisposition, which
+naturally diffused a lively joy through the school, there was a good
+deal of noise in the course of the morning’s work. The great relief and
+satisfaction experienced by the boys made them difficult to manage; and
+though the dreaded Tungay brought his wooden leg in twice or thrice, and
+took notes of the principal offenders’ names, no great impression was
+made by it, as they were pretty sure of getting into trouble tomorrow,
+do what they would, and thought it wise, no doubt, to enjoy themselves
+today.
+
+It was, properly, a half-holiday; being Saturday. But as the noise in
+the playground would have disturbed Mr. Creakle, and the weather was
+not favourable for going out walking, we were ordered into school in the
+afternoon, and set some lighter tasks than usual, which were made for
+the occasion. It was the day of the week on which Mr. Sharp went out to
+get his wig curled; so Mr. Mell, who always did the drudgery, whatever
+it was, kept school by himself. If I could associate the idea of a bull
+or a bear with anyone so mild as Mr. Mell, I should think of him, in
+connexion with that afternoon when the uproar was at its height, as of
+one of those animals, baited by a thousand dogs. I recall him bending
+his aching head, supported on his bony hand, over the book on his desk,
+and wretchedly endeavouring to get on with his tiresome work, amidst an
+uproar that might have made the Speaker of the House of Commons giddy.
+Boys started in and out of their places, playing at puss in the corner
+with other boys; there were laughing boys, singing boys, talking boys,
+dancing boys, howling boys; boys shuffled with their feet, boys whirled
+about him, grinning, making faces, mimicking him behind his back and
+before his eyes; mimicking his poverty, his boots, his coat, his mother,
+everything belonging to him that they should have had consideration for.
+
+‘Silence!’ cried Mr. Mell, suddenly rising up, and striking his desk
+with the book. ‘What does this mean! It’s impossible to bear it. It’s
+maddening. How can you do it to me, boys?’
+
+It was my book that he struck his desk with; and as I stood beside him,
+following his eye as it glanced round the room, I saw the boys all stop,
+some suddenly surprised, some half afraid, and some sorry perhaps.
+
+Steerforth’s place was at the bottom of the school, at the opposite end
+of the long room. He was lounging with his back against the wall, and
+his hands in his pockets, and looked at Mr. Mell with his mouth shut up
+as if he were whistling, when Mr. Mell looked at him.
+
+‘Silence, Mr. Steerforth!’ said Mr. Mell.
+
+‘Silence yourself,’ said Steerforth, turning red. ‘Whom are you talking
+to?’
+
+‘Sit down,’ said Mr. Mell.
+
+‘Sit down yourself,’ said Steerforth, ‘and mind your business.’
+
+There was a titter, and some applause; but Mr. Mell was so white, that
+silence immediately succeeded; and one boy, who had darted out behind
+him to imitate his mother again, changed his mind, and pretended to want
+a pen mended.
+
+‘If you think, Steerforth,’ said Mr. Mell, ‘that I am not acquainted
+with the power you can establish over any mind here’--he laid his hand,
+without considering what he did (as I supposed), upon my head--‘or that
+I have not observed you, within a few minutes, urging your juniors on to
+every sort of outrage against me, you are mistaken.’
+
+‘I don’t give myself the trouble of thinking at all about you,’ said
+Steerforth, coolly; ‘so I’m not mistaken, as it happens.’
+
+‘And when you make use of your position of favouritism here, sir,’
+pursued Mr. Mell, with his lip trembling very much, ‘to insult a
+gentleman--’
+
+‘A what?--where is he?’ said Steerforth.
+
+Here somebody cried out, ‘Shame, J. Steerforth! Too bad!’ It was
+Traddles; whom Mr. Mell instantly discomfited by bidding him hold his
+tongue. --‘To insult one who is not fortunate in life, sir, and who
+never gave you the least offence, and the many reasons for not insulting
+whom you are old enough and wise enough to understand,’ said Mr. Mell,
+with his lips trembling more and more, ‘you commit a mean and base
+action. You can sit down or stand up as you please, sir. Copperfield, go
+on.’
+
+‘Young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, coming forward up the room,
+‘stop a bit. I tell you what, Mr. Mell, once for all. When you take the
+liberty of calling me mean or base, or anything of that sort, you are
+an impudent beggar. You are always a beggar, you know; but when you do
+that, you are an impudent beggar.’
+
+I am not clear whether he was going to strike Mr. Mell, or Mr. Mell was
+going to strike him, or there was any such intention on either side.
+I saw a rigidity come upon the whole school as if they had been turned
+into stone, and found Mr. Creakle in the midst of us, with Tungay at his
+side, and Mrs. and Miss Creakle looking in at the door as if they were
+frightened. Mr. Mell, with his elbows on his desk and his face in his
+hands, sat, for some moments, quite still.
+
+‘Mr. Mell,’ said Mr. Creakle, shaking him by the arm; and his whisper
+was so audible now, that Tungay felt it unnecessary to repeat his words;
+‘you have not forgotten yourself, I hope?’
+
+‘No, sir, no,’ returned the Master, showing his face, and shaking his
+head, and rubbing his hands in great agitation. ‘No, sir. No. I have
+remembered myself, I--no, Mr. Creakle, I have not forgotten myself, I--I
+have remembered myself, sir. I--I--could wish you had remembered me a
+little sooner, Mr. Creakle. It--it--would have been more kind, sir, more
+just, sir. It would have saved me something, sir.’
+
+Mr. Creakle, looking hard at Mr. Mell, put his hand on Tungay’s
+shoulder, and got his feet upon the form close by, and sat upon the
+desk. After still looking hard at Mr. Mell from his throne, as he
+shook his head, and rubbed his hands, and remained in the same state of
+agitation, Mr. Creakle turned to Steerforth, and said:
+
+‘Now, sir, as he don’t condescend to tell me, what is this?’
+
+Steerforth evaded the question for a little while; looking in scorn and
+anger on his opponent, and remaining silent. I could not help thinking
+even in that interval, I remember, what a noble fellow he was in
+appearance, and how homely and plain Mr. Mell looked opposed to him.
+
+‘What did he mean by talking about favourites, then?’ said Steerforth at
+length.
+
+‘Favourites?’ repeated Mr. Creakle, with the veins in his forehead
+swelling quickly. ‘Who talked about favourites?’
+
+‘He did,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘And pray, what did you mean by that, sir?’ demanded Mr. Creakle,
+turning angrily on his assistant.
+
+‘I meant, Mr. Creakle,’ he returned in a low voice, ‘as I said; that
+no pupil had a right to avail himself of his position of favouritism to
+degrade me.’
+
+‘To degrade YOU?’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘My stars! But give me leave to ask
+you, Mr. What’s-your-name’; and here Mr. Creakle folded his arms, cane
+and all, upon his chest, and made such a knot of his brows that his
+little eyes were hardly visible below them; ‘whether, when you talk
+about favourites, you showed proper respect to me? To me, sir,’ said Mr.
+Creakle, darting his head at him suddenly, and drawing it back again,
+‘the principal of this establishment, and your employer.’
+
+‘It was not judicious, sir, I am willing to admit,’ said Mr. Mell. ‘I
+should not have done so, if I had been cool.’
+
+Here Steerforth struck in.
+
+‘Then he said I was mean, and then he said I was base, and then I called
+him a beggar. If I had been cool, perhaps I shouldn’t have called him a
+beggar. But I did, and I am ready to take the consequences of it.’
+
+Without considering, perhaps, whether there were any consequences to
+be taken, I felt quite in a glow at this gallant speech. It made an
+impression on the boys too, for there was a low stir among them, though
+no one spoke a word.
+
+‘I am surprised, Steerforth--although your candour does you honour,’
+said Mr. Creakle, ‘does you honour, certainly--I am surprised,
+Steerforth, I must say, that you should attach such an epithet to any
+person employed and paid in Salem House, sir.’
+
+Steerforth gave a short laugh.
+
+‘That’s not an answer, sir,’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘to my remark. I expect
+more than that from you, Steerforth.’
+
+If Mr. Mell looked homely, in my eyes, before the handsome boy, it would
+be quite impossible to say how homely Mr. Creakle looked. ‘Let him deny
+it,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Deny that he is a beggar, Steerforth?’ cried Mr. Creakle. ‘Why, where
+does he go a-begging?’
+
+‘If he is not a beggar himself, his near relation’s one,’ said
+Steerforth. ‘It’s all the same.’
+
+He glanced at me, and Mr. Mell’s hand gently patted me upon the
+shoulder. I looked up with a flush upon my face and remorse in my heart,
+but Mr. Mell’s eyes were fixed on Steerforth. He continued to pat me
+kindly on the shoulder, but he looked at him.
+
+‘Since you expect me, Mr. Creakle, to justify myself,’ said Steerforth,
+‘and to say what I mean,--what I have to say is, that his mother lives
+on charity in an alms-house.’
+
+Mr. Mell still looked at him, and still patted me kindly on the
+shoulder, and said to himself, in a whisper, if I heard right: ‘Yes, I
+thought so.’
+
+Mr. Creakle turned to his assistant, with a severe frown and laboured
+politeness:
+
+‘Now, you hear what this gentleman says, Mr. Mell. Have the goodness, if
+you please, to set him right before the assembled school.’
+
+‘He is right, sir, without correction,’ returned Mr. Mell, in the midst
+of a dead silence; ‘what he has said is true.’
+
+‘Be so good then as declare publicly, will you,’ said Mr. Creakle,
+putting his head on one side, and rolling his eyes round the school,
+‘whether it ever came to my knowledge until this moment?’
+
+‘I believe not directly,’ he returned.
+
+‘Why, you know not,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘Don’t you, man?’
+
+‘I apprehend you never supposed my worldly circumstances to be very
+good,’ replied the assistant. ‘You know what my position is, and always
+has been, here.’
+
+‘I apprehend, if you come to that,’ said Mr. Creakle, with his veins
+swelling again bigger than ever, ‘that you’ve been in a wrong position
+altogether, and mistook this for a charity school. Mr. Mell, we’ll part,
+if you please. The sooner the better.’
+
+‘There is no time,’ answered Mr. Mell, rising, ‘like the present.’
+
+‘Sir, to you!’ said Mr. Creakle.
+
+‘I take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and all of you,’ said Mr. Mell,
+glancing round the room, and again patting me gently on the shoulders.
+‘James Steerforth, the best wish I can leave you is that you may come to
+be ashamed of what you have done today. At present I would prefer to see
+you anything rather than a friend, to me, or to anyone in whom I feel an
+interest.’
+
+Once more he laid his hand upon my shoulder; and then taking his
+flute and a few books from his desk, and leaving the key in it for his
+successor, he went out of the school, with his property under his arm.
+Mr. Creakle then made a speech, through Tungay, in which he thanked
+Steerforth for asserting (though perhaps too warmly) the independence
+and respectability of Salem House; and which he wound up by shaking
+hands with Steerforth, while we gave three cheers--I did not quite know
+what for, but I supposed for Steerforth, and so joined in them ardently,
+though I felt miserable. Mr. Creakle then caned Tommy Traddles for
+being discovered in tears, instead of cheers, on account of Mr. Mell’s
+departure; and went back to his sofa, or his bed, or wherever he had
+come from.
+
+We were left to ourselves now, and looked very blank, I recollect, on
+one another. For myself, I felt so much self-reproach and contrition for
+my part in what had happened, that nothing would have enabled me to keep
+back my tears but the fear that Steerforth, who often looked at me, I
+saw, might think it unfriendly--or, I should rather say, considering our
+relative ages, and the feeling with which I regarded him, undutiful--if
+I showed the emotion which distressed me. He was very angry with
+Traddles, and said he was glad he had caught it.
+
+Poor Traddles, who had passed the stage of lying with his head upon the
+desk, and was relieving himself as usual with a burst of skeletons, said
+he didn’t care. Mr. Mell was ill-used.
+
+‘Who has ill-used him, you girl?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Why, you have,’ returned Traddles.
+
+‘What have I done?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘What have you done?’ retorted Traddles. ‘Hurt his feelings, and lost
+him his situation.’
+
+‘His feelings?’ repeated Steerforth disdainfully. ‘His feelings will
+soon get the better of it, I’ll be bound. His feelings are not like
+yours, Miss Traddles. As to his situation--which was a precious one,
+wasn’t it?--do you suppose I am not going to write home, and take care
+that he gets some money? Polly?’
+
+We thought this intention very noble in Steerforth, whose mother was
+a widow, and rich, and would do almost anything, it was said, that he
+asked her. We were all extremely glad to see Traddles so put down,
+and exalted Steerforth to the skies: especially when he told us, as he
+condescended to do, that what he had done had been done expressly for
+us, and for our cause; and that he had conferred a great boon upon us
+by unselfishly doing it. But I must say that when I was going on with a
+story in the dark that night, Mr. Mell’s old flute seemed more than once
+to sound mournfully in my ears; and that when at last Steerforth was
+tired, and I lay down in my bed, I fancied it playing so sorrowfully
+somewhere, that I was quite wretched.
+
+I soon forgot him in the contemplation of Steerforth, who, in an easy
+amateur way, and without any book (he seemed to me to know everything by
+heart), took some of his classes until a new master was found. The new
+master came from a grammar school; and before he entered on his duties,
+dined in the parlour one day, to be introduced to Steerforth. Steerforth
+approved of him highly, and told us he was a Brick. Without exactly
+understanding what learned distinction was meant by this, I respected
+him greatly for it, and had no doubt whatever of his superior knowledge:
+though he never took the pains with me--not that I was anybody--that Mr.
+Mell had taken.
+
+There was only one other event in this half-year, out of the daily
+school-life, that made an impression upon me which still survives. It
+survives for many reasons.
+
+One afternoon, when we were all harassed into a state of dire confusion,
+and Mr. Creakle was laying about him dreadfully, Tungay came in, and
+called out in his usual strong way: ‘Visitors for Copperfield!’
+
+A few words were interchanged between him and Mr. Creakle, as, who the
+visitors were, and what room they were to be shown into; and then I, who
+had, according to custom, stood up on the announcement being made, and
+felt quite faint with astonishment, was told to go by the back stairs
+and get a clean frill on, before I repaired to the dining-room. These
+orders I obeyed, in such a flutter and hurry of my young spirits as
+I had never known before; and when I got to the parlour door, and the
+thought came into my head that it might be my mother--I had only thought
+of Mr. or Miss Murdstone until then--I drew back my hand from the lock,
+and stopped to have a sob before I went in.
+
+At first I saw nobody; but feeling a pressure against the door, I looked
+round it, and there, to my amazement, were Mr. Peggotty and Ham, ducking
+at me with their hats, and squeezing one another against the wall. I
+could not help laughing; but it was much more in the pleasure of seeing
+them, than at the appearance they made. We shook hands in a very
+cordial way; and I laughed and laughed, until I pulled out my
+pocket-handkerchief and wiped my eyes.
+
+Mr. Peggotty (who never shut his mouth once, I remember, during the
+visit) showed great concern when he saw me do this, and nudged Ham to
+say something.
+
+‘Cheer up, Mas’r Davy bor’!’ said Ham, in his simpering way. ‘Why, how
+you have growed!’
+
+‘Am I grown?’ I said, drying my eyes. I was not crying at anything
+in particular that I know of; but somehow it made me cry, to see old
+friends.
+
+‘Growed, Mas’r Davy bor’? Ain’t he growed!’ said Ham.
+
+‘Ain’t he growed!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+They made me laugh again by laughing at each other, and then we all
+three laughed until I was in danger of crying again.
+
+‘Do you know how mama is, Mr. Peggotty?’ I said. ‘And how my dear, dear,
+old Peggotty is?’
+
+‘Oncommon,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘And little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge?’
+
+‘On--common,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+There was a silence. Mr. Peggotty, to relieve it, took two prodigious
+lobsters, and an enormous crab, and a large canvas bag of shrimps, out
+of his pockets, and piled them up in Ham’s arms.
+
+‘You see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘knowing as you was partial to a little
+relish with your wittles when you was along with us, we took the
+liberty. The old Mawther biled ‘em, she did. Mrs. Gummidge biled ‘em.
+Yes,’ said Mr. Peggotty, slowly, who I thought appeared to stick to the
+subject on account of having no other subject ready, ‘Mrs. Gummidge, I
+do assure you, she biled ‘em.’
+
+I expressed my thanks; and Mr. Peggotty, after looking at Ham, who stood
+smiling sheepishly over the shellfish, without making any attempt to
+help him, said:
+
+‘We come, you see, the wind and tide making in our favour, in one of our
+Yarmouth lugs to Gravesen’. My sister she wrote to me the name of this
+here place, and wrote to me as if ever I chanced to come to Gravesen’,
+I was to come over and inquire for Mas’r Davy and give her dooty,
+humbly wishing him well and reporting of the fam’ly as they was oncommon
+toe-be-sure. Little Em’ly, you see, she’ll write to my sister when I go
+back, as I see you and as you was similarly oncommon, and so we make it
+quite a merry-go-rounder.’
+
+I was obliged to consider a little before I understood what Mr. Peggotty
+meant by this figure, expressive of a complete circle of intelligence. I
+then thanked him heartily; and said, with a consciousness of reddening,
+that I supposed little Em’ly was altered too, since we used to pick up
+shells and pebbles on the beach?
+
+‘She’s getting to be a woman, that’s wot she’s getting to be,’ said Mr.
+Peggotty. ‘Ask HIM.’ He meant Ham, who beamed with delight and assent
+over the bag of shrimps.
+
+‘Her pretty face!’ said Mr. Peggotty, with his own shining like a light.
+
+‘Her learning!’ said Ham.
+
+‘Her writing!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Why it’s as black as jet! And so
+large it is, you might see it anywheres.’
+
+It was perfectly delightful to behold with what enthusiasm Mr. Peggotty
+became inspired when he thought of his little favourite. He stands
+before me again, his bluff hairy face irradiating with a joyful love and
+pride, for which I can find no description. His honest eyes fire up, and
+sparkle, as if their depths were stirred by something bright. His broad
+chest heaves with pleasure. His strong loose hands clench themselves,
+in his earnestness; and he emphasizes what he says with a right arm that
+shows, in my pigmy view, like a sledge-hammer.
+
+Ham was quite as earnest as he. I dare say they would have said much
+more about her, if they had not been abashed by the unexpected coming in
+of Steerforth, who, seeing me in a corner speaking with two strangers,
+stopped in a song he was singing, and said: ‘I didn’t know you were
+here, young Copperfield!’ (for it was not the usual visiting room) and
+crossed by us on his way out.
+
+I am not sure whether it was in the pride of having such a friend as
+Steerforth, or in the desire to explain to him how I came to have such a
+friend as Mr. Peggotty, that I called to him as he was going away. But I
+said, modestly--Good Heaven, how it all comes back to me this long time
+afterwards--!
+
+‘Don’t go, Steerforth, if you please. These are two Yarmouth
+boatmen--very kind, good people--who are relations of my nurse, and have
+come from Gravesend to see me.’
+
+‘Aye, aye?’ said Steerforth, returning. ‘I am glad to see them. How are
+you both?’
+
+There was an ease in his manner--a gay and light manner it was, but not
+swaggering--which I still believe to have borne a kind of enchantment
+with it. I still believe him, in virtue of this carriage, his animal
+spirits, his delightful voice, his handsome face and figure, and, for
+aught I know, of some inborn power of attraction besides (which I think
+a few people possess), to have carried a spell with him to which it was
+a natural weakness to yield, and which not many persons could withstand.
+I could not but see how pleased they were with him, and how they seemed
+to open their hearts to him in a moment.
+
+‘You must let them know at home, if you please, Mr. Peggotty,’ I said,
+‘when that letter is sent, that Mr. Steerforth is very kind to me, and
+that I don’t know what I should ever do here without him.’
+
+‘Nonsense!’ said Steerforth, laughing. ‘You mustn’t tell them anything
+of the sort.’
+
+‘And if Mr. Steerforth ever comes into Norfolk or Suffolk, Mr.
+Peggotty,’ I said, ‘while I am there, you may depend upon it I shall
+bring him to Yarmouth, if he will let me, to see your house. You never
+saw such a good house, Steerforth. It’s made out of a boat!’
+
+‘Made out of a boat, is it?’ said Steerforth. ‘It’s the right sort of a
+house for such a thorough-built boatman.’
+
+‘So ‘tis, sir, so ‘tis, sir,’ said Ham, grinning. ‘You’re right, young
+gen’l’m’n! Mas’r Davy bor’, gen’l’m’n’s right. A thorough-built boatman!
+Hor, hor! That’s what he is, too!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty was no less pleased than his nephew, though his modesty
+forbade him to claim a personal compliment so vociferously.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ he said, bowing and chuckling, and tucking in the ends
+of his neckerchief at his breast: ‘I thankee, sir, I thankee! I do my
+endeavours in my line of life, sir.’
+
+‘The best of men can do no more, Mr. Peggotty,’ said Steerforth. He had
+got his name already.
+
+‘I’ll pound it, it’s wot you do yourself, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty,
+shaking his head, ‘and wot you do well--right well! I thankee, sir. I’m
+obleeged to you, sir, for your welcoming manner of me. I’m rough, sir,
+but I’m ready--least ways, I hope I’m ready, you unnerstand. My house
+ain’t much for to see, sir, but it’s hearty at your service if ever you
+should come along with Mas’r Davy to see it. I’m a reg’lar Dodman,
+I am,’ said Mr. Peggotty, by which he meant snail, and this was in
+allusion to his being slow to go, for he had attempted to go after every
+sentence, and had somehow or other come back again; ‘but I wish you both
+well, and I wish you happy!’
+
+Ham echoed this sentiment, and we parted with them in the heartiest
+manner. I was almost tempted that evening to tell Steerforth about
+pretty little Em’ly, but I was too timid of mentioning her name, and
+too much afraid of his laughing at me. I remember that I thought a good
+deal, and in an uneasy sort of way, about Mr. Peggotty having said that
+she was getting on to be a woman; but I decided that was nonsense.
+
+We transported the shellfish, or the ‘relish’ as Mr. Peggotty had
+modestly called it, up into our room unobserved, and made a great supper
+that evening. But Traddles couldn’t get happily out of it. He was too
+unfortunate even to come through a supper like anybody else. He was
+taken ill in the night--quite prostrate he was--in consequence of Crab;
+and after being drugged with black draughts and blue pills, to an extent
+which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said was enough to undermine
+a horse’s constitution, received a caning and six chapters of Greek
+Testament for refusing to confess.
+
+The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of the daily
+strife and struggle of our lives; of the waning summer and the changing
+season; of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the
+cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of
+the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the
+morning schoolroom which was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of
+the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with
+roast mutton; of clods of bread-and-butter, dog’s-eared lesson-books,
+cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings,
+hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet-puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of
+ink, surrounding all.
+
+I well remember though, how the distant idea of the holidays, after
+seeming for an immense time to be a stationary speck, began to come
+towards us, and to grow and grow. How from counting months, we came to
+weeks, and then to days; and how I then began to be afraid that I should
+not be sent for and when I learnt from Steerforth that I had been sent
+for, and was certainly to go home, had dim forebodings that I might
+break my leg first. How the breaking-up day changed its place fast, at
+last, from the week after next to next week, this week, the day after
+tomorrow, tomorrow, today, tonight--when I was inside the Yarmouth mail,
+and going home.
+
+I had many a broken sleep inside the Yarmouth mail, and many an
+incoherent dream of all these things. But when I awoke at intervals, the
+ground outside the window was not the playground of Salem House, and the
+sound in my ears was not the sound of Mr. Creakle giving it to Traddles,
+but the sound of the coachman touching up the horses.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 8. MY HOLIDAYS. ESPECIALLY ONE HAPPY AFTERNOON
+
+
+When we arrived before day at the inn where the mail stopped, which was
+not the inn where my friend the waiter lived, I was shown up to a nice
+little bedroom, with DOLPHIN painted on the door. Very cold I was, I
+know, notwithstanding the hot tea they had given me before a large fire
+downstairs; and very glad I was to turn into the Dolphin’s bed, pull the
+Dolphin’s blankets round my head, and go to sleep.
+
+Mr. Barkis the carrier was to call for me in the morning at nine
+o’clock. I got up at eight, a little giddy from the shortness of my
+night’s rest, and was ready for him before the appointed time. He
+received me exactly as if not five minutes had elapsed since we were
+last together, and I had only been into the hotel to get change for
+sixpence, or something of that sort.
+
+As soon as I and my box were in the cart, and the carrier seated, the
+lazy horse walked away with us all at his accustomed pace.
+
+‘You look very well, Mr. Barkis,’ I said, thinking he would like to know
+it.
+
+Mr. Barkis rubbed his cheek with his cuff, and then looked at his cuff
+as if he expected to find some of the bloom upon it; but made no other
+acknowledgement of the compliment.
+
+‘I gave your message, Mr. Barkis,’ I said: ‘I wrote to Peggotty.’
+
+‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+Mr. Barkis seemed gruff, and answered drily.
+
+‘Wasn’t it right, Mr. Barkis?’ I asked, after a little hesitation.
+
+‘Why, no,’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+‘Not the message?’
+
+‘The message was right enough, perhaps,’ said Mr. Barkis; ‘but it come
+to an end there.’
+
+Not understanding what he meant, I repeated inquisitively: ‘Came to an
+end, Mr. Barkis?’
+
+‘Nothing come of it,’ he explained, looking at me sideways. ‘No answer.’
+
+‘There was an answer expected, was there, Mr. Barkis?’ said I, opening
+my eyes. For this was a new light to me.
+
+‘When a man says he’s willin’,’ said Mr. Barkis, turning his glance
+slowly on me again, ‘it’s as much as to say, that man’s a-waitin’ for a
+answer.’
+
+‘Well, Mr. Barkis?’
+
+‘Well,’ said Mr. Barkis, carrying his eyes back to his horse’s ears;
+‘that man’s been a-waitin’ for a answer ever since.’
+
+‘Have you told her so, Mr. Barkis?’
+
+‘No--no,’ growled Mr. Barkis, reflecting about it. ‘I ain’t got no call
+to go and tell her so. I never said six words to her myself, I ain’t
+a-goin’ to tell her so.’
+
+‘Would you like me to do it, Mr. Barkis?’ said I, doubtfully. ‘You might
+tell her, if you would,’ said Mr. Barkis, with another slow look at me,
+‘that Barkis was a-waitin’ for a answer. Says you--what name is it?’
+
+‘Her name?’
+
+‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis, with a nod of his head.
+
+‘Peggotty.’
+
+‘Chrisen name? Or nat’ral name?’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+‘Oh, it’s not her Christian name. Her Christian name is Clara.’
+
+‘Is it though?’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+He seemed to find an immense fund of reflection in this circumstance,
+and sat pondering and inwardly whistling for some time.
+
+‘Well!’ he resumed at length. ‘Says you, “Peggotty! Barkis is waitin’
+for a answer.” Says she, perhaps, “Answer to what?” Says you, “To what I
+told you.” “What is that?” says she. “Barkis is willin’,” says you.’
+
+This extremely artful suggestion Mr. Barkis accompanied with a nudge
+of his elbow that gave me quite a stitch in my side. After that, he
+slouched over his horse in his usual manner; and made no other reference
+to the subject except, half an hour afterwards, taking a piece of chalk
+from his pocket, and writing up, inside the tilt of the cart, ‘Clara
+Peggotty’--apparently as a private memorandum.
+
+Ah, what a strange feeling it was to be going home when it was not home,
+and to find that every object I looked at, reminded me of the happy old
+home, which was like a dream I could never dream again! The days when my
+mother and I and Peggotty were all in all to one another, and there was
+no one to come between us, rose up before me so sorrowfully on the road,
+that I am not sure I was glad to be there--not sure but that I would
+rather have remained away, and forgotten it in Steerforth’s company. But
+there I was; and soon I was at our house, where the bare old elm-trees
+wrung their many hands in the bleak wintry air, and shreds of the old
+rooks’-nests drifted away upon the wind.
+
+The carrier put my box down at the garden-gate, and left me. I walked
+along the path towards the house, glancing at the windows, and fearing
+at every step to see Mr. Murdstone or Miss Murdstone lowering out of
+one of them. No face appeared, however; and being come to the house, and
+knowing how to open the door, before dark, without knocking, I went in
+with a quiet, timid step.
+
+God knows how infantine the memory may have been, that was awakened
+within me by the sound of my mother’s voice in the old parlour, when I
+set foot in the hall. She was singing in a low tone. I think I must have
+lain in her arms, and heard her singing so to me when I was but a baby.
+The strain was new to me, and yet it was so old that it filled my heart
+brim-full; like a friend come back from a long absence.
+
+I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother
+murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room.
+She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she
+held against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she
+sat singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion.
+
+I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she
+called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room
+to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head
+down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and
+put its hand to my lips.
+
+I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my
+heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been
+since.
+
+‘He is your brother,’ said my mother, fondling me. ‘Davy, my pretty boy!
+My poor child!’ Then she kissed me more and more, and clasped me round
+the neck. This she was doing when Peggotty came running in, and bounced
+down on the ground beside us, and went mad about us both for a quarter
+of an hour.
+
+It seemed that I had not been expected so soon, the carrier being much
+before his usual time. It seemed, too, that Mr. and Miss Murdstone had
+gone out upon a visit in the neighbourhood, and would not return before
+night. I had never hoped for this. I had never thought it possible that
+we three could be together undisturbed, once more; and I felt, for the
+time, as if the old days were come back.
+
+We dined together by the fireside. Peggotty was in attendance to wait
+upon us, but my mother wouldn’t let her do it, and made her dine with
+us. I had my own old plate, with a brown view of a man-of-war in full
+sail upon it, which Peggotty had hoarded somewhere all the time I
+had been away, and would not have had broken, she said, for a hundred
+pounds. I had my own old mug with David on it, and my own old little
+knife and fork that wouldn’t cut.
+
+While we were at table, I thought it a favourable occasion to tell
+Peggotty about Mr. Barkis, who, before I had finished what I had to tell
+her, began to laugh, and throw her apron over her face.
+
+‘Peggotty,’ said my mother. ‘What’s the matter?’
+
+Peggotty only laughed the more, and held her apron tight over her face
+when my mother tried to pull it away, and sat as if her head were in a
+bag.
+
+‘What are you doing, you stupid creature?’ said my mother, laughing.
+
+‘Oh, drat the man!’ cried Peggotty. ‘He wants to marry me.’
+
+‘It would be a very good match for you; wouldn’t it?’ said my mother.
+
+‘Oh! I don’t know,’ said Peggotty. ‘Don’t ask me. I wouldn’t have him if
+he was made of gold. Nor I wouldn’t have anybody.’
+
+‘Then, why don’t you tell him so, you ridiculous thing?’ said my mother.
+
+‘Tell him so,’ retorted Peggotty, looking out of her apron. ‘He has
+never said a word to me about it. He knows better. If he was to make so
+bold as say a word to me, I should slap his face.’
+
+Her own was as red as ever I saw it, or any other face, I think; but she
+only covered it again, for a few moments at a time, when she was taken
+with a violent fit of laughter; and after two or three of those attacks,
+went on with her dinner.
+
+I remarked that my mother, though she smiled when Peggotty looked at
+her, became more serious and thoughtful. I had seen at first that she
+was changed. Her face was very pretty still, but it looked careworn, and
+too delicate; and her hand was so thin and white that it seemed to me
+to be almost transparent. But the change to which I now refer was
+superadded to this: it was in her manner, which became anxious and
+fluttered. At last she said, putting out her hand, and laying it
+affectionately on the hand of her old servant,
+
+‘Peggotty, dear, you are not going to be married?’
+
+‘Me, ma’am?’ returned Peggotty, staring. ‘Lord bless you, no!’
+
+‘Not just yet?’ said my mother, tenderly.
+
+‘Never!’ cried Peggotty.
+
+My mother took her hand, and said:
+
+‘Don’t leave me, Peggotty. Stay with me. It will not be for long,
+perhaps. What should I ever do without you!’
+
+‘Me leave you, my precious!’ cried Peggotty. ‘Not for all the world and
+his wife. Why, what’s put that in your silly little head?’--For Peggotty
+had been used of old to talk to my mother sometimes like a child.
+
+But my mother made no answer, except to thank her, and Peggotty went
+running on in her own fashion.
+
+‘Me leave you? I think I see myself. Peggotty go away from you? I should
+like to catch her at it! No, no, no,’ said Peggotty, shaking her head,
+and folding her arms; ‘not she, my dear. It isn’t that there ain’t some
+Cats that would be well enough pleased if she did, but they sha’n’t be
+pleased. They shall be aggravated. I’ll stay with you till I am a cross
+cranky old woman. And when I’m too deaf, and too lame, and too blind,
+and too mumbly for want of teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be
+found fault with, than I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me
+in.’
+
+‘And, Peggotty,’ says I, ‘I shall be glad to see you, and I’ll make you
+as welcome as a queen.’
+
+‘Bless your dear heart!’ cried Peggotty. ‘I know you will!’ And she
+kissed me beforehand, in grateful acknowledgement of my hospitality.
+After that, she covered her head up with her apron again and had another
+laugh about Mr. Barkis. After that, she took the baby out of its little
+cradle, and nursed it. After that, she cleared the dinner table;
+after that, came in with another cap on, and her work-box, and the
+yard-measure, and the bit of wax-candle, all just the same as ever.
+
+We sat round the fire, and talked delightfully. I told them what a hard
+master Mr. Creakle was, and they pitied me very much. I told them what a
+fine fellow Steerforth was, and what a patron of mine, and Peggotty said
+she would walk a score of miles to see him. I took the little baby in
+my arms when it was awake, and nursed it lovingly. When it was asleep
+again, I crept close to my mother’s side according to my old custom,
+broken now a long time, and sat with my arms embracing her waist, and my
+little red cheek on her shoulder, and once more felt her beautiful
+hair drooping over me--like an angel’s wing as I used to think, I
+recollect--and was very happy indeed.
+
+While I sat thus, looking at the fire, and seeing pictures in the
+red-hot coals, I almost believed that I had never been away; that Mr.
+and Miss Murdstone were such pictures, and would vanish when the fire
+got low; and that there was nothing real in all that I remembered, save
+my mother, Peggotty, and I.
+
+Peggotty darned away at a stocking as long as she could see, and then
+sat with it drawn on her left hand like a glove, and her needle in her
+right, ready to take another stitch whenever there was a blaze. I cannot
+conceive whose stockings they can have been that Peggotty was always
+darning, or where such an unfailing supply of stockings in want of
+darning can have come from. From my earliest infancy she seems to have
+been always employed in that class of needlework, and never by any
+chance in any other.
+
+‘I wonder,’ said Peggotty, who was sometimes seized with a fit of
+wondering on some most unexpected topic, ‘what’s become of Davy’s
+great-aunt?’ ‘Lor, Peggotty!’ observed my mother, rousing herself from a
+reverie, ‘what nonsense you talk!’
+
+‘Well, but I really do wonder, ma’am,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘What can have put such a person in your head?’ inquired my mother. ‘Is
+there nobody else in the world to come there?’
+
+‘I don’t know how it is,’ said Peggotty, ‘unless it’s on account of
+being stupid, but my head never can pick and choose its people. They
+come and they go, and they don’t come and they don’t go, just as they
+like. I wonder what’s become of her?’
+
+‘How absurd you are, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘One would suppose
+you wanted a second visit from her.’
+
+‘Lord forbid!’ cried Peggotty.
+
+‘Well then, don’t talk about such uncomfortable things, there’s a good
+soul,’ said my mother. ‘Miss Betsey is shut up in her cottage by the
+sea, no doubt, and will remain there. At all events, she is not likely
+ever to trouble us again.’
+
+‘No!’ mused Peggotty. ‘No, that ain’t likely at all.---I wonder, if she
+was to die, whether she’d leave Davy anything?’
+
+‘Good gracious me, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, ‘what a nonsensical
+woman you are! when you know that she took offence at the poor dear
+boy’s ever being born at all.’
+
+‘I suppose she wouldn’t be inclined to forgive him now,’ hinted
+Peggotty.
+
+‘Why should she be inclined to forgive him now?’ said my mother, rather
+sharply.
+
+‘Now that he’s got a brother, I mean,’ said Peggotty.
+
+My mother immediately began to cry, and wondered how Peggotty dared to
+say such a thing.
+
+‘As if this poor little innocent in its cradle had ever done any harm to
+you or anybody else, you jealous thing!’ said she. ‘You had much better
+go and marry Mr. Barkis, the carrier. Why don’t you?’
+
+‘I should make Miss Murdstone happy, if I was to,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘What a bad disposition you have, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘You
+are as jealous of Miss Murdstone as it is possible for a ridiculous
+creature to be. You want to keep the keys yourself, and give out all the
+things, I suppose? I shouldn’t be surprised if you did. When you know
+that she only does it out of kindness and the best intentions! You know
+she does, Peggotty--you know it well.’
+
+Peggotty muttered something to the effect of ‘Bother the best
+intentions!’ and something else to the effect that there was a little
+too much of the best intentions going on.
+
+‘I know what you mean, you cross thing,’ said my mother. ‘I understand
+you, Peggotty, perfectly. You know I do, and I wonder you don’t colour
+up like fire. But one point at a time. Miss Murdstone is the point now,
+Peggotty, and you sha’n’t escape from it. Haven’t you heard her
+say, over and over again, that she thinks I am too thoughtless and
+too--a--a--’
+
+‘Pretty,’ suggested Peggotty.
+
+‘Well,’ returned my mother, half laughing, ‘and if she is so silly as to
+say so, can I be blamed for it?’
+
+‘No one says you can,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘No, I should hope not, indeed!’ returned my mother. ‘Haven’t you heard
+her say, over and over again, that on this account she wished to spare
+me a great deal of trouble, which she thinks I am not suited for, and
+which I really don’t know myself that I AM suited for; and isn’t she up
+early and late, and going to and fro continually--and doesn’t she do
+all sorts of things, and grope into all sorts of places, coal-holes and
+pantries and I don’t know where, that can’t be very agreeable--and do
+you mean to insinuate that there is not a sort of devotion in that?’
+
+‘I don’t insinuate at all,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘You do, Peggotty,’ returned my mother. ‘You never do anything else,
+except your work. You are always insinuating. You revel in it. And when
+you talk of Mr. Murdstone’s good intentions--’
+
+‘I never talked of ‘em,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘No, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, ‘but you insinuated. That’s what I
+told you just now. That’s the worst of you. You WILL insinuate. I said,
+at the moment, that I understood you, and you see I did. When you talk
+of Mr. Murdstone’s good intentions, and pretend to slight them (for I
+don’t believe you really do, in your heart, Peggotty), you must be as
+well convinced as I am how good they are, and how they actuate him in
+everything. If he seems to have been at all stern with a certain person,
+Peggotty--you understand, and so I am sure does Davy, that I am not
+alluding to anybody present--it is solely because he is satisfied that
+it is for a certain person’s benefit. He naturally loves a certain
+person, on my account; and acts solely for a certain person’s good. He
+is better able to judge of it than I am; for I very well know that I am
+a weak, light, girlish creature, and that he is a firm, grave, serious
+man. And he takes,’ said my mother, with the tears which were engendered
+in her affectionate nature, stealing down her face, ‘he takes great
+pains with me; and I ought to be very thankful to him, and very
+submissive to him even in my thoughts; and when I am not, Peggotty, I
+worry and condemn myself, and feel doubtful of my own heart, and don’t
+know what to do.’
+
+Peggotty sat with her chin on the foot of the stocking, looking silently
+at the fire.
+
+‘There, Peggotty,’ said my mother, changing her tone, ‘don’t let us fall
+out with one another, for I couldn’t bear it. You are my true friend, I
+know, if I have any in the world. When I call you a ridiculous creature,
+or a vexatious thing, or anything of that sort, Peggotty, I only mean
+that you are my true friend, and always have been, ever since the night
+when Mr. Copperfield first brought me home here, and you came out to the
+gate to meet me.’
+
+Peggotty was not slow to respond, and ratify the treaty of friendship by
+giving me one of her best hugs. I think I had some glimpses of the real
+character of this conversation at the time; but I am sure, now, that
+the good creature originated it, and took her part in it, merely that
+my mother might comfort herself with the little contradictory summary in
+which she had indulged. The design was efficacious; for I remember that
+my mother seemed more at ease during the rest of the evening, and that
+Peggotty observed her less.
+
+When we had had our tea, and the ashes were thrown up, and the candles
+snuffed, I read Peggotty a chapter out of the Crocodile Book, in
+remembrance of old times--she took it out of her pocket: I don’t know
+whether she had kept it there ever since--and then we talked about Salem
+House, which brought me round again to Steerforth, who was my great
+subject. We were very happy; and that evening, as the last of its race,
+and destined evermore to close that volume of my life, will never pass
+out of my memory.
+
+It was almost ten o’clock before we heard the sound of wheels. We all
+got up then; and my mother said hurriedly that, as it was so late, and
+Mr. and Miss Murdstone approved of early hours for young people, perhaps
+I had better go to bed. I kissed her, and went upstairs with my candle
+directly, before they came in. It appeared to my childish fancy, as I
+ascended to the bedroom where I had been imprisoned, that they brought
+a cold blast of air into the house which blew away the old familiar
+feeling like a feather.
+
+I felt uncomfortable about going down to breakfast in the morning, as
+I had never set eyes on Mr. Murdstone since the day when I committed my
+memorable offence. However, as it must be done, I went down, after two
+or three false starts half-way, and as many runs back on tiptoe to my
+own room, and presented myself in the parlour.
+
+He was standing before the fire with his back to it, while Miss
+Murdstone made the tea. He looked at me steadily as I entered, but made
+no sign of recognition whatever. I went up to him, after a moment of
+confusion, and said: ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I am very sorry for what I
+did, and I hope you will forgive me.’
+
+‘I am glad to hear you are sorry, David,’ he replied.
+
+The hand he gave me was the hand I had bitten. I could not restrain my
+eye from resting for an instant on a red spot upon it; but it was not so
+red as I turned, when I met that sinister expression in his face.
+
+‘How do you do, ma’am?’ I said to Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Ah, dear me!’ sighed Miss Murdstone, giving me the tea-caddy scoop
+instead of her fingers. ‘How long are the holidays?’
+
+‘A month, ma’am.’
+
+‘Counting from when?’
+
+‘From today, ma’am.’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Miss Murdstone. ‘Then here’s one day off.’
+
+She kept a calendar of the holidays in this way, and every morning
+checked a day off in exactly the same manner. She did it gloomily until
+she came to ten, but when she got into two figures she became more
+hopeful, and, as the time advanced, even jocular.
+
+It was on this very first day that I had the misfortune to throw her,
+though she was not subject to such weakness in general, into a state of
+violent consternation. I came into the room where she and my mother
+were sitting; and the baby (who was only a few weeks old) being on
+my mother’s lap, I took it very carefully in my arms. Suddenly Miss
+Murdstone gave such a scream that I all but dropped it.
+
+‘My dear Jane!’ cried my mother.
+
+‘Good heavens, Clara, do you see?’ exclaimed Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘See what, my dear Jane?’ said my mother; ‘where?’
+
+‘He’s got it!’ cried Miss Murdstone. ‘The boy has got the baby!’
+
+She was limp with horror; but stiffened herself to make a dart at me,
+and take it out of my arms. Then, she turned faint; and was so very
+ill that they were obliged to give her cherry brandy. I was solemnly
+interdicted by her, on her recovery, from touching my brother any more
+on any pretence whatever; and my poor mother, who, I could see, wished
+otherwise, meekly confirmed the interdict, by saying: ‘No doubt you are
+right, my dear Jane.’
+
+On another occasion, when we three were together, this same dear
+baby--it was truly dear to me, for our mother’s sake--was the innocent
+occasion of Miss Murdstone’s going into a passion. My mother, who had
+been looking at its eyes as it lay upon her lap, said:
+
+‘Davy! come here!’ and looked at mine.
+
+I saw Miss Murdstone lay her beads down.
+
+‘I declare,’ said my mother, gently, ‘they are exactly alike. I suppose
+they are mine. I think they are the colour of mine. But they are
+wonderfully alike.’
+
+‘What are you talking about, Clara?’ said Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘My dear Jane,’ faltered my mother, a little abashed by the harsh tone
+of this inquiry, ‘I find that the baby’s eyes and Davy’s are exactly
+alike.’
+
+‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, rising angrily, ‘you are a positive fool
+sometimes.’
+
+‘My dear Jane,’ remonstrated my mother.
+
+‘A positive fool,’ said Miss Murdstone. ‘Who else could compare my
+brother’s baby with your boy? They are not at all alike. They are
+exactly unlike. They are utterly dissimilar in all respects. I hope
+they will ever remain so. I will not sit here, and hear such comparisons
+made.’ With that she stalked out, and made the door bang after her.
+
+In short, I was not a favourite with Miss Murdstone. In short, I was not
+a favourite there with anybody, not even with myself; for those who did
+like me could not show it, and those who did not, showed it so plainly
+that I had a sensitive consciousness of always appearing constrained,
+boorish, and dull.
+
+I felt that I made them as uncomfortable as they made me. If I came into
+the room where they were, and they were talking together and my mother
+seemed cheerful, an anxious cloud would steal over her face from the
+moment of my entrance. If Mr. Murdstone were in his best humour, I
+checked him. If Miss Murdstone were in her worst, I intensified it. I
+had perception enough to know that my mother was the victim always; that
+she was afraid to speak to me or to be kind to me, lest she should
+give them some offence by her manner of doing so, and receive a
+lecture afterwards; that she was not only ceaselessly afraid of her own
+offending, but of my offending, and uneasily watched their looks if I
+only moved. Therefore I resolved to keep myself as much out of their way
+as I could; and many a wintry hour did I hear the church clock strike,
+when I was sitting in my cheerless bedroom, wrapped in my little
+great-coat, poring over a book.
+
+In the evening, sometimes, I went and sat with Peggotty in the kitchen.
+There I was comfortable, and not afraid of being myself. But neither of
+these resources was approved of in the parlour. The tormenting humour
+which was dominant there stopped them both. I was still held to be
+necessary to my poor mother’s training, and, as one of her trials, could
+not be suffered to absent myself.
+
+‘David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, one day after dinner when I was going to
+leave the room as usual; ‘I am sorry to observe that you are of a sullen
+disposition.’
+
+‘As sulky as a bear!’ said Miss Murdstone.
+
+I stood still, and hung my head.
+
+‘Now, David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘a sullen obdurate disposition is, of
+all tempers, the worst.’
+
+‘And the boy’s is, of all such dispositions that ever I have seen,’
+remarked his sister, ‘the most confirmed and stubborn. I think, my dear
+Clara, even you must observe it?’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, my dear Jane,’ said my mother, ‘but are you quite
+sure--I am certain you’ll excuse me, my dear Jane--that you understand
+Davy?’
+
+‘I should be somewhat ashamed of myself, Clara,’ returned Miss
+Murdstone, ‘if I could not understand the boy, or any boy. I don’t
+profess to be profound; but I do lay claim to common sense.’
+
+‘No doubt, my dear Jane,’ returned my mother, ‘your understanding is
+very vigorous--’
+
+‘Oh dear, no! Pray don’t say that, Clara,’ interposed Miss Murdstone,
+angrily.
+
+‘But I am sure it is,’ resumed my mother; ‘and everybody knows it is. I
+profit so much by it myself, in many ways--at least I ought to--that no
+one can be more convinced of it than myself; and therefore I speak with
+great diffidence, my dear Jane, I assure you.’
+
+‘We’ll say I don’t understand the boy, Clara,’ returned Miss Murdstone,
+arranging the little fetters on her wrists. ‘We’ll agree, if you please,
+that I don’t understand him at all. He is much too deep for me. But
+perhaps my brother’s penetration may enable him to have some insight
+into his character. And I believe my brother was speaking on the subject
+when we--not very decently--interrupted him.’
+
+‘I think, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone, in a low grave voice, ‘that there
+may be better and more dispassionate judges of such a question than
+you.’
+
+‘Edward,’ replied my mother, timidly, ‘you are a far better judge of all
+questions than I pretend to be. Both you and Jane are. I only said--’
+
+‘You only said something weak and inconsiderate,’ he replied. ‘Try not
+to do it again, my dear Clara, and keep a watch upon yourself.’
+
+My mother’s lips moved, as if she answered ‘Yes, my dear Edward,’ but
+she said nothing aloud.
+
+‘I was sorry, David, I remarked,’ said Mr. Murdstone, turning his head
+and his eyes stiffly towards me, ‘to observe that you are of a sullen
+disposition. This is not a character that I can suffer to develop itself
+beneath my eyes without an effort at improvement. You must endeavour,
+sir, to change it. We must endeavour to change it for you.’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ I faltered. ‘I have never meant to be sullen
+since I came back.’
+
+‘Don’t take refuge in a lie, sir!’ he returned so fiercely, that I saw
+my mother involuntarily put out her trembling hand as if to interpose
+between us. ‘You have withdrawn yourself in your sullenness to your own
+room. You have kept your own room when you ought to have been here. You
+know now, once for all, that I require you to be here, and not there.
+Further, that I require you to bring obedience here. You know me, David.
+I will have it done.’
+
+Miss Murdstone gave a hoarse chuckle.
+
+‘I will have a respectful, prompt, and ready bearing towards myself,’ he
+continued, ‘and towards Jane Murdstone, and towards your mother. I will
+not have this room shunned as if it were infected, at the pleasure of a
+child. Sit down.’
+
+He ordered me like a dog, and I obeyed like a dog.
+
+‘One thing more,’ he said. ‘I observe that you have an attachment to low
+and common company. You are not to associate with servants. The
+kitchen will not improve you, in the many respects in which you need
+improvement. Of the woman who abets you, I say nothing--since you,
+Clara,’ addressing my mother in a lower voice, ‘from old associations
+and long-established fancies, have a weakness respecting her which is
+not yet overcome.’
+
+‘A most unaccountable delusion it is!’ cried Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘I only say,’ he resumed, addressing me, ‘that I disapprove of your
+preferring such company as Mistress Peggotty, and that it is to be
+abandoned. Now, David, you understand me, and you know what will be the
+consequence if you fail to obey me to the letter.’
+
+I knew well--better perhaps than he thought, as far as my poor mother
+was concerned--and I obeyed him to the letter. I retreated to my own
+room no more; I took refuge with Peggotty no more; but sat wearily in
+the parlour day after day, looking forward to night, and bedtime.
+
+What irksome constraint I underwent, sitting in the same attitude hours
+upon hours, afraid to move an arm or a leg lest Miss Murdstone should
+complain (as she did on the least pretence) of my restlessness, and
+afraid to move an eye lest she should light on some look of dislike
+or scrutiny that would find new cause for complaint in mine! What
+intolerable dulness to sit listening to the ticking of the clock; and
+watching Miss Murdstone’s little shiny steel beads as she strung them;
+and wondering whether she would ever be married, and if so, to what
+sort of unhappy man; and counting the divisions in the moulding of the
+chimney-piece; and wandering away, with my eyes, to the ceiling, among
+the curls and corkscrews in the paper on the wall!
+
+What walks I took alone, down muddy lanes, in the bad winter weather,
+carrying that parlour, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone in it, everywhere: a
+monstrous load that I was obliged to bear, a daymare that there was
+no possibility of breaking in, a weight that brooded on my wits, and
+blunted them!
+
+What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always feeling that there
+were a knife and fork too many, and that mine; an appetite too many, and
+that mine; a plate and chair too many, and those mine; a somebody too
+many, and that I!
+
+What evenings, when the candles came, and I was expected to employ
+myself, but, not daring to read an entertaining book, pored over some
+hard-headed, harder-hearted treatise on arithmetic; when the tables of
+weights and measures set themselves to tunes, as ‘Rule Britannia’, or
+‘Away with Melancholy’; when they wouldn’t stand still to be learnt, but
+would go threading my grandmother’s needle through my unfortunate head,
+in at one ear and out at the other! What yawns and dozes I lapsed into,
+in spite of all my care; what starts I came out of concealed sleeps
+with; what answers I never got, to little observations that I rarely
+made; what a blank space I seemed, which everybody overlooked, and
+yet was in everybody’s way; what a heavy relief it was to hear Miss
+Murdstone hail the first stroke of nine at night, and order me to bed!
+
+Thus the holidays lagged away, until the morning came when Miss
+Murdstone said: ‘Here’s the last day off!’ and gave me the closing cup
+of tea of the vacation.
+
+I was not sorry to go. I had lapsed into a stupid state; but I was
+recovering a little and looking forward to Steerforth, albeit Mr.
+Creakle loomed behind him. Again Mr. Barkis appeared at the gate, and
+again Miss Murdstone in her warning voice, said: ‘Clara!’ when my mother
+bent over me, to bid me farewell.
+
+I kissed her, and my baby brother, and was very sorry then; but not
+sorry to go away, for the gulf between us was there, and the parting was
+there, every day. And it is not so much the embrace she gave me, that
+lives in my mind, though it was as fervent as could be, as what followed
+the embrace.
+
+I was in the carrier’s cart when I heard her calling to me. I looked
+out, and she stood at the garden-gate alone, holding her baby up in her
+arms for me to see. It was cold still weather; and not a hair of her
+head, nor a fold of her dress, was stirred, as she looked intently at
+me, holding up her child.
+
+So I lost her. So I saw her afterwards, in my sleep at school--a silent
+presence near my bed--looking at me with the same intent face--holding
+up her baby in her arms.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 9. I HAVE A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY
+
+
+I PASS over all that happened at school, until the anniversary of my
+birthday came round in March. Except that Steerforth was more to be
+admired than ever, I remember nothing. He was going away at the end of
+the half-year, if not sooner, and was more spirited and independent than
+before in my eyes, and therefore more engaging than before; but beyond
+this I remember nothing. The great remembrance by which that time is
+marked in my mind, seems to have swallowed up all lesser recollections,
+and to exist alone.
+
+It is even difficult for me to believe that there was a gap of full
+two months between my return to Salem House and the arrival of that
+birthday. I can only understand that the fact was so, because I know it
+must have been so; otherwise I should feel convinced that there was no
+interval, and that the one occasion trod upon the other’s heels.
+
+How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that hung
+about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my
+rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of
+the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the
+foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the
+raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet upon the
+floor. It was after breakfast, and we had been summoned in from the
+playground, when Mr. Sharp entered and said:
+
+‘David Copperfield is to go into the parlour.’
+
+I expected a hamper from Peggotty, and brightened at the order. Some
+of the boys about me put in their claim not to be forgotten in the
+distribution of the good things, as I got out of my seat with great
+alacrity.
+
+‘Don’t hurry, David,’ said Mr. Sharp. ‘There’s time enough, my boy,
+don’t hurry.’
+
+I might have been surprised by the feeling tone in which he spoke, if I
+had given it a thought; but I gave it none until afterwards. I hurried
+away to the parlour; and there I found Mr. Creakle, sitting at his
+breakfast with the cane and a newspaper before him, and Mrs. Creakle
+with an opened letter in her hand. But no hamper.
+
+‘David Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Creakle, leading me to a sofa, and
+sitting down beside me. ‘I want to speak to you very particularly. I
+have something to tell you, my child.’
+
+Mr. Creakle, at whom of course I looked, shook his head without looking
+at me, and stopped up a sigh with a very large piece of buttered toast.
+
+‘You are too young to know how the world changes every day,’ said Mrs.
+Creakle, ‘and how the people in it pass away. But we all have to learn
+it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when we are old,
+some of us at all times of our lives.’
+
+I looked at her earnestly.
+
+‘When you came away from home at the end of the vacation,’ said Mrs.
+Creakle, after a pause, ‘were they all well?’ After another pause, ‘Was
+your mama well?’
+
+I trembled without distinctly knowing why, and still looked at her
+earnestly, making no attempt to answer.
+
+‘Because,’ said she, ‘I grieve to tell you that I hear this morning your
+mama is very ill.’
+
+A mist rose between Mrs. Creakle and me, and her figure seemed to move
+in it for an instant. Then I felt the burning tears run down my face,
+and it was steady again.
+
+‘She is very dangerously ill,’ she added.
+
+I knew all now.
+
+‘She is dead.’
+
+There was no need to tell me so. I had already broken out into a
+desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world.
+
+She was very kind to me. She kept me there all day, and left me alone
+sometimes; and I cried, and wore myself to sleep, and awoke and
+cried again. When I could cry no more, I began to think; and then the
+oppression on my breast was heaviest, and my grief a dull pain that
+there was no ease for.
+
+And yet my thoughts were idle; not intent on the calamity that weighed
+upon my heart, but idly loitering near it. I thought of our house shut
+up and hushed. I thought of the little baby, who, Mrs. Creakle said, had
+been pining away for some time, and who, they believed, would die too. I
+thought of my father’s grave in the churchyard, by our house, and of my
+mother lying there beneath the tree I knew so well. I stood upon a chair
+when I was left alone, and looked into the glass to see how red my eyes
+were, and how sorrowful my face. I considered, after some hours were
+gone, if my tears were really hard to flow now, as they seemed to be,
+what, in connexion with my loss, it would affect me most to think
+of when I drew near home--for I was going home to the funeral. I am
+sensible of having felt that a dignity attached to me among the rest of
+the boys, and that I was important in my affliction.
+
+If ever child were stricken with sincere grief, I was. But I remember
+that this importance was a kind of satisfaction to me, when I walked in
+the playground that afternoon while the boys were in school. When I
+saw them glancing at me out of the windows, as they went up to their
+classes, I felt distinguished, and looked more melancholy, and walked
+slower. When school was over, and they came out and spoke to me, I felt
+it rather good in myself not to be proud to any of them, and to take
+exactly the same notice of them all, as before.
+
+I was to go home next night; not by the mail, but by the heavy
+night-coach, which was called the Farmer, and was principally used by
+country-people travelling short intermediate distances upon the road. We
+had no story-telling that evening, and Traddles insisted on lending me
+his pillow. I don’t know what good he thought it would do me, for I
+had one of my own: but it was all he had to lend, poor fellow, except a
+sheet of letter-paper full of skeletons; and that he gave me at parting,
+as a soother of my sorrows and a contribution to my peace of mind.
+
+I left Salem House upon the morrow afternoon. I little thought then that
+I left it, never to return. We travelled very slowly all night, and
+did not get into Yarmouth before nine or ten o’clock in the morning. I
+looked out for Mr. Barkis, but he was not there; and instead of him a
+fat, short-winded, merry-looking, little old man in black, with rusty
+little bunches of ribbons at the knees of his breeches, black stockings,
+and a broad-brimmed hat, came puffing up to the coach window, and said:
+
+‘Master Copperfield?’
+
+‘Yes, sir.’
+
+‘Will you come with me, young sir, if you please,’ he said, opening the
+door, ‘and I shall have the pleasure of taking you home.’
+
+I put my hand in his, wondering who he was, and we walked away to a
+shop in a narrow street, on which was written OMER, DRAPER, TAILOR,
+HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, &c. It was a close and stifling little
+shop; full of all sorts of clothing, made and unmade, including
+one window full of beaver-hats and bonnets. We went into a little
+back-parlour behind the shop, where we found three young women at work
+on a quantity of black materials, which were heaped upon the table,
+and little bits and cuttings of which were littered all over the floor.
+There was a good fire in the room, and a breathless smell of warm black
+crape--I did not know what the smell was then, but I know now.
+
+The three young women, who appeared to be very industrious and
+comfortable, raised their heads to look at me, and then went on with
+their work. Stitch, stitch, stitch. At the same time there came from
+a workshop across a little yard outside the window, a regular sound
+of hammering that kept a kind of tune: RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat,
+RAT--tat-tat, without any variation.
+
+‘Well,’ said my conductor to one of the three young women. ‘How do you
+get on, Minnie?’
+
+‘We shall be ready by the trying-on time,’ she replied gaily, without
+looking up. ‘Don’t you be afraid, father.’
+
+Mr. Omer took off his broad-brimmed hat, and sat down and panted. He was
+so fat that he was obliged to pant some time before he could say:
+
+‘That’s right.’
+
+‘Father!’ said Minnie, playfully. ‘What a porpoise you do grow!’
+
+‘Well, I don’t know how it is, my dear,’ he replied, considering about
+it. ‘I am rather so.’
+
+‘You are such a comfortable man, you see,’ said Minnie. ‘You take things
+so easy.’
+
+‘No use taking ‘em otherwise, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer.
+
+‘No, indeed,’ returned his daughter. ‘We are all pretty gay here, thank
+Heaven! Ain’t we, father?’
+
+‘I hope so, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘As I have got my breath now, I
+think I’ll measure this young scholar. Would you walk into the shop,
+Master Copperfield?’
+
+I preceded Mr. Omer, in compliance with his request; and after showing
+me a roll of cloth which he said was extra super, and too good mourning
+for anything short of parents, he took my various dimensions, and put
+them down in a book. While he was recording them he called my attention
+to his stock in trade, and to certain fashions which he said had ‘just
+come up’, and to certain other fashions which he said had ‘just gone
+out’.
+
+‘And by that sort of thing we very often lose a little mint of money,’
+said Mr. Omer. ‘But fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody
+knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or
+how. Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it in that
+point of view.’
+
+I was too sorrowful to discuss the question, which would possibly have
+been beyond me under any circumstances; and Mr. Omer took me back into
+the parlour, breathing with some difficulty on the way.
+
+He then called down a little break-neck range of steps behind a door:
+‘Bring up that tea and bread-and-butter!’ which, after some time,
+during which I sat looking about me and thinking, and listening to the
+stitching in the room and the tune that was being hammered across the
+yard, appeared on a tray, and turned out to be for me.
+
+‘I have been acquainted with you,’ said Mr. Omer, after watching me
+for some minutes, during which I had not made much impression on the
+breakfast, for the black things destroyed my appetite, ‘I have been
+acquainted with you a long time, my young friend.’
+
+‘Have you, sir?’
+
+‘All your life,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘I may say before it. I knew your
+father before you. He was five foot nine and a half, and he lays in
+five-and-twen-ty foot of ground.’
+
+‘RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat,’ across the yard.
+
+‘He lays in five and twen-ty foot of ground, if he lays in a fraction,’
+said Mr. Omer, pleasantly. ‘It was either his request or her direction,
+I forget which.’
+
+‘Do you know how my little brother is, sir?’ I inquired.
+
+Mr. Omer shook his head.
+
+‘RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat.’
+
+‘He is in his mother’s arms,’ said he.
+
+‘Oh, poor little fellow! Is he dead?’
+
+‘Don’t mind it more than you can help,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Yes. The baby’s
+dead.’
+
+My wounds broke out afresh at this intelligence. I left the
+scarcely-tasted breakfast, and went and rested my head on another table,
+in a corner of the little room, which Minnie hastily cleared, lest I
+should spot the mourning that was lying there with my tears. She was
+a pretty, good-natured girl, and put my hair away from my eyes with a
+soft, kind touch; but she was very cheerful at having nearly finished
+her work and being in good time, and was so different from me!
+
+Presently the tune left off, and a good-looking young fellow came across
+the yard into the room. He had a hammer in his hand, and his mouth was
+full of little nails, which he was obliged to take out before he could
+speak.
+
+‘Well, Joram!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘How do you get on?’
+
+‘All right,’ said Joram. ‘Done, sir.’
+
+Minnie coloured a little, and the other two girls smiled at one another.
+
+‘What! you were at it by candle-light last night, when I was at the
+club, then? Were you?’ said Mr. Omer, shutting up one eye.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Joram. ‘As you said we could make a little trip of it, and
+go over together, if it was done, Minnie and me--and you.’
+
+‘Oh! I thought you were going to leave me out altogether,’ said Mr.
+Omer, laughing till he coughed.
+
+‘--As you was so good as to say that,’ resumed the young man, ‘why I
+turned to with a will, you see. Will you give me your opinion of it?’
+
+‘I will,’ said Mr. Omer, rising. ‘My dear’; and he stopped and turned to
+me: ‘would you like to see your--’
+
+‘No, father,’ Minnie interposed.
+
+‘I thought it might be agreeable, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘But perhaps
+you’re right.’
+
+I can’t say how I knew it was my dear, dear mother’s coffin that they
+went to look at. I had never heard one making; I had never seen one that
+I know of.--but it came into my mind what the noise was, while it was
+going on; and when the young man entered, I am sure I knew what he had
+been doing.
+
+The work being now finished, the two girls, whose names I had not heard,
+brushed the shreds and threads from their dresses, and went into the
+shop to put that to rights, and wait for customers. Minnie stayed behind
+to fold up what they had made, and pack it in two baskets. This she did
+upon her knees, humming a lively little tune the while. Joram, who I had
+no doubt was her lover, came in and stole a kiss from her while she was
+busy (he didn’t appear to mind me, at all), and said her father was gone
+for the chaise, and he must make haste and get himself ready. Then he
+went out again; and then she put her thimble and scissors in her pocket,
+and stuck a needle threaded with black thread neatly in the bosom of her
+gown, and put on her outer clothing smartly, at a little glass behind
+the door, in which I saw the reflection of her pleased face.
+
+All this I observed, sitting at the table in the corner with my head
+leaning on my hand, and my thoughts running on very different things.
+The chaise soon came round to the front of the shop, and the baskets
+being put in first, I was put in next, and those three followed. I
+remember it as a kind of half chaise-cart, half pianoforte-van, painted
+of a sombre colour, and drawn by a black horse with a long tail. There
+was plenty of room for us all.
+
+I do not think I have ever experienced so strange a feeling in my life
+(I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them, remembering how
+they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the ride. I was not angry
+with them; I was more afraid of them, as if I were cast away among
+creatures with whom I had no community of nature. They were very
+cheerful. The old man sat in front to drive, and the two young people
+sat behind him, and whenever he spoke to them leaned forward, the one on
+one side of his chubby face and the other on the other, and made a great
+deal of him. They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and
+moped in my corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity, though
+it was far from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came
+upon them for their hardness of heart.
+
+So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank and enjoyed
+themselves, I could touch nothing that they touched, but kept my fast
+unbroken. So, when we reached home, I dropped out of the chaise behind,
+as quickly as possible, that I might not be in their company before
+those solemn windows, looking blindly on me like closed eyes once
+bright. And oh, how little need I had had to think what would move me to
+tears when I came back--seeing the window of my mother’s room, and next
+it that which, in the better time, was mine!
+
+I was in Peggotty’s arms before I got to the door, and she took me into
+the house. Her grief burst out when she first saw me; but she controlled
+it soon, and spoke in whispers, and walked softly, as if the dead could
+be disturbed. She had not been in bed, I found, for a long time. She
+sat up at night still, and watched. As long as her poor dear pretty was
+above the ground, she said, she would never desert her.
+
+Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where he
+was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in his
+elbow-chair. Miss Murdstone, who was busy at her writing-desk, which
+was covered with letters and papers, gave me her cold finger-nails, and
+asked me, in an iron whisper, if I had been measured for my mourning.
+
+I said: ‘Yes.’
+
+‘And your shirts,’ said Miss Murdstone; ‘have you brought ‘em home?’
+
+‘Yes, ma’am. I have brought home all my clothes.’
+
+This was all the consolation that her firmness administered to me. I do
+not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what she called
+her self-command, and her firmness, and her strength of mind, and
+her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of her unamiable
+qualities, on such an occasion. She was particularly proud of her turn
+for business; and she showed it now in reducing everything to pen and
+ink, and being moved by nothing. All the rest of that day, and from
+morning to night afterwards, she sat at that desk, scratching composedly
+with a hard pen, speaking in the same imperturbable whisper to
+everybody; never relaxing a muscle of her face, or softening a tone of
+her voice, or appearing with an atom of her dress astray.
+
+Her brother took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw. He
+would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would remain for
+a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it down and walk to
+and fro in the room. I used to sit with folded hands watching him, and
+counting his footsteps, hour after hour. He very seldom spoke to her,
+and never to me. He seemed to be the only restless thing, except the
+clocks, in the whole motionless house.
+
+In these days before the funeral, I saw but little of Peggotty, except
+that, in passing up or down stairs, I always found her close to the room
+where my mother and her baby lay, and except that she came to me every
+night, and sat by my bed’s head while I went to sleep. A day or
+two before the burial--I think it was a day or two before, but I am
+conscious of confusion in my mind about that heavy time, with nothing
+to mark its progress--she took me into the room. I only recollect that
+underneath some white covering on the bed, with a beautiful cleanliness
+and freshness all around it, there seemed to me to lie embodied the
+solemn stillness that was in the house; and that when she would have
+turned the cover gently back, I cried: ‘Oh no! oh no!’ and held her
+hand.
+
+If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it better. The
+very air of the best parlour, when I went in at the door, the bright
+condition of the fire, the shining of the wine in the decanters, the
+patterns of the glasses and plates, the faint sweet smell of cake, the
+odour of Miss Murdstone’s dress, and our black clothes. Mr. Chillip is
+in the room, and comes to speak to me.
+
+‘And how is Master David?’ he says, kindly.
+
+I cannot tell him very well. I give him my hand, which he holds in his.
+
+‘Dear me!’ says Mr. Chillip, meekly smiling, with something shining in
+his eye. ‘Our little friends grow up around us. They grow out of our
+knowledge, ma’am?’ This is to Miss Murdstone, who makes no reply.
+
+‘There is a great improvement here, ma’am?’ says Mr. Chillip.
+
+Miss Murdstone merely answers with a frown and a formal bend: Mr.
+Chillip, discomfited, goes into a corner, keeping me with him, and opens
+his mouth no more.
+
+I remark this, because I remark everything that happens, not because
+I care about myself, or have done since I came home. And now the bell
+begins to sound, and Mr. Omer and another come to make us ready. As
+Peggotty was wont to tell me, long ago, the followers of my father to
+the same grave were made ready in the same room.
+
+There are Mr. Murdstone, our neighbour Mr. Grayper, Mr. Chillip, and
+I. When we go out to the door, the Bearers and their load are in the
+garden; and they move before us down the path, and past the elms, and
+through the gate, and into the churchyard, where I have so often heard
+the birds sing on a summer morning.
+
+We stand around the grave. The day seems different to me from every
+other day, and the light not of the same colour--of a sadder colour.
+Now there is a solemn hush, which we have brought from home with what is
+resting in the mould; and while we stand bareheaded, I hear the voice
+of the clergyman, sounding remote in the open air, and yet distinct and
+plain, saying: ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord!’
+Then I hear sobs; and, standing apart among the lookers-on, I see that
+good and faithful servant, whom of all the people upon earth I love the
+best, and unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will one
+day say: ‘Well done.’
+
+There are many faces that I know, among the little crowd; faces that I
+knew in church, when mine was always wondering there; faces that first
+saw my mother, when she came to the village in her youthful bloom. I do
+not mind them--I mind nothing but my grief--and yet I see and know them
+all; and even in the background, far away, see Minnie looking on, and
+her eye glancing on her sweetheart, who is near me.
+
+It is over, and the earth is filled in, and we turn to come away. Before
+us stands our house, so pretty and unchanged, so linked in my mind with
+the young idea of what is gone, that all my sorrow has been nothing to
+the sorrow it calls forth. But they take me on; and Mr. Chillip talks to
+me; and when we get home, puts some water to my lips; and when I ask his
+leave to go up to my room, dismisses me with the gentleness of a woman.
+
+All this, I say, is yesterday’s event. Events of later date have floated
+from me to the shore where all forgotten things will reappear, but this
+stands like a high rock in the ocean.
+
+I knew that Peggotty would come to me in my room. The Sabbath stillness
+of the time (the day was so like Sunday! I have forgotten that) was
+suited to us both. She sat down by my side upon my little bed; and
+holding my hand, and sometimes putting it to her lips, and sometimes
+smoothing it with hers, as she might have comforted my little brother,
+told me, in her way, all that she had to tell concerning what had
+happened.
+
+‘She was never well,’ said Peggotty, ‘for a long time. She was uncertain
+in her mind, and not happy. When her baby was born, I thought at first
+she would get better, but she was more delicate, and sunk a little every
+day. She used to like to sit alone before her baby came, and then she
+cried; but afterwards she used to sing to it--so soft, that I once
+thought, when I heard her, it was like a voice up in the air, that was
+rising away.
+
+‘I think she got to be more timid, and more frightened-like, of late;
+and that a hard word was like a blow to her. But she was always the same
+to me. She never changed to her foolish Peggotty, didn’t my sweet girl.’
+
+Here Peggotty stopped, and softly beat upon my hand a little while.
+
+‘The last time that I saw her like her own old self, was the night when
+you came home, my dear. The day you went away, she said to me, “I never
+shall see my pretty darling again. Something tells me so, that tells the
+truth, I know.”
+
+‘She tried to hold up after that; and many a time, when they told her
+she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made believe to be so; but it was
+all a bygone then. She never told her husband what she had told me--she
+was afraid of saying it to anybody else--till one night, a little more
+than a week before it happened, when she said to him: “My dear, I think
+I am dying.”
+
+‘“It’s off my mind now, Peggotty,” she told me, when I laid her in her
+bed that night. “He will believe it more and more, poor fellow, every
+day for a few days to come; and then it will be past. I am very tired.
+If this is sleep, sit by me while I sleep: don’t leave me. God bless
+both my children! God protect and keep my fatherless boy!”
+
+‘I never left her afterwards,’ said Peggotty. ‘She often talked to them
+two downstairs--for she loved them; she couldn’t bear not to love anyone
+who was about her--but when they went away from her bed-side, she always
+turned to me, as if there was rest where Peggotty was, and never fell
+asleep in any other way.
+
+‘On the last night, in the evening, she kissed me, and said: “If my baby
+should die too, Peggotty, please let them lay him in my arms, and bury
+us together.” (It was done; for the poor lamb lived but a day beyond
+her.) “Let my dearest boy go with us to our resting-place,” she said,
+“and tell him that his mother, when she lay here, blessed him not once,
+but a thousand times.”’
+
+Another silence followed this, and another gentle beating on my hand.
+
+‘It was pretty far in the night,’ said Peggotty, ‘when she asked me for
+some drink; and when she had taken it, gave me such a patient smile, the
+dear!--so beautiful!
+
+‘Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she said to me, how
+kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her, and how
+he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted herself, that
+a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom, and that he was a
+happy man in hers. “Peggotty, my dear,” she said then, “put me nearer to
+you,” for she was very weak. “Lay your good arm underneath my neck,” she
+said, “and turn me to you, for your face is going far off, and I want it
+to be near.” I put it as she asked; and oh Davy! the time had come when
+my first parting words to you were true--when she was glad to lay her
+poor head on her stupid cross old Peggotty’s arm--and she died like a
+child that had gone to sleep!’
+
+
+Thus ended Peggotty’s narration. From the moment of my knowing of the
+death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had vanished
+from me. I remembered her, from that instant, only as the young mother
+of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind her bright curls
+round and round her finger, and to dance with me at twilight in the
+parlour. What Peggotty had told me now, was so far from bringing me back
+to the later period, that it rooted the earlier image in my mind. It may
+be curious, but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her
+calm untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest.
+
+The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the
+little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for
+ever on her bosom.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 10. I BECOME NEGLECTED, AND AM PROVIDED FOR
+
+
+The first act of business Miss Murdstone performed when the day of the
+solemnity was over, and light was freely admitted into the house, was
+to give Peggotty a month’s warning. Much as Peggotty would have disliked
+such a service, I believe she would have retained it, for my sake, in
+preference to the best upon earth. She told me we must part, and told me
+why; and we condoled with one another, in all sincerity.
+
+As to me or my future, not a word was said, or a step taken. Happy
+they would have been, I dare say, if they could have dismissed me at a
+month’s warning too. I mustered courage once, to ask Miss Murdstone when
+I was going back to school; and she answered dryly, she believed I was
+not going back at all. I was told nothing more. I was very anxious to
+know what was going to be done with me, and so was Peggotty; but neither
+she nor I could pick up any information on the subject.
+
+There was one change in my condition, which, while it relieved me of
+a great deal of present uneasiness, might have made me, if I had been
+capable of considering it closely, yet more uncomfortable about the
+future. It was this. The constraint that had been put upon me, was quite
+abandoned. I was so far from being required to keep my dull post in
+the parlour, that on several occasions, when I took my seat there, Miss
+Murdstone frowned to me to go away. I was so far from being warned off
+from Peggotty’s society, that, provided I was not in Mr. Murdstone’s, I
+was never sought out or inquired for. At first I was in daily dread of
+his taking my education in hand again, or of Miss Murdstone’s
+devoting herself to it; but I soon began to think that such fears were
+groundless, and that all I had to anticipate was neglect.
+
+I do not conceive that this discovery gave me much pain then. I was
+still giddy with the shock of my mother’s death, and in a kind of
+stunned state as to all tributary things. I can recollect, indeed, to
+have speculated, at odd times, on the possibility of my not being taught
+any more, or cared for any more; and growing up to be a shabby, moody
+man, lounging an idle life away, about the village; as well as on the
+feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by going away somewhere,
+like the hero in a story, to seek my fortune: but these were transient
+visions, daydreams I sat looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly
+painted or written on the wall of my room, and which, as they melted
+away, left the wall blank again.
+
+‘Peggotty,’ I said in a thoughtful whisper, one evening, when I was
+warming my hands at the kitchen fire, ‘Mr. Murdstone likes me less than
+he used to. He never liked me much, Peggotty; but he would rather not
+even see me now, if he can help it.’
+
+‘Perhaps it’s his sorrow,’ said Peggotty, stroking my hair.
+
+‘I am sure, Peggotty, I am sorry too. If I believed it was his sorrow,
+I should not think of it at all. But it’s not that; oh, no, it’s not
+that.’
+
+‘How do you know it’s not that?’ said Peggotty, after a silence.
+
+‘Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. He is sorry at
+this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone; but if I was
+to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides.’
+
+‘What would he be?’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘Angry,’ I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark frown.
+‘If he was only sorry, he wouldn’t look at me as he does. I am only
+sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.’
+
+Peggotty said nothing for a little while; and I warmed my hands, as
+silent as she.
+
+‘Davy,’ she said at length.
+
+‘Yes, Peggotty?’ ‘I have tried, my dear, all ways I could think of--all
+the ways there are, and all the ways there ain’t, in short--to get a
+suitable service here, in Blunderstone; but there’s no such a thing, my
+love.’
+
+‘And what do you mean to do, Peggotty,’ says I, wistfully. ‘Do you mean
+to go and seek your fortune?’
+
+‘I expect I shall be forced to go to Yarmouth,’ replied Peggotty, ‘and
+live there.’
+
+‘You might have gone farther off,’ I said, brightening a little, ‘and
+been as bad as lost. I shall see you sometimes, my dear old Peggotty,
+there. You won’t be quite at the other end of the world, will you?’
+
+‘Contrary ways, please God!’ cried Peggotty, with great animation. ‘As
+long as you are here, my pet, I shall come over every week of my life to
+see you. One day, every week of my life!’
+
+I felt a great weight taken off my mind by this promise: but even this
+was not all, for Peggotty went on to say:
+
+‘I’m a-going, Davy, you see, to my brother’s, first, for another
+fortnight’s visit--just till I have had time to look about me, and
+get to be something like myself again. Now, I have been thinking that
+perhaps, as they don’t want you here at present, you might be let to go
+along with me.’
+
+If anything, short of being in a different relation to every one about
+me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a sense of pleasure at that
+time, it would have been this project of all others. The idea of being
+again surrounded by those honest faces, shining welcome on me; of
+renewing the peacefulness of the sweet Sunday morning, when the bells
+were ringing, the stones dropping in the water, and the shadowy ships
+breaking through the mist; of roaming up and down with little Em’ly,
+telling her my troubles, and finding charms against them in the shells
+and pebbles on the beach; made a calm in my heart. It was ruffled next
+moment, to be sure, by a doubt of Miss Murdstone’s giving her consent;
+but even that was set at rest soon, for she came out to take an evening
+grope in the store-closet while we were yet in conversation, and
+Peggotty, with a boldness that amazed me, broached the topic on the
+spot.
+
+‘The boy will be idle there,’ said Miss Murdstone, looking into a
+pickle-jar, ‘and idleness is the root of all evil. But, to be sure, he
+would be idle here--or anywhere, in my opinion.’
+
+Peggotty had an angry answer ready, I could see; but she swallowed it
+for my sake, and remained silent.
+
+‘Humph!’ said Miss Murdstone, still keeping her eye on the pickles;
+‘it is of more importance than anything else--it is of paramount
+importance--that my brother should not be disturbed or made
+uncomfortable. I suppose I had better say yes.’
+
+I thanked her, without making any demonstration of joy, lest it should
+induce her to withdraw her assent. Nor could I help thinking this a
+prudent course, since she looked at me out of the pickle-jar, with
+as great an access of sourness as if her black eyes had absorbed its
+contents. However, the permission was given, and was never retracted;
+for when the month was out, Peggotty and I were ready to depart.
+
+Mr. Barkis came into the house for Peggotty’s boxes. I had never known
+him to pass the garden-gate before, but on this occasion he came into
+the house. And he gave me a look as he shouldered the largest box and
+went out, which I thought had meaning in it, if meaning could ever be
+said to find its way into Mr. Barkis’s visage.
+
+Peggotty was naturally in low spirits at leaving what had been her home
+so many years, and where the two strong attachments of her life--for
+my mother and myself--had been formed. She had been walking in the
+churchyard, too, very early; and she got into the cart, and sat in it
+with her handkerchief at her eyes.
+
+So long as she remained in this condition, Mr. Barkis gave no sign
+of life whatever. He sat in his usual place and attitude like a great
+stuffed figure. But when she began to look about her, and to speak to
+me, he nodded his head and grinned several times. I have not the least
+notion at whom, or what he meant by it.
+
+‘It’s a beautiful day, Mr. Barkis!’ I said, as an act of politeness.
+
+‘It ain’t bad,’ said Mr. Barkis, who generally qualified his speech, and
+rarely committed himself.
+
+‘Peggotty is quite comfortable now, Mr. Barkis,’ I remarked, for his
+satisfaction.
+
+‘Is she, though?’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+After reflecting about it, with a sagacious air, Mr. Barkis eyed her,
+and said:
+
+‘ARE you pretty comfortable?’
+
+Peggotty laughed, and answered in the affirmative.
+
+‘But really and truly, you know. Are you?’ growled Mr. Barkis, sliding
+nearer to her on the seat, and nudging her with his elbow. ‘Are you?
+Really and truly pretty comfortable? Are you? Eh?’
+
+At each of these inquiries Mr. Barkis shuffled nearer to her, and gave
+her another nudge; so that at last we were all crowded together in the
+left-hand corner of the cart, and I was so squeezed that I could hardly
+bear it.
+
+Peggotty calling his attention to my sufferings, Mr. Barkis gave me a
+little more room at once, and got away by degrees. But I could not help
+observing that he seemed to think he had hit upon a wonderful expedient
+for expressing himself in a neat, agreeable, and pointed manner, without
+the inconvenience of inventing conversation. He manifestly chuckled over
+it for some time. By and by he turned to Peggotty again, and repeating,
+‘Are you pretty comfortable though?’ bore down upon us as before, until
+the breath was nearly edged out of my body. By and by he made another
+descent upon us with the same inquiry, and the same result. At length,
+I got up whenever I saw him coming, and standing on the foot-board,
+pretended to look at the prospect; after which I did very well.
+
+He was so polite as to stop at a public-house, expressly on our account,
+and entertain us with broiled mutton and beer. Even when Peggotty was
+in the act of drinking, he was seized with one of those approaches, and
+almost choked her. But as we drew nearer to the end of our journey, he
+had more to do and less time for gallantry; and when we got on Yarmouth
+pavement, we were all too much shaken and jolted, I apprehend, to have
+any leisure for anything else.
+
+Mr. Peggotty and Ham waited for us at the old place. They received me
+and Peggotty in an affectionate manner, and shook hands with Mr. Barkis,
+who, with his hat on the very back of his head, and a shame-faced leer
+upon his countenance, and pervading his very legs, presented but a
+vacant appearance, I thought. They each took one of Peggotty’s trunks,
+and we were going away, when Mr. Barkis solemnly made a sign to me with
+his forefinger to come under an archway.
+
+‘I say,’ growled Mr. Barkis, ‘it was all right.’
+
+I looked up into his face, and answered, with an attempt to be very
+profound: ‘Oh!’
+
+‘It didn’t come to a end there,’ said Mr. Barkis, nodding
+confidentially. ‘It was all right.’
+
+Again I answered, ‘Oh!’
+
+‘You know who was willin’,’ said my friend. ‘It was Barkis, and Barkis
+only.’
+
+I nodded assent.
+
+‘It’s all right,’ said Mr. Barkis, shaking hands; ‘I’m a friend of
+your’n. You made it all right, first. It’s all right.’
+
+In his attempts to be particularly lucid, Mr. Barkis was so extremely
+mysterious, that I might have stood looking in his face for an hour, and
+most assuredly should have got as much information out of it as out
+of the face of a clock that had stopped, but for Peggotty’s calling me
+away. As we were going along, she asked me what he had said; and I told
+her he had said it was all right.
+
+‘Like his impudence,’ said Peggotty, ‘but I don’t mind that! Davy dear,
+what should you think if I was to think of being married?’
+
+‘Why--I suppose you would like me as much then, Peggotty, as you do
+now?’ I returned, after a little consideration.
+
+Greatly to the astonishment of the passengers in the street, as well as
+of her relations going on before, the good soul was obliged to stop and
+embrace me on the spot, with many protestations of her unalterable love.
+
+‘Tell me what should you say, darling?’ she asked again, when this was
+over, and we were walking on.
+
+‘If you were thinking of being married--to Mr. Barkis, Peggotty?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘I should think it would be a very good thing. For then you know,
+Peggotty, you would always have the horse and cart to bring you over to
+see me, and could come for nothing, and be sure of coming.’
+
+‘The sense of the dear!’ cried Peggotty. ‘What I have been thinking
+of, this month back! Yes, my precious; and I think I should be more
+independent altogether, you see; let alone my working with a better
+heart in my own house, than I could in anybody else’s now. I don’t know
+what I might be fit for, now, as a servant to a stranger. And I shall be
+always near my pretty’s resting-place,’ said Peggotty, musing, ‘and be
+able to see it when I like; and when I lie down to rest, I may be laid
+not far off from my darling girl!’
+
+We neither of us said anything for a little while.
+
+‘But I wouldn’t so much as give it another thought,’ said Peggotty,
+cheerily ‘if my Davy was anyways against it--not if I had been asked in
+church thirty times three times over, and was wearing out the ring in my
+pocket.’
+
+‘Look at me, Peggotty,’ I replied; ‘and see if I am not really glad, and
+don’t truly wish it!’ As indeed I did, with all my heart.
+
+‘Well, my life,’ said Peggotty, giving me a squeeze, ‘I have thought of
+it night and day, every way I can, and I hope the right way; but I’ll
+think of it again, and speak to my brother about it, and in the meantime
+we’ll keep it to ourselves, Davy, you and me. Barkis is a good plain
+creature,’ said Peggotty, ‘and if I tried to do my duty by him, I think
+it would be my fault if I wasn’t--if I wasn’t pretty comfortable,’
+said Peggotty, laughing heartily. This quotation from Mr. Barkis was
+so appropriate, and tickled us both so much, that we laughed again and
+again, and were quite in a pleasant humour when we came within view of
+Mr. Peggotty’s cottage.
+
+It looked just the same, except that it may, perhaps, have shrunk a
+little in my eyes; and Mrs. Gummidge was waiting at the door as if she
+had stood there ever since. All within was the same, down to the seaweed
+in the blue mug in my bedroom. I went into the out-house to look about
+me; and the very same lobsters, crabs, and crawfish possessed by the
+same desire to pinch the world in general, appeared to be in the same
+state of conglomeration in the same old corner.
+
+But there was no little Em’ly to be seen, so I asked Mr. Peggotty where
+she was.
+
+‘She’s at school, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, wiping the heat consequent
+on the porterage of Peggotty’s box from his forehead; ‘she’ll be home,’
+looking at the Dutch clock, ‘in from twenty minutes to half-an-hour’s
+time. We all on us feel the loss of her, bless ye!’
+
+Mrs. Gummidge moaned.
+
+‘Cheer up, Mawther!’ cried Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘I feel it more than anybody else,’ said Mrs. Gummidge; ‘I’m a lone
+lorn creetur’, and she used to be a’most the only thing that didn’t go
+contrary with me.’
+
+Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head, applied herself to
+blowing the fire. Mr. Peggotty, looking round upon us while she was so
+engaged, said in a low voice, which he shaded with his hand: ‘The old
+‘un!’ From this I rightly conjectured that no improvement had taken
+place since my last visit in the state of Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits.
+
+Now, the whole place was, or it should have been, quite as delightful
+a place as ever; and yet it did not impress me in the same way. I felt
+rather disappointed with it. Perhaps it was because little Em’ly was
+not at home. I knew the way by which she would come, and presently found
+myself strolling along the path to meet her.
+
+A figure appeared in the distance before long, and I soon knew it to be
+Em’ly, who was a little creature still in stature, though she was grown.
+But when she drew nearer, and I saw her blue eyes looking bluer, and her
+dimpled face looking brighter, and her whole self prettier and gayer, a
+curious feeling came over me that made me pretend not to know her, and
+pass by as if I were looking at something a long way off. I have done
+such a thing since in later life, or I am mistaken.
+
+Little Em’ly didn’t care a bit. She saw me well enough; but instead of
+turning round and calling after me, ran away laughing. This obliged me
+to run after her, and she ran so fast that we were very near the cottage
+before I caught her.
+
+‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said little Em’ly.
+
+‘Why, you knew who it was, Em’ly,’ said I.
+
+‘And didn’t YOU know who it was?’ said Em’ly. I was going to kiss her,
+but she covered her cherry lips with her hands, and said she wasn’t a
+baby now, and ran away, laughing more than ever, into the house.
+
+She seemed to delight in teasing me, which was a change in her I
+wondered at very much. The tea table was ready, and our little locker
+was put out in its old place, but instead of coming to sit by me, she
+went and bestowed her company upon that grumbling Mrs. Gummidge: and on
+Mr. Peggotty’s inquiring why, rumpled her hair all over her face to hide
+it, and could do nothing but laugh.
+
+‘A little puss, it is!’ said Mr. Peggotty, patting her with his great
+hand.
+
+‘So sh’ is! so sh’ is!’ cried Ham. ‘Mas’r Davy bor’, so sh’ is!’ and he
+sat and chuckled at her for some time, in a state of mingled admiration
+and delight, that made his face a burning red.
+
+Little Em’ly was spoiled by them all, in fact; and by no one more than
+Mr. Peggotty himself, whom she could have coaxed into anything, by
+only going and laying her cheek against his rough whisker. That was my
+opinion, at least, when I saw her do it; and I held Mr. Peggotty to be
+thoroughly in the right. But she was so affectionate and sweet-natured,
+and had such a pleasant manner of being both sly and shy at once, that
+she captivated me more than ever.
+
+She was tender-hearted, too; for when, as we sat round the fire after
+tea, an allusion was made by Mr. Peggotty over his pipe to the loss
+I had sustained, the tears stood in her eyes, and she looked at me so
+kindly across the table, that I felt quite thankful to her.
+
+‘Ah!’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking up her curls, and running them over his
+hand like water, ‘here’s another orphan, you see, sir. And here,’ said
+Mr. Peggotty, giving Ham a backhanded knock in the chest, ‘is another of
+‘em, though he don’t look much like it.’
+
+‘If I had you for my guardian, Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, shaking my head,
+‘I don’t think I should FEEL much like it.’
+
+‘Well said, Mas’r Davy bor’!’ cried Ham, in an ecstasy. ‘Hoorah! Well
+said! Nor more you wouldn’t! Hor! Hor!’--Here he returned Mr. Peggotty’s
+back-hander, and little Em’ly got up and kissed Mr. Peggotty. ‘And how’s
+your friend, sir?’ said Mr. Peggotty to me.
+
+‘Steerforth?’ said I.
+
+‘That’s the name!’ cried Mr. Peggotty, turning to Ham. ‘I knowed it was
+something in our way.’
+
+‘You said it was Rudderford,’ observed Ham, laughing.
+
+‘Well!’ retorted Mr. Peggotty. ‘And ye steer with a rudder, don’t ye? It
+ain’t fur off. How is he, sir?’
+
+‘He was very well indeed when I came away, Mr. Peggotty.’
+
+‘There’s a friend!’ said Mr. Peggotty, stretching out his pipe. ‘There’s
+a friend, if you talk of friends! Why, Lord love my heart alive, if it
+ain’t a treat to look at him!’
+
+‘He is very handsome, is he not?’ said I, my heart warming with this
+praise.
+
+‘Handsome!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘He stands up to you like--like a--why I
+don’t know what he don’t stand up to you like. He’s so bold!’
+
+‘Yes! That’s just his character,’ said I. ‘He’s as brave as a lion, and
+you can’t think how frank he is, Mr. Peggotty.’
+
+‘And I do suppose, now,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at me through the
+smoke of his pipe, ‘that in the way of book-larning he’d take the wind
+out of a’most anything.’
+
+‘Yes,’ said I, delighted; ‘he knows everything. He is astonishingly
+clever.’
+
+‘There’s a friend!’ murmured Mr. Peggotty, with a grave toss of his
+head.
+
+‘Nothing seems to cost him any trouble,’ said I. ‘He knows a task if he
+only looks at it. He is the best cricketer you ever saw. He will give
+you almost as many men as you like at draughts, and beat you easily.’
+
+Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: ‘Of course
+he will.’
+
+‘He is such a speaker,’ I pursued, ‘that he can win anybody over; and I
+don’t know what you’d say if you were to hear him sing, Mr. Peggotty.’
+
+Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: ‘I have no
+doubt of it.’
+
+‘Then, he’s such a generous, fine, noble fellow,’ said I, quite carried
+away by my favourite theme, ‘that it’s hardly possible to give him as
+much praise as he deserves. I am sure I can never feel thankful enough
+for the generosity with which he has protected me, so much younger and
+lower in the school than himself.’
+
+I was running on, very fast indeed, when my eyes rested on little
+Em’ly’s face, which was bent forward over the table, listening with the
+deepest attention, her breath held, her blue eyes sparkling like jewels,
+and the colour mantling in her cheeks. She looked so extraordinarily
+earnest and pretty, that I stopped in a sort of wonder; and they all
+observed her at the same time, for as I stopped, they laughed and looked
+at her.
+
+‘Em’ly is like me,’ said Peggotty, ‘and would like to see him.’
+
+Em’ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung down her head,
+and her face was covered with blushes. Glancing up presently through her
+stray curls, and seeing that we were all looking at her still (I am sure
+I, for one, could have looked at her for hours), she ran away, and kept
+away till it was nearly bedtime.
+
+I lay down in the old little bed in the stern of the boat, and the wind
+came moaning on across the flat as it had done before. But I could not
+help fancying, now, that it moaned of those who were gone; and instead
+of thinking that the sea might rise in the night and float the boat
+away, I thought of the sea that had risen, since I last heard those
+sounds, and drowned my happy home. I recollect, as the wind and water
+began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into my
+prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to marry little Em’ly, and so
+dropping lovingly asleep.
+
+The days passed pretty much as they had passed before, except--it was
+a great exception--that little Em’ly and I seldom wandered on the beach
+now. She had tasks to learn, and needle-work to do; and was absent
+during a great part of each day. But I felt that we should not have had
+those old wanderings, even if it had been otherwise. Wild and full of
+childish whims as Em’ly was, she was more of a little woman than I
+had supposed. She seemed to have got a great distance away from me,
+in little more than a year. She liked me, but she laughed at me, and
+tormented me; and when I went to meet her, stole home another way, and
+was laughing at the door when I came back, disappointed. The best times
+were when she sat quietly at work in the doorway, and I sat on the
+wooden step at her feet, reading to her. It seems to me, at this
+hour, that I have never seen such sunlight as on those bright April
+afternoons; that I have never seen such a sunny little figure as I used
+to see, sitting in the doorway of the old boat; that I have never beheld
+such sky, such water, such glorified ships sailing away into golden air.
+
+On the very first evening after our arrival, Mr. Barkis appeared in an
+exceedingly vacant and awkward condition, and with a bundle of oranges
+tied up in a handkerchief. As he made no allusion of any kind to this
+property, he was supposed to have left it behind him by accident when
+he went away; until Ham, running after him to restore it, came back with
+the information that it was intended for Peggotty. After that occasion
+he appeared every evening at exactly the same hour, and always with a
+little bundle, to which he never alluded, and which he regularly put
+behind the door and left there. These offerings of affection were of a
+most various and eccentric description. Among them I remember a double
+set of pigs’ trotters, a huge pin-cushion, half a bushel or so of
+apples, a pair of jet earrings, some Spanish onions, a box of dominoes,
+a canary bird and cage, and a leg of pickled pork.
+
+Mr. Barkis’s wooing, as I remember it, was altogether of a peculiar
+kind. He very seldom said anything; but would sit by the fire in much
+the same attitude as he sat in his cart, and stare heavily at Peggotty,
+who was opposite. One night, being, as I suppose, inspired by love, he
+made a dart at the bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread, and put
+it in his waistcoat-pocket and carried it off. After that, his great
+delight was to produce it when it was wanted, sticking to the lining of
+his pocket, in a partially melted state, and pocket it again when it was
+done with. He seemed to enjoy himself very much, and not to feel at all
+called upon to talk. Even when he took Peggotty out for a walk on the
+flats, he had no uneasiness on that head, I believe; contenting himself
+with now and then asking her if she was pretty comfortable; and I
+remember that sometimes, after he was gone, Peggotty would throw her
+apron over her face, and laugh for half-an-hour. Indeed, we were
+all more or less amused, except that miserable Mrs. Gummidge, whose
+courtship would appear to have been of an exactly parallel nature, she
+was so continually reminded by these transactions of the old one.
+
+At length, when the term of my visit was nearly expired, it was given
+out that Peggotty and Mr. Barkis were going to make a day’s holiday
+together, and that little Em’ly and I were to accompany them. I had but
+a broken sleep the night before, in anticipation of the pleasure of
+a whole day with Em’ly. We were all astir betimes in the morning; and
+while we were yet at breakfast, Mr. Barkis appeared in the distance,
+driving a chaise-cart towards the object of his affections.
+
+Peggotty was dressed as usual, in her neat and quiet mourning; but Mr.
+Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of which the tailor had given him
+such good measure, that the cuffs would have rendered gloves unnecessary
+in the coldest weather, while the collar was so high that it pushed his
+hair up on end on the top of his head. His bright buttons, too, were
+of the largest size. Rendered complete by drab pantaloons and a buff
+waistcoat, I thought Mr. Barkis a phenomenon of respectability.
+
+When we were all in a bustle outside the door, I found that Mr. Peggotty
+was prepared with an old shoe, which was to be thrown after us for luck,
+and which he offered to Mrs. Gummidge for that purpose.
+
+‘No. It had better be done by somebody else, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
+‘I’m a lone lorn creetur’ myself, and everythink that reminds me of
+creetur’s that ain’t lone and lorn, goes contrary with me.’
+
+‘Come, old gal!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘Take and heave it.’
+
+‘No, Dan’l,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head.
+‘If I felt less, I could do more. You don’t feel like me, Dan’l; thinks
+don’t go contrary with you, nor you with them; you had better do it
+yourself.’
+
+But here Peggotty, who had been going about from one to another in a
+hurried way, kissing everybody, called out from the cart, in which we
+all were by this time (Em’ly and I on two little chairs, side by side),
+that Mrs. Gummidge must do it. So Mrs. Gummidge did it; and, I am sorry
+to relate, cast a damp upon the festive character of our departure, by
+immediately bursting into tears, and sinking subdued into the arms of
+Ham, with the declaration that she knowed she was a burden, and had
+better be carried to the House at once. Which I really thought was a
+sensible idea, that Ham might have acted on.
+
+Away we went, however, on our holiday excursion; and the first thing
+we did was to stop at a church, where Mr. Barkis tied the horse to some
+rails, and went in with Peggotty, leaving little Em’ly and me alone in
+the chaise. I took that occasion to put my arm round Em’ly’s waist, and
+propose that as I was going away so very soon now, we should determine
+to be very affectionate to one another, and very happy, all day. Little
+Em’ly consenting, and allowing me to kiss her, I became desperate;
+informing her, I recollect, that I never could love another, and that
+I was prepared to shed the blood of anybody who should aspire to her
+affections.
+
+How merry little Em’ly made herself about it! With what a demure
+assumption of being immensely older and wiser than I, the fairy little
+woman said I was ‘a silly boy’; and then laughed so charmingly that
+I forgot the pain of being called by that disparaging name, in the
+pleasure of looking at her.
+
+Mr. Barkis and Peggotty were a good while in the church, but came out at
+last, and then we drove away into the country. As we were going along,
+Mr. Barkis turned to me, and said, with a wink,--by the by, I should
+hardly have thought, before, that he could wink:
+
+‘What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?’
+
+‘Clara Peggotty,’ I answered.
+
+‘What name would it be as I should write up now, if there was a tilt
+here?’
+
+‘Clara Peggotty, again?’ I suggested.
+
+‘Clara Peggotty BARKIS!’ he returned, and burst into a roar of laughter
+that shook the chaise.
+
+In a word, they were married, and had gone into the church for no other
+purpose. Peggotty was resolved that it should be quietly done; and
+the clerk had given her away, and there had been no witnesses of the
+ceremony. She was a little confused when Mr. Barkis made this abrupt
+announcement of their union, and could not hug me enough in token of her
+unimpaired affection; but she soon became herself again, and said she
+was very glad it was over.
+
+We drove to a little inn in a by-road, where we were expected, and
+where we had a very comfortable dinner, and passed the day with great
+satisfaction. If Peggotty had been married every day for the last ten
+years, she could hardly have been more at her ease about it; it made no
+sort of difference in her: she was just the same as ever, and went
+out for a stroll with little Em’ly and me before tea, while Mr. Barkis
+philosophically smoked his pipe, and enjoyed himself, I suppose, with
+the contemplation of his happiness. If so, it sharpened his appetite;
+for I distinctly call to mind that, although he had eaten a good deal of
+pork and greens at dinner, and had finished off with a fowl or two, he
+was obliged to have cold boiled bacon for tea, and disposed of a large
+quantity without any emotion.
+
+I have often thought, since, what an odd, innocent, out-of-the-way kind
+of wedding it must have been! We got into the chaise again soon after
+dark, and drove cosily back, looking up at the stars, and talking about
+them. I was their chief exponent, and opened Mr. Barkis’s mind to
+an amazing extent. I told him all I knew, but he would have believed
+anything I might have taken it into my head to impart to him; for he
+had a profound veneration for my abilities, and informed his wife in my
+hearing, on that very occasion, that I was ‘a young Roeshus’--by which I
+think he meant prodigy.
+
+When we had exhausted the subject of the stars, or rather when I had
+exhausted the mental faculties of Mr. Barkis, little Em’ly and I made a
+cloak of an old wrapper, and sat under it for the rest of the journey.
+Ah, how I loved her! What happiness (I thought) if we were married,
+and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields,
+never growing older, never growing wiser, children ever, rambling hand
+in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our
+heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried
+by the birds when we were dead! Some such picture, with no real world in
+it, bright with the light of our innocence, and vague as the stars afar
+off, was in my mind all the way. I am glad to think there were two such
+guileless hearts at Peggotty’s marriage as little Em’ly’s and mine. I
+am glad to think the Loves and Graces took such airy forms in its homely
+procession.
+
+Well, we came to the old boat again in good time at night; and there
+Mr. and Mrs. Barkis bade us good-bye, and drove away snugly to their
+own home. I felt then, for the first time, that I had lost Peggotty. I
+should have gone to bed with a sore heart indeed under any other roof
+but that which sheltered little Em’ly’s head.
+
+Mr. Peggotty and Ham knew what was in my thoughts as well as I did, and
+were ready with some supper and their hospitable faces to drive it away.
+Little Em’ly came and sat beside me on the locker for the only time in
+all that visit; and it was altogether a wonderful close to a wonderful
+day.
+
+It was a night tide; and soon after we went to bed, Mr. Peggotty and Ham
+went out to fish. I felt very brave at being left alone in the solitary
+house, the protector of Em’ly and Mrs. Gummidge, and only wished that
+a lion or a serpent, or any ill-disposed monster, would make an attack
+upon us, that I might destroy him, and cover myself with glory. But as
+nothing of the sort happened to be walking about on Yarmouth flats that
+night, I provided the best substitute I could by dreaming of dragons
+until morning.
+
+With morning came Peggotty; who called to me, as usual, under my window
+as if Mr. Barkis the carrier had been from first to last a dream too.
+After breakfast she took me to her own home, and a beautiful little
+home it was. Of all the moveables in it, I must have been impressed by
+a certain old bureau of some dark wood in the parlour (the tile-floored
+kitchen was the general sitting-room), with a retreating top which
+opened, let down, and became a desk, within which was a large quarto
+edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. This precious volume, of which I do
+not recollect one word, I immediately discovered and immediately applied
+myself to; and I never visited the house afterwards, but I kneeled on
+a chair, opened the casket where this gem was enshrined, spread my arms
+over the desk, and fell to devouring the book afresh. I was chiefly
+edified, I am afraid, by the pictures, which were numerous, and
+represented all kinds of dismal horrors; but the Martyrs and Peggotty’s
+house have been inseparable in my mind ever since, and are now.
+
+I took leave of Mr. Peggotty, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge, and little
+Em’ly, that day; and passed the night at Peggotty’s, in a little room
+in the roof (with the Crocodile Book on a shelf by the bed’s head) which
+was to be always mine, Peggotty said, and should always be kept for me
+in exactly the same state.
+
+‘Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive and have this house over
+my head,’ said Peggotty, ‘you shall find it as if I expected you here
+directly minute. I shall keep it every day, as I used to keep your old
+little room, my darling; and if you was to go to China, you might think
+of it as being kept just the same, all the time you were away.’
+
+I felt the truth and constancy of my dear old nurse, with all my heart,
+and thanked her as well as I could. That was not very well, for she
+spoke to me thus, with her arms round my neck, in the morning, and I was
+going home in the morning, and I went home in the morning, with herself
+and Mr. Barkis in the cart. They left me at the gate, not easily or
+lightly; and it was a strange sight to me to see the cart go on, taking
+Peggotty away, and leaving me under the old elm-trees looking at the
+house, in which there was no face to look on mine with love or liking
+any more.
+
+And now I fell into a state of neglect, which I cannot look back upon
+without compassion. I fell at once into a solitary condition,--apart
+from all friendly notice, apart from the society of all other boys of
+my own age, apart from all companionship but my own spiritless
+thoughts,--which seems to cast its gloom upon this paper as I write.
+
+What would I have given, to have been sent to the hardest school that
+ever was kept!--to have been taught something, anyhow, anywhere! No
+such hope dawned upon me. They disliked me; and they sullenly, sternly,
+steadily, overlooked me. I think Mr. Murdstone’s means were straitened
+at about this time; but it is little to the purpose. He could not bear
+me; and in putting me from him he tried, as I believe, to put away the
+notion that I had any claim upon him--and succeeded.
+
+I was not actively ill-used. I was not beaten, or starved; but the wrong
+that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was done in a
+systematic, passionless manner. Day after day, week after week, month
+after month, I was coldly neglected. I wonder sometimes, when I think
+of it, what they would have done if I had been taken with an illness;
+whether I should have lain down in my lonely room, and languished
+through it in my usual solitary way, or whether anybody would have
+helped me out.
+
+When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my meals with them; in
+their absence, I ate and drank by myself. At all times I lounged about
+the house and neighbourhood quite disregarded, except that they were
+jealous of my making any friends: thinking, perhaps, that if I did, I
+might complain to someone. For this reason, though Mr. Chillip often
+asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, having, some years before
+that, lost a little small light-haired wife, whom I can just remember
+connecting in my own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was
+but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his
+closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with
+the smell of the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding
+something in a mortar under his mild directions.
+
+For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her, I was
+seldom allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to her promise, she either
+came to see me, or met me somewhere near, once every week, and never
+empty-handed; but many and bitter were the disappointments I had, in
+being refused permission to pay a visit to her at her house. Some few
+times, however, at long intervals, I was allowed to go there; and then
+I found out that Mr. Barkis was something of a miser, or as Peggotty
+dutifully expressed it, was ‘a little near’, and kept a heap of money
+in a box under his bed, which he pretended was only full of coats
+and trousers. In this coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a
+tenacious modesty, that the smallest instalments could only be tempted
+out by artifice; so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate
+scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, for every Saturday’s expenses.
+
+All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any promise I had
+given, and of my being utterly neglected, that I should have been
+perfectly miserable, I have no doubt, but for the old books. They were
+my only comfort; and I was as true to them as they were to me, and read
+them over and over I don’t know how many times more.
+
+I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the
+remembrance of, while I remember anything: and the recollection of
+which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and
+haunted happier times.
+
+I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the listless,
+meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when, turning the
+corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone walking with
+a gentleman. I was confused, and was going by them, when the gentleman
+cried:
+
+‘What! Brooks!’
+
+‘No, sir, David Copperfield,’ I said.
+
+‘Don’t tell me. You are Brooks,’ said the gentleman. ‘You are Brooks of
+Sheffield. That’s your name.’
+
+At these words, I observed the gentleman more attentively. His laugh
+coming to my remembrance too, I knew him to be Mr. Quinion, whom I
+had gone over to Lowestoft with Mr. Murdstone to see, before--it is no
+matter--I need not recall when.
+
+‘And how do you get on, and where are you being educated, Brooks?’ said
+Mr. Quinion.
+
+He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me about, to walk
+with them. I did not know what to reply, and glanced dubiously at Mr.
+Murdstone.
+
+‘He is at home at present,’ said the latter. ‘He is not being educated
+anywhere. I don’t know what to do with him. He is a difficult subject.’
+
+That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then his eyes darkened
+with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, elsewhere.
+
+‘Humph!’ said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, I thought. ‘Fine
+weather!’
+
+Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best disengage my
+shoulder from his hand, and go away, when he said:
+
+‘I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still? Eh, Brooks?’
+
+‘Aye! He is sharp enough,’ said Mr. Murdstone, impatiently. ‘You had
+better let him go. He will not thank you for troubling him.’
+
+On this hint, Mr. Quinion released me, and I made the best of my
+way home. Looking back as I turned into the front garden, I saw Mr.
+Murdstone leaning against the wicket of the churchyard, and Mr. Quinion
+talking to him. They were both looking after me, and I felt that they
+were speaking of me.
+
+Mr. Quinion lay at our house that night. After breakfast, the next
+morning, I had put my chair away, and was going out of the room, when
+Mr. Murdstone called me back. He then gravely repaired to another table,
+where his sister sat herself at her desk. Mr. Quinion, with his hands
+in his pockets, stood looking out of window; and I stood looking at them
+all.
+
+‘David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘to the young this is a world for action;
+not for moping and droning in.’ --‘As you do,’ added his sister.
+
+‘Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. I say, David, to the
+young this is a world for action, and not for moping and droning in. It
+is especially so for a young boy of your disposition, which requires a
+great deal of correcting; and to which no greater service can be done
+than to force it to conform to the ways of the working world, and to
+bend it and break it.’
+
+‘For stubbornness won’t do here,’ said his sister ‘What it wants is, to
+be crushed. And crushed it must be. Shall be, too!’
+
+He gave her a look, half in remonstrance, half in approval, and went on:
+
+‘I suppose you know, David, that I am not rich. At any rate, you know it
+now. You have received some considerable education already. Education is
+costly; and even if it were not, and I could afford it, I am of opinion
+that it would not be at all advantageous to you to be kept at school.
+What is before you, is a fight with the world; and the sooner you begin
+it, the better.’
+
+I think it occurred to me that I had already begun it, in my poor way:
+but it occurs to me now, whether or no.
+
+‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned sometimes,’ said Mr.
+Murdstone.
+
+‘The counting-house, sir?’ I repeated. ‘Of Murdstone and Grinby, in the
+wine trade,’ he replied.
+
+I suppose I looked uncertain, for he went on hastily:
+
+‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned, or the business, or the
+cellars, or the wharf, or something about it.’
+
+‘I think I have heard the business mentioned, sir,’ I said, remembering
+what I vaguely knew of his and his sister’s resources. ‘But I don’t know
+when.’
+
+‘It does not matter when,’ he returned. ‘Mr. Quinion manages that
+business.’
+
+I glanced at the latter deferentially as he stood looking out of window.
+
+‘Mr. Quinion suggests that it gives employment to some other boys,
+and that he sees no reason why it shouldn’t, on the same terms, give
+employment to you.’
+
+‘He having,’ Mr. Quinion observed in a low voice, and half turning
+round, ‘no other prospect, Murdstone.’
+
+Mr. Murdstone, with an impatient, even an angry gesture, resumed,
+without noticing what he had said:
+
+‘Those terms are, that you will earn enough for yourself to provide for
+your eating and drinking, and pocket-money. Your lodging (which I have
+arranged for) will be paid by me. So will your washing--’
+
+‘--Which will be kept down to my estimate,’ said his sister.
+
+‘Your clothes will be looked after for you, too,’ said Mr. Murdstone;
+‘as you will not be able, yet awhile, to get them for yourself. So you
+are now going to London, David, with Mr. Quinion, to begin the world on
+your own account.’
+
+‘In short, you are provided for,’ observed his sister; ‘and will please
+to do your duty.’
+
+Though I quite understood that the purpose of this announcement was
+to get rid of me, I have no distinct remembrance whether it pleased
+or frightened me. My impression is, that I was in a state of confusion
+about it, and, oscillating between the two points, touched neither. Nor
+had I much time for the clearing of my thoughts, as Mr. Quinion was to
+go upon the morrow.
+
+Behold me, on the morrow, in a much-worn little white hat, with a black
+crape round it for my mother, a black jacket, and a pair of hard, stiff
+corduroy trousers--which Miss Murdstone considered the best armour for
+the legs in that fight with the world which was now to come off. Behold
+me so attired, and with my little worldly all before me in a small
+trunk, sitting, a lone lorn child (as Mrs. Gummidge might have said),
+in the post-chaise that was carrying Mr. Quinion to the London coach at
+Yarmouth! See, how our house and church are lessening in the distance;
+how the grave beneath the tree is blotted out by intervening objects;
+how the spire points upwards from my old playground no more, and the sky
+is empty!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 11. I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, AND DON’T LIKE IT
+
+
+I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of
+being much surprised by anything; but it is matter of some surprise to
+me, even now, that I can have been so easily thrown away at such an age.
+A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation,
+quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems
+wonderful to me that nobody should have made any sign in my behalf. But
+none was made; and I became, at ten years old, a little labouring hind
+in the service of Murdstone and Grinby.
+
+Murdstone and Grinby’s warehouse was at the waterside. It was down in
+Blackfriars. Modern improvements have altered the place; but it was the
+last house at the bottom of a narrow street, curving down hill to the
+river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat. It was a
+crazy old house with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the
+tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, and literally overrun
+with rats. Its panelled rooms, discoloured with the dirt and smoke of
+a hundred years, I dare say; its decaying floors and staircase; the
+squeaking and scuffling of the old grey rats down in the cellars; and
+the dirt and rottenness of the place; are things, not of many years ago,
+in my mind, but of the present instant. They are all before me, just as
+they were in the evil hour when I went among them for the first time,
+with my trembling hand in Mr. Quinion’s.
+
+Murdstone and Grinby’s trade was among a good many kinds of people, but
+an important branch of it was the supply of wines and spirits to certain
+packet ships. I forget now where they chiefly went, but I think there
+were some among them that made voyages both to the East and West Indies.
+I know that a great many empty bottles were one of the consequences of
+this traffic, and that certain men and boys were employed to examine
+them against the light, and reject those that were flawed, and to rinse
+and wash them. When the empty bottles ran short, there were labels to be
+pasted on full ones, or corks to be fitted to them, or seals to be put
+upon the corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks. All this work
+was my work, and of the boys employed upon it I was one.
+
+There were three or four of us, counting me. My working place was
+established in a corner of the warehouse, where Mr. Quinion could see
+me, when he chose to stand up on the bottom rail of his stool in the
+counting-house, and look at me through a window above the desk. Hither,
+on the first morning of my so auspiciously beginning life on my own
+account, the oldest of the regular boys was summoned to show me my
+business. His name was Mick Walker, and he wore a ragged apron and a
+paper cap. He informed me that his father was a bargeman, and walked, in
+a black velvet head-dress, in the Lord Mayor’s Show. He also informed me
+that our principal associate would be another boy whom he introduced by
+the--to me--extraordinary name of Mealy Potatoes. I discovered, however,
+that this youth had not been christened by that name, but that it had
+been bestowed upon him in the warehouse, on account of his complexion,
+which was pale or mealy. Mealy’s father was a waterman, who had the
+additional distinction of being a fireman, and was engaged as such at
+one of the large theatres; where some young relation of Mealy’s--I think
+his little sister--did Imps in the Pantomimes.
+
+No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this
+companionship; compared these henceforth everyday associates with those
+of my happier childhood--not to say with Steerforth, Traddles, and the
+rest of those boys; and felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned
+and distinguished man, crushed in my bosom. The deep remembrance of the
+sense I had, of being utterly without hope now; of the shame I felt in
+my position; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that day
+by day what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my
+fancy and my emulation up by, would pass away from me, little by little,
+never to be brought back any more; cannot be written. As often as Mick
+Walker went away in the course of that forenoon, I mingled my tears with
+the water in which I was washing the bottles; and sobbed as if there
+were a flaw in my own breast, and it were in danger of bursting.
+
+The counting-house clock was at half past twelve, and there was
+general preparation for going to dinner, when Mr. Quinion tapped at the
+counting-house window, and beckoned to me to go in. I went in, and
+found there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout and black
+tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head (which was a large
+one, and very shining) than there is upon an egg, and with a very
+extensive face, which he turned full upon me. His clothes were shabby,
+but he had an imposing shirt-collar on. He carried a jaunty sort of a
+stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels to it; and a quizzing-glass
+hung outside his coat,--for ornament, I afterwards found, as he very
+seldom looked through it, and couldn’t see anything when he did.
+
+‘This,’ said Mr. Quinion, in allusion to myself, ‘is he.’
+
+‘This,’ said the stranger, with a certain condescending roll in his
+voice, and a certain indescribable air of doing something genteel, which
+impressed me very much, ‘is Master Copperfield. I hope I see you well,
+sir?’
+
+I said I was very well, and hoped he was. I was sufficiently ill at
+ease, Heaven knows; but it was not in my nature to complain much at that
+time of my life, so I said I was very well, and hoped he was.
+
+‘I am,’ said the stranger, ‘thank Heaven, quite well. I have received a
+letter from Mr. Murdstone, in which he mentions that he would desire
+me to receive into an apartment in the rear of my house, which is at
+present unoccupied--and is, in short, to be let as a--in short,’
+said the stranger, with a smile and in a burst of confidence, ‘as a
+bedroom--the young beginner whom I have now the pleasure to--’ and the
+stranger waved his hand, and settled his chin in his shirt-collar.
+
+‘This is Mr. Micawber,’ said Mr. Quinion to me.
+
+‘Ahem!’ said the stranger, ‘that is my name.’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber,’ said Mr. Quinion, ‘is known to Mr. Murdstone. He takes
+orders for us on commission, when he can get any. He has been written to
+by Mr. Murdstone, on the subject of your lodgings, and he will receive
+you as a lodger.’
+
+‘My address,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘is Windsor Terrace, City Road. I--in
+short,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the same genteel air, and in another
+burst of confidence--‘I live there.’
+
+I made him a bow.
+
+‘Under the impression,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘that your peregrinations in
+this metropolis have not as yet been extensive, and that you might have
+some difficulty in penetrating the arcana of the Modern Babylon in the
+direction of the City Road,--in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, in another
+burst of confidence, ‘that you might lose yourself--I shall be happy to
+call this evening, and install you in the knowledge of the nearest way.’
+
+I thanked him with all my heart, for it was friendly in him to offer to
+take that trouble.
+
+‘At what hour,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘shall I--’
+
+‘At about eight,’ said Mr. Quinion.
+
+‘At about eight,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘I beg to wish you good day, Mr.
+Quinion. I will intrude no longer.’
+
+So he put on his hat, and went out with his cane under his arm: very
+upright, and humming a tune when he was clear of the counting-house.
+
+Mr. Quinion then formally engaged me to be as useful as I could in
+the warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby, at a salary, I think, of six
+shillings a week. I am not clear whether it was six or seven. I am
+inclined to believe, from my uncertainty on this head, that it was six
+at first and seven afterwards. He paid me a week down (from his own
+pocket, I believe), and I gave Mealy sixpence out of it to get my
+trunk carried to Windsor Terrace that night: it being too heavy for my
+strength, small as it was. I paid sixpence more for my dinner, which was
+a meat pie and a turn at a neighbouring pump; and passed the hour which
+was allowed for that meal, in walking about the streets.
+
+At the appointed time in the evening, Mr. Micawber reappeared. I washed
+my hands and face, to do the greater honour to his gentility, and we
+walked to our house, as I suppose I must now call it, together; Mr.
+Micawber impressing the name of streets, and the shapes of corner houses
+upon me, as we went along, that I might find my way back, easily, in the
+morning.
+
+Arrived at this house in Windsor Terrace (which I noticed was shabby
+like himself, but also, like himself, made all the show it could), he
+presented me to Mrs. Micawber, a thin and faded lady, not at all
+young, who was sitting in the parlour (the first floor was altogether
+unfurnished, and the blinds were kept down to delude the neighbours),
+with a baby at her breast. This baby was one of twins; and I may remark
+here that I hardly ever, in all my experience of the family, saw both
+the twins detached from Mrs. Micawber at the same time. One of them was
+always taking refreshment.
+
+There were two other children; Master Micawber, aged about four, and
+Miss Micawber, aged about three. These, and a dark-complexioned young
+woman, with a habit of snorting, who was servant to the family, and
+informed me, before half an hour had expired, that she was ‘a Orfling’,
+and came from St. Luke’s workhouse, in the neighbourhood, completed the
+establishment. My room was at the top of the house, at the back: a close
+chamber; stencilled all over with an ornament which my young imagination
+represented as a blue muffin; and very scantily furnished.
+
+‘I never thought,’ said Mrs. Micawber, when she came up, twin and all,
+to show me the apartment, and sat down to take breath, ‘before I was
+married, when I lived with papa and mama, that I should ever find it
+necessary to take a lodger. But Mr. Micawber being in difficulties, all
+considerations of private feeling must give way.’
+
+I said: ‘Yes, ma’am.’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber’s difficulties are almost overwhelming just at present,’
+said Mrs. Micawber; ‘and whether it is possible to bring him through
+them, I don’t know. When I lived at home with papa and mama, I really
+should have hardly understood what the word meant, in the sense in which
+I now employ it, but experientia does it,--as papa used to say.’
+
+I cannot satisfy myself whether she told me that Mr. Micawber had been
+an officer in the Marines, or whether I have imagined it. I only know
+that I believe to this hour that he WAS in the Marines once upon a time,
+without knowing why. He was a sort of town traveller for a number
+of miscellaneous houses, now; but made little or nothing of it, I am
+afraid.
+
+‘If Mr. Micawber’s creditors will not give him time,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘they must take the consequences; and the sooner they bring it
+to an issue the better. Blood cannot be obtained from a stone, neither
+can anything on account be obtained at present (not to mention law
+expenses) from Mr. Micawber.’
+
+I never can quite understand whether my precocious self-dependence
+confused Mrs. Micawber in reference to my age, or whether she was so
+full of the subject that she would have talked about it to the very
+twins if there had been nobody else to communicate with, but this was
+the strain in which she began, and she went on accordingly all the time
+I knew her.
+
+Poor Mrs. Micawber! She said she had tried to exert herself, and so,
+I have no doubt, she had. The centre of the street door was perfectly
+covered with a great brass-plate, on which was engraved ‘Mrs. Micawber’s
+Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies’: but I never found that any
+young lady had ever been to school there; or that any young lady ever
+came, or proposed to come; or that the least preparation was ever made
+to receive any young lady. The only visitors I ever saw, or heard of,
+were creditors. THEY used to come at all hours, and some of them were
+quite ferocious. One dirty-faced man, I think he was a boot-maker,
+used to edge himself into the passage as early as seven o’clock in the
+morning, and call up the stairs to Mr. Micawber--‘Come! You ain’t out
+yet, you know. Pay us, will you? Don’t hide, you know; that’s mean. I
+wouldn’t be mean if I was you. Pay us, will you? You just pay us, d’ye
+hear? Come!’ Receiving no answer to these taunts, he would mount in
+his wrath to the words ‘swindlers’ and ‘robbers’; and these being
+ineffectual too, would sometimes go to the extremity of crossing the
+street, and roaring up at the windows of the second floor, where he knew
+Mr. Micawber was. At these times, Mr. Micawber would be transported with
+grief and mortification, even to the length (as I was once made aware by
+a scream from his wife) of making motions at himself with a razor;
+but within half-an-hour afterwards, he would polish up his shoes with
+extraordinary pains, and go out, humming a tune with a greater air of
+gentility than ever. Mrs. Micawber was quite as elastic. I have known
+her to be thrown into fainting fits by the king’s taxes at three
+o’clock, and to eat lamb chops, breaded, and drink warm ale (paid for
+with two tea-spoons that had gone to the pawnbroker’s) at four. On one
+occasion, when an execution had just been put in, coming home through
+some chance as early as six o’clock, I saw her lying (of course with a
+twin) under the grate in a swoon, with her hair all torn about her face;
+but I never knew her more cheerful than she was, that very same night,
+over a veal cutlet before the kitchen fire, telling me stories about her
+papa and mama, and the company they used to keep.
+
+In this house, and with this family, I passed my leisure time. My own
+exclusive breakfast of a penny loaf and a pennyworth of milk, I provided
+myself. I kept another small loaf, and a modicum of cheese, on a
+particular shelf of a particular cupboard, to make my supper on when I
+came back at night. This made a hole in the six or seven shillings, I
+know well; and I was out at the warehouse all day, and had to support
+myself on that money all the week. From Monday morning until Saturday
+night, I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation,
+no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to
+mind, as I hope to go to heaven!
+
+I was so young and childish, and so little qualified--how could I be
+otherwise?--to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that
+often, in going to Murdstone and Grinby’s, of a morning, I could
+not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half-price at the
+pastrycooks’ doors, and spent in that the money I should have kept for
+my dinner. Then, I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice
+of pudding. I remember two pudding shops, between which I was divided,
+according to my finances. One was in a court close to St. Martin’s
+Church--at the back of the church,--which is now removed altogether.
+The pudding at that shop was made of currants, and was rather a special
+pudding, but was dear, twopennyworth not being larger than a pennyworth
+of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter was in the
+Strand--somewhere in that part which has been rebuilt since. It was a
+stout pale pudding, heavy and flabby, and with great flat raisins in it,
+stuck in whole at wide distances apart. It came up hot at about my time
+every day, and many a day did I dine off it. When I dined regularly and
+handsomely, I had a saveloy and a penny loaf, or a fourpenny plate of
+red beef from a cook’s shop; or a plate of bread and cheese and a
+glass of beer, from a miserable old public-house opposite our place of
+business, called the Lion, or the Lion and something else that I have
+forgotten. Once, I remember carrying my own bread (which I had brought
+from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped in a piece of paper,
+like a book, and going to a famous alamode beef-house near Drury Lane,
+and ordering a ‘small plate’ of that delicacy to eat with it. What the
+waiter thought of such a strange little apparition coming in all alone,
+I don’t know; but I can see him now, staring at me as I ate my dinner,
+and bringing up the other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny for
+himself, and I wish he hadn’t taken it.
+
+We had half-an-hour, I think, for tea. When I had money enough, I used
+to get half-a-pint of ready-made coffee and a slice of bread and butter.
+When I had none, I used to look at a venison shop in Fleet Street; or
+I have strolled, at such a time, as far as Covent Garden Market, and
+stared at the pineapples. I was fond of wandering about the Adelphi,
+because it was a mysterious place, with those dark arches. I see myself
+emerging one evening from some of these arches, on a little public-house
+close to the river, with an open space before it, where some
+coal-heavers were dancing; to look at whom I sat down upon a bench. I
+wonder what they thought of me!
+
+I was such a child, and so little, that frequently when I went into the
+bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale or porter, to moisten
+what I had had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me. I remember
+one hot evening I went into the bar of a public-house, and said to the
+landlord: ‘What is your best--your very best--ale a glass?’ For it was a
+special occasion. I don’t know what. It may have been my birthday.
+
+‘Twopence-halfpenny,’ says the landlord, ‘is the price of the Genuine
+Stunning ale.’
+
+‘Then,’ says I, producing the money, ‘just draw me a glass of the
+Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it.’
+
+The landlord looked at me in return over the bar, from head to foot,
+with a strange smile on his face; and instead of drawing the beer,
+looked round the screen and said something to his wife. She came out
+from behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying
+me. Here we stand, all three, before me now. The landlord in his
+shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar window-frame; his wife looking
+over the little half-door; and I, in some confusion, looking up at them
+from outside the partition. They asked me a good many questions; as,
+what my name was, how old I was, where I lived, how I was employed,
+and how I came there. To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I
+invented, I am afraid, appropriate answers. They served me with the ale,
+though I suspect it was not the Genuine Stunning; and the landlord’s
+wife, opening the little half-door of the bar, and bending down, gave
+me my money back, and gave me a kiss that was half admiring and half
+compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure.
+
+I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the
+scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life. I know that
+if a shilling were given me by Mr. Quinion at any time, I spent it in
+a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked, from morning until night, with
+common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I lounged about the
+streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for
+the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken
+of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.
+
+Yet I held some station at Murdstone and Grinby’s too. Besides that Mr.
+Quinion did what a careless man so occupied, and dealing with a thing so
+anomalous, could, to treat me as one upon a different footing from the
+rest, I never said, to man or boy, how it was that I came to be there,
+or gave the least indication of being sorry that I was there. That I
+suffered in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew
+but I. How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly
+beyond my power to tell. But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work.
+I knew from the first, that, if I could not do my work as well as any
+of the rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt. I soon
+became at least as expeditious and as skilful as either of the other
+boys. Though perfectly familiar with them, my conduct and manner were
+different enough from theirs to place a space between us. They and
+the men generally spoke of me as ‘the little gent’, or ‘the young
+Suffolker.’ A certain man named Gregory, who was foreman of the packers,
+and another named Tipp, who was the carman, and wore a red jacket, used
+to address me sometimes as ‘David’: but I think it was mostly when we
+were very confidential, and when I had made some efforts to entertain
+them, over our work, with some results of the old readings; which were
+fast perishing out of my remembrance. Mealy Potatoes uprose once, and
+rebelled against my being so distinguished; but Mick Walker settled him
+in no time.
+
+My rescue from this kind of existence I considered quite hopeless, and
+abandoned, as such, altogether. I am solemnly convinced that I never for
+one hour was reconciled to it, or was otherwise than miserably unhappy;
+but I bore it; and even to Peggotty, partly for the love of her and
+partly for shame, never in any letter (though many passed between us)
+revealed the truth.
+
+Mr. Micawber’s difficulties were an addition to the distressed state of
+my mind. In my forlorn state I became quite attached to the family, and
+used to walk about, busy with Mrs. Micawber’s calculations of ways and
+means, and heavy with the weight of Mr. Micawber’s debts. On a Saturday
+night, which was my grand treat,--partly because it was a great thing
+to walk home with six or seven shillings in my pocket, looking into the
+shops and thinking what such a sum would buy, and partly because I went
+home early,--Mrs. Micawber would make the most heart-rending confidences
+to me; also on a Sunday morning, when I mixed the portion of tea or
+coffee I had bought over-night, in a little shaving-pot, and sat late
+at my breakfast. It was nothing at all unusual for Mr. Micawber to sob
+violently at the beginning of one of these Saturday night conversations,
+and sing about Jack’s delight being his lovely Nan, towards the end of
+it. I have known him come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a
+declaration that nothing was now left but a jail; and go to bed making a
+calculation of the expense of putting bow-windows to the house, ‘in
+case anything turned up’, which was his favourite expression. And Mrs.
+Micawber was just the same.
+
+A curious equality of friendship, originating, I suppose, in our
+respective circumstances, sprung up between me and these people,
+notwithstanding the ludicrous disparity in our years. But I never
+allowed myself to be prevailed upon to accept any invitation to eat and
+drink with them out of their stock (knowing that they got on badly with
+the butcher and baker, and had often not too much for themselves),
+until Mrs. Micawber took me into her entire confidence. This she did one
+evening as follows:
+
+‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I make no stranger of you,
+and therefore do not hesitate to say that Mr. Micawber’s difficulties
+are coming to a crisis.’
+
+It made me very miserable to hear it, and I looked at Mrs. Micawber’s
+red eyes with the utmost sympathy.
+
+‘With the exception of the heel of a Dutch cheese--which is not adapted
+to the wants of a young family’--said Mrs. Micawber, ‘there is really
+not a scrap of anything in the larder. I was accustomed to speak of
+the larder when I lived with papa and mama, and I use the word almost
+unconsciously. What I mean to express is, that there is nothing to eat
+in the house.’
+
+‘Dear me!’ I said, in great concern.
+
+I had two or three shillings of my week’s money in my pocket--from which
+I presume that it must have been on a Wednesday night when we held this
+conversation--and I hastily produced them, and with heartfelt emotion
+begged Mrs. Micawber to accept of them as a loan. But that lady, kissing
+me, and making me put them back in my pocket, replied that she couldn’t
+think of it.
+
+‘No, my dear Master Copperfield,’ said she, ‘far be it from my thoughts!
+But you have a discretion beyond your years, and can render me another
+kind of service, if you will; and a service I will thankfully accept
+of.’
+
+I begged Mrs. Micawber to name it.
+
+‘I have parted with the plate myself,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘Six tea, two
+salt, and a pair of sugars, I have at different times borrowed money on,
+in secret, with my own hands. But the twins are a great tie; and to me,
+with my recollections, of papa and mama, these transactions are very
+painful. There are still a few trifles that we could part with. Mr.
+Micawber’s feelings would never allow him to dispose of them; and
+Clickett’--this was the girl from the workhouse--‘being of a vulgar
+mind, would take painful liberties if so much confidence was reposed in
+her. Master Copperfield, if I might ask you--’
+
+I understood Mrs. Micawber now, and begged her to make use of me to any
+extent. I began to dispose of the more portable articles of property
+that very evening; and went out on a similar expedition almost every
+morning, before I went to Murdstone and Grinby’s.
+
+Mr. Micawber had a few books on a little chiffonier, which he called the
+library; and those went first. I carried them, one after another, to
+a bookstall in the City Road--one part of which, near our house, was
+almost all bookstalls and bird shops then--and sold them for whatever
+they would bring. The keeper of this bookstall, who lived in a little
+house behind it, used to get tipsy every night, and to be violently
+scolded by his wife every morning. More than once, when I went there
+early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bedstead, with a cut in his
+forehead or a black eye, bearing witness to his excesses over-night (I
+am afraid he was quarrelsome in his drink), and he, with a shaking
+hand, endeavouring to find the needful shillings in one or other of the
+pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife, with a
+baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left off rating him.
+Sometimes he had lost his money, and then he would ask me to call again;
+but his wife had always got some--had taken his, I dare say, while he
+was drunk--and secretly completed the bargain on the stairs, as we went
+down together. At the pawnbroker’s shop, too, I began to be very well
+known. The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took
+a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a
+Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while
+he transacted my business. After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made
+a little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar
+relish in these meals which I well remember.
+
+At last Mr. Micawber’s difficulties came to a crisis, and he was
+arrested early one morning, and carried over to the King’s Bench Prison
+in the Borough. He told me, as he went out of the house, that the God
+of day had now gone down upon him--and I really thought his heart was
+broken and mine too. But I heard, afterwards, that he was seen to play a
+lively game at skittles, before noon.
+
+On the first Sunday after he was taken there, I was to go and see him,
+and have dinner with him. I was to ask my way to such a place, and just
+short of that place I should see such another place, and just short of
+that I should see a yard, which I was to cross, and keep straight on
+until I saw a turnkey. All this I did; and when at last I did see a
+turnkey (poor little fellow that I was!), and thought how, when Roderick
+Random was in a debtors’ prison, there was a man there with nothing
+on him but an old rug, the turnkey swam before my dimmed eyes and my
+beating heart.
+
+Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his
+room (top story but one), and cried very much. He solemnly conjured me,
+I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man
+had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds
+nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he
+spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable. After which he borrowed a
+shilling of me for porter, gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for
+the amount, and put away his pocket-handkerchief, and cheered up.
+
+We sat before a little fire, with two bricks put within the rusted
+grate, one on each side, to prevent its burning too many coals; until
+another debtor, who shared the room with Mr. Micawber, came in from the
+bakehouse with the loin of mutton which was our joint-stock repast.
+Then I was sent up to ‘Captain Hopkins’ in the room overhead, with Mr.
+Micawber’s compliments, and I was his young friend, and would Captain
+Hopkins lend me a knife and fork.
+
+Captain Hopkins lent me the knife and fork, with his compliments to Mr.
+Micawber. There was a very dirty lady in his little room, and two wan
+girls, his daughters, with shock heads of hair. I thought it was better
+to borrow Captain Hopkins’s knife and fork, than Captain Hopkins’s comb.
+The Captain himself was in the last extremity of shabbiness, with large
+whiskers, and an old, old brown great-coat with no other coat below it.
+I saw his bed rolled up in a corner; and what plates and dishes and pots
+he had, on a shelf; and I divined (God knows how) that though the two
+girls with the shock heads of hair were Captain Hopkins’s children, the
+dirty lady was not married to Captain Hopkins. My timid station on his
+threshold was not occupied more than a couple of minutes at most; but
+I came down again with all this in my knowledge, as surely as the knife
+and fork were in my hand.
+
+There was something gipsy-like and agreeable in the dinner, after all.
+I took back Captain Hopkins’s knife and fork early in the afternoon,
+and went home to comfort Mrs. Micawber with an account of my visit.
+She fainted when she saw me return, and made a little jug of egg-hot
+afterwards to console us while we talked it over.
+
+I don’t know how the household furniture came to be sold for the family
+benefit, or who sold it, except that I did not. Sold it was, however,
+and carried away in a van; except the bed, a few chairs, and the kitchen
+table. With these possessions we encamped, as it were, in the two
+parlours of the emptied house in Windsor Terrace; Mrs. Micawber, the
+children, the Orfling, and myself; and lived in those rooms night and
+day. I have no idea for how long, though it seems to me for a long
+time. At last Mrs. Micawber resolved to move into the prison, where Mr.
+Micawber had now secured a room to himself. So I took the key of the
+house to the landlord, who was very glad to get it; and the beds were
+sent over to the King’s Bench, except mine, for which a little room was
+hired outside the walls in the neighbourhood of that Institution, very
+much to my satisfaction, since the Micawbers and I had become too used
+to one another, in our troubles, to part. The Orfling was likewise
+accommodated with an inexpensive lodging in the same neighbourhood.
+Mine was a quiet back-garret with a sloping roof, commanding a pleasant
+prospect of a timberyard; and when I took possession of it, with the
+reflection that Mr. Micawber’s troubles had come to a crisis at last, I
+thought it quite a paradise.
+
+All this time I was working at Murdstone and Grinby’s in the same common
+way, and with the same common companions, and with the same sense of
+unmerited degradation as at first. But I never, happily for me no doubt,
+made a single acquaintance, or spoke to any of the many boys whom I
+saw daily in going to the warehouse, in coming from it, and in prowling
+about the streets at meal-times. I led the same secretly unhappy life;
+but I led it in the same lonely, self-reliant manner. The only changes
+I am conscious of are, firstly, that I had grown more shabby, and
+secondly, that I was now relieved of much of the weight of Mr. and Mrs.
+Micawber’s cares; for some relatives or friends had engaged to help them
+at their present pass, and they lived more comfortably in the prison
+than they had lived for a long while out of it. I used to breakfast with
+them now, in virtue of some arrangement, of which I have forgotten
+the details. I forget, too, at what hour the gates were opened in the
+morning, admitting of my going in; but I know that I was often up at six
+o’clock, and that my favourite lounging-place in the interval was old
+London Bridge, where I was wont to sit in one of the stone recesses,
+watching the people going by, or to look over the balustrades at the sun
+shining in the water, and lighting up the golden flame on the top of the
+Monument. The Orfling met me here sometimes, to be told some astonishing
+fictions respecting the wharves and the Tower; of which I can say no
+more than that I hope I believed them myself. In the evening I used
+to go back to the prison, and walk up and down the parade with Mr.
+Micawber; or play casino with Mrs. Micawber, and hear reminiscences of
+her papa and mama. Whether Mr. Murdstone knew where I was, I am unable
+to say. I never told them at Murdstone and Grinby’s.
+
+Mr. Micawber’s affairs, although past their crisis, were very much
+involved by reason of a certain ‘Deed’, of which I used to hear a great
+deal, and which I suppose, now, to have been some former composition
+with his creditors, though I was so far from being clear about it
+then, that I am conscious of having confounded it with those demoniacal
+parchments which are held to have, once upon a time, obtained to a great
+extent in Germany. At last this document appeared to be got out of the
+way, somehow; at all events it ceased to be the rock-ahead it had been;
+and Mrs. Micawber informed me that ‘her family’ had decided that Mr.
+Micawber should apply for his release under the Insolvent Debtors Act,
+which would set him free, she expected, in about six weeks.
+
+‘And then,’ said Mr. Micawber, who was present, ‘I have no doubt I
+shall, please Heaven, begin to be beforehand with the world, and to live
+in a perfectly new manner, if--in short, if anything turns up.’
+
+By way of going in for anything that might be on the cards, I call to
+mind that Mr. Micawber, about this time, composed a petition to the
+House of Commons, praying for an alteration in the law of imprisonment
+for debt. I set down this remembrance here, because it is an instance to
+myself of the manner in which I fitted my old books to my altered life,
+and made stories for myself, out of the streets, and out of men and
+women; and how some main points in the character I shall unconsciously
+develop, I suppose, in writing my life, were gradually forming all this
+while.
+
+There was a club in the prison, in which Mr. Micawber, as a gentleman,
+was a great authority. Mr. Micawber had stated his idea of this petition
+to the club, and the club had strongly approved of the same. Wherefore
+Mr. Micawber (who was a thoroughly good-natured man, and as active a
+creature about everything but his own affairs as ever existed, and never
+so happy as when he was busy about something that could never be of any
+profit to him) set to work at the petition, invented it, engrossed it
+on an immense sheet of paper, spread it out on a table, and appointed a
+time for all the club, and all within the walls if they chose, to come
+up to his room and sign it.
+
+When I heard of this approaching ceremony, I was so anxious to see them
+all come in, one after another, though I knew the greater part of
+them already, and they me, that I got an hour’s leave of absence from
+Murdstone and Grinby’s, and established myself in a corner for that
+purpose. As many of the principal members of the club as could be got
+into the small room without filling it, supported Mr. Micawber in front
+of the petition, while my old friend Captain Hopkins (who had washed
+himself, to do honour to so solemn an occasion) stationed himself close
+to it, to read it to all who were unacquainted with its contents. The
+door was then thrown open, and the general population began to come in,
+in a long file: several waiting outside, while one entered, affixed his
+signature, and went out. To everybody in succession, Captain Hopkins
+said: ‘Have you read it?’--‘No.’---‘Would you like to hear it read?’ If
+he weakly showed the least disposition to hear it, Captain Hopkins, in
+a loud sonorous voice, gave him every word of it. The Captain would
+have read it twenty thousand times, if twenty thousand people would have
+heard him, one by one. I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to
+such phrases as ‘The people’s representatives in Parliament assembled,’
+‘Your petitioners therefore humbly approach your honourable house,’ ‘His
+gracious Majesty’s unfortunate subjects,’ as if the words were something
+real in his mouth, and delicious to taste; Mr. Micawber, meanwhile,
+listening with a little of an author’s vanity, and contemplating (not
+severely) the spikes on the opposite wall.
+
+As I walked to and fro daily between Southwark and Blackfriars, and
+lounged about at meal-times in obscure streets, the stones of which
+may, for anything I know, be worn at this moment by my childish feet, I
+wonder how many of these people were wanting in the crowd that used to
+come filing before me in review again, to the echo of Captain Hopkins’s
+voice! When my thoughts go back, now, to that slow agony of my youth, I
+wonder how much of the histories I invented for such people hangs like a
+mist of fancy over well-remembered facts! When I tread the old ground,
+I do not wonder that I seem to see and pity, going on before me, an
+innocent romantic boy, making his imaginative world out of such strange
+experiences and sordid things!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 12. LIKING LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT NO BETTER, I FORM A GREAT RESOLUTION
+
+
+In due time, Mr. Micawber’s petition was ripe for hearing; and that
+gentleman was ordered to be discharged under the Act, to my great joy.
+His creditors were not implacable; and Mrs. Micawber informed me that
+even the revengeful boot-maker had declared in open court that he bore
+him no malice, but that when money was owing to him he liked to be paid.
+He said he thought it was human nature.
+
+Mr. Micawber returned to the King’s Bench when his case was over, as
+some fees were to be settled, and some formalities observed, before he
+could be actually released. The club received him with transport, and
+held an harmonic meeting that evening in his honour; while Mrs. Micawber
+and I had a lamb’s fry in private, surrounded by the sleeping family.
+
+‘On such an occasion I will give you, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘in a little more flip,’ for we had been having some already,
+‘the memory of my papa and mama.’
+
+‘Are they dead, ma’am?’ I inquired, after drinking the toast in a
+wine-glass.
+
+‘My mama departed this life,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘before Mr. Micawber’s
+difficulties commenced, or at least before they became pressing. My papa
+lived to bail Mr. Micawber several times, and then expired, regretted by
+a numerous circle.’
+
+Mrs. Micawber shook her head, and dropped a pious tear upon the twin who
+happened to be in hand.
+
+As I could hardly hope for a more favourable opportunity of putting a
+question in which I had a near interest, I said to Mrs. Micawber:
+
+‘May I ask, ma’am, what you and Mr. Micawber intend to do, now that Mr.
+Micawber is out of his difficulties, and at liberty? Have you settled
+yet?’
+
+‘My family,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who always said those two words with an
+air, though I never could discover who came under the denomination, ‘my
+family are of opinion that Mr. Micawber should quit London, and exert
+his talents in the country. Mr. Micawber is a man of great talent,
+Master Copperfield.’
+
+I said I was sure of that.
+
+‘Of great talent,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber. ‘My family are of opinion,
+that, with a little interest, something might be done for a man of his
+ability in the Custom House. The influence of my family being local, it
+is their wish that Mr. Micawber should go down to Plymouth. They think
+it indispensable that he should be upon the spot.’
+
+‘That he may be ready?’ I suggested.
+
+‘Exactly,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘That he may be ready--in case of
+anything turning up.’
+
+‘And do you go too, ma’am?’
+
+The events of the day, in combination with the twins, if not with the
+flip, had made Mrs. Micawber hysterical, and she shed tears as she
+replied:
+
+‘I never will desert Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber may have concealed his
+difficulties from me in the first instance, but his sanguine temper may
+have led him to expect that he would overcome them. The pearl necklace
+and bracelets which I inherited from mama, have been disposed of for
+less than half their value; and the set of coral, which was the wedding
+gift of my papa, has been actually thrown away for nothing. But I never
+will desert Mr. Micawber. No!’ cried Mrs. Micawber, more affected than
+before, ‘I never will do it! It’s of no use asking me!’
+
+I felt quite uncomfortable--as if Mrs. Micawber supposed I had asked her
+to do anything of the sort!--and sat looking at her in alarm.
+
+‘Mr. Micawber has his faults. I do not deny that he is improvident. I
+do not deny that he has kept me in the dark as to his resources and his
+liabilities both,’ she went on, looking at the wall; ‘but I never will
+desert Mr. Micawber!’
+
+Mrs. Micawber having now raised her voice into a perfect scream, I
+was so frightened that I ran off to the club-room, and disturbed Mr.
+Micawber in the act of presiding at a long table, and leading the chorus
+of
+
+ Gee up, Dobbin,
+ Gee ho, Dobbin,
+ Gee up, Dobbin,
+ Gee up, and gee ho--o--o!
+
+with the tidings that Mrs. Micawber was in an alarming state, upon
+which he immediately burst into tears, and came away with me with his
+waistcoat full of the heads and tails of shrimps, of which he had been
+partaking.
+
+‘Emma, my angel!’ cried Mr. Micawber, running into the room; ‘what is
+the matter?’
+
+‘I never will desert you, Micawber!’ she exclaimed.
+
+‘My life!’ said Mr. Micawber, taking her in his arms. ‘I am perfectly
+aware of it.’
+
+‘He is the parent of my children! He is the father of my twins! He is
+the husband of my affections,’ cried Mrs. Micawber, struggling; ‘and I
+ne--ver--will--desert Mr. Micawber!’
+
+Mr. Micawber was so deeply affected by this proof of her devotion (as
+to me, I was dissolved in tears), that he hung over her in a passionate
+manner, imploring her to look up, and to be calm. But the more he asked
+Mrs. Micawber to look up, the more she fixed her eyes on nothing;
+and the more he asked her to compose herself, the more she wouldn’t.
+Consequently Mr. Micawber was soon so overcome, that he mingled his
+tears with hers and mine; until he begged me to do him the favour of
+taking a chair on the staircase, while he got her into bed. I would have
+taken my leave for the night, but he would not hear of my doing that
+until the strangers’ bell should ring. So I sat at the staircase window,
+until he came out with another chair and joined me.
+
+‘How is Mrs. Micawber now, sir?’ I said.
+
+‘Very low,’ said Mr. Micawber, shaking his head; ‘reaction. Ah, this has
+been a dreadful day! We stand alone now--everything is gone from us!’
+
+Mr. Micawber pressed my hand, and groaned, and afterwards shed tears.
+I was greatly touched, and disappointed too, for I had expected that we
+should be quite gay on this happy and long-looked-for occasion. But Mr.
+and Mrs. Micawber were so used to their old difficulties, I think, that
+they felt quite shipwrecked when they came to consider that they were
+released from them. All their elasticity was departed, and I never saw
+them half so wretched as on this night; insomuch that when the bell
+rang, and Mr. Micawber walked with me to the lodge, and parted from me
+there with a blessing, I felt quite afraid to leave him by himself, he
+was so profoundly miserable.
+
+But through all the confusion and lowness of spirits in which we had
+been, so unexpectedly to me, involved, I plainly discerned that Mr. and
+Mrs. Micawber and their family were going away from London, and that a
+parting between us was near at hand. It was in my walk home that night,
+and in the sleepless hours which followed when I lay in bed, that the
+thought first occurred to me--though I don’t know how it came into my
+head--which afterwards shaped itself into a settled resolution.
+
+I had grown to be so accustomed to the Micawbers, and had been so
+intimate with them in their distresses, and was so utterly friendless
+without them, that the prospect of being thrown upon some new shift for
+a lodging, and going once more among unknown people, was like being that
+moment turned adrift into my present life, with such a knowledge of it
+ready made as experience had given me. All the sensitive feelings it
+wounded so cruelly, all the shame and misery it kept alive within my
+breast, became more poignant as I thought of this; and I determined that
+the life was unendurable.
+
+That there was no hope of escape from it, unless the escape was my own
+act, I knew quite well. I rarely heard from Miss Murdstone, and never
+from Mr. Murdstone: but two or three parcels of made or mended clothes
+had come up for me, consigned to Mr. Quinion, and in each there was
+a scrap of paper to the effect that J. M. trusted D. C. was applying
+himself to business, and devoting himself wholly to his duties--not the
+least hint of my ever being anything else than the common drudge into
+which I was fast settling down.
+
+The very next day showed me, while my mind was in the first agitation of
+what it had conceived, that Mrs. Micawber had not spoken of their going
+away without warrant. They took a lodging in the house where I lived,
+for a week; at the expiration of which time they were to start for
+Plymouth. Mr. Micawber himself came down to the counting-house, in the
+afternoon, to tell Mr. Quinion that he must relinquish me on the day
+of his departure, and to give me a high character, which I am sure I
+deserved. And Mr. Quinion, calling in Tipp the carman, who was a married
+man, and had a room to let, quartered me prospectively on him--by our
+mutual consent, as he had every reason to think; for I said nothing,
+though my resolution was now taken.
+
+I passed my evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, during the remaining
+term of our residence under the same roof; and I think we became fonder
+of one another as the time went on. On the last Sunday, they invited me
+to dinner; and we had a loin of pork and apple sauce, and a pudding. I
+had bought a spotted wooden horse over-night as a parting gift to little
+Wilkins Micawber--that was the boy--and a doll for little Emma. I had
+also bestowed a shilling on the Orfling, who was about to be disbanded.
+
+We had a very pleasant day, though we were all in a tender state about
+our approaching separation.
+
+‘I shall never, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘revert to the
+period when Mr. Micawber was in difficulties, without thinking of
+you. Your conduct has always been of the most delicate and obliging
+description. You have never been a lodger. You have been a friend.’
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘Copperfield,’ for so he had been
+accustomed to call me, of late, ‘has a heart to feel for the distresses
+of his fellow-creatures when they are behind a cloud, and a head to
+plan, and a hand to--in short, a general ability to dispose of such
+available property as could be made away with.’
+
+I expressed my sense of this commendation, and said I was very sorry we
+were going to lose one another.
+
+‘My dear young friend,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I am older than you; a man
+of some experience in life, and--and of some experience, in short, in
+difficulties, generally speaking. At present, and until something turns
+up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing to bestow
+but advice. Still my advice is so far worth taking, that--in short, that
+I have never taken it myself, and am the’--here Mr. Micawber, who had
+been beaming and smiling, all over his head and face, up to the present
+moment, checked himself and frowned--‘the miserable wretch you behold.’
+
+‘My dear Micawber!’ urged his wife.
+
+‘I say,’ returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling
+again, ‘the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do tomorrow
+what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar
+him!’
+
+‘My poor papa’s maxim,’ Mrs. Micawber observed.
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘your papa was very well in his way, and
+Heaven forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for all in all, we
+ne’er shall--in short, make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else
+possessing, at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and able to
+read the same description of print, without spectacles. But he applied
+that maxim to our marriage, my dear; and that was so far prematurely
+entered into, in consequence, that I never recovered the expense.’ Mr.
+Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber, and added: ‘Not that I am sorry
+for it. Quite the contrary, my love.’ After which, he was grave for a
+minute or so.
+
+‘My other piece of advice, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you know.
+Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and
+six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
+twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted,
+the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene,
+and--and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!’
+
+To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a glass of
+punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and whistled the
+College Hornpipe.
+
+I did not fail to assure him that I would store these precepts in my
+mind, though indeed I had no need to do so, for, at the time, they
+affected me visibly. Next morning I met the whole family at the coach
+office, and saw them, with a desolate heart, take their places outside,
+at the back.
+
+‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘God bless you! I never can
+forget all that, you know, and I never would if I could.’
+
+‘Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘farewell! Every happiness and
+prosperity! If, in the progress of revolving years, I could persuade
+myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you, I should feel
+that I had not occupied another man’s place in existence altogether in
+vain. In case of anything turning up (of which I am rather confident),
+I shall be extremely happy if it should be in my power to improve your
+prospects.’
+
+I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the
+children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist
+cleared from her eyes, and she saw what a little creature I really was.
+I think so, because she beckoned to me to climb up, with quite a new and
+motherly expression in her face, and put her arm round my neck, and gave
+me just such a kiss as she might have given to her own boy. I had barely
+time to get down again before the coach started, and I could hardly see
+the family for the handkerchiefs they waved. It was gone in a minute.
+The Orfling and I stood looking vacantly at each other in the middle
+of the road, and then shook hands and said good-bye; she going back,
+I suppose, to St. Luke’s workhouse, as I went to begin my weary day at
+Murdstone and Grinby’s.
+
+But with no intention of passing many more weary days there. No. I had
+resolved to run away.---To go, by some means or other, down into the
+country, to the only relation I had in the world, and tell my story to
+my aunt, Miss Betsey. I have already observed that I don’t know how this
+desperate idea came into my brain. But, once there, it remained there;
+and hardened into a purpose than which I have never entertained a more
+determined purpose in my life. I am far from sure that I believed there
+was anything hopeful in it, but my mind was thoroughly made up that it
+must be carried into execution.
+
+Again, and again, and a hundred times again, since the night when the
+thought had first occurred to me and banished sleep, I had gone over
+that old story of my poor mother’s about my birth, which it had been one
+of my great delights in the old time to hear her tell, and which I knew
+by heart. My aunt walked into that story, and walked out of it, a dread
+and awful personage; but there was one little trait in her behaviour
+which I liked to dwell on, and which gave me some faint shadow of
+encouragement. I could not forget how my mother had thought that she
+felt her touch her pretty hair with no ungentle hand; and though it
+might have been altogether my mother’s fancy, and might have had no
+foundation whatever in fact, I made a little picture, out of it, of my
+terrible aunt relenting towards the girlish beauty that I recollected so
+well and loved so much, which softened the whole narrative. It is very
+possible that it had been in my mind a long time, and had gradually
+engendered my determination.
+
+As I did not even know where Miss Betsey lived, I wrote a long letter
+to Peggotty, and asked her, incidentally, if she remembered; pretending
+that I had heard of such a lady living at a certain place I named at
+random, and had a curiosity to know if it were the same. In the course
+of that letter, I told Peggotty that I had a particular occasion for
+half a guinea; and that if she could lend me that sum until I could
+repay it, I should be very much obliged to her, and would tell her
+afterwards what I had wanted it for.
+
+Peggotty’s answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of affectionate
+devotion. She enclosed the half guinea (I was afraid she must have had
+a world of trouble to get it out of Mr. Barkis’s box), and told me that
+Miss Betsey lived near Dover, but whether at Dover itself, at Hythe,
+Sandgate, or Folkestone, she could not say. One of our men, however,
+informing me on my asking him about these places, that they were all
+close together, I deemed this enough for my object, and resolved to set
+out at the end of that week.
+
+Being a very honest little creature, and unwilling to disgrace the
+memory I was going to leave behind me at Murdstone and Grinby’s, I
+considered myself bound to remain until Saturday night; and, as I had
+been paid a week’s wages in advance when I first came there, not to
+present myself in the counting-house at the usual hour, to receive my
+stipend. For this express reason, I had borrowed the half-guinea, that
+I might not be without a fund for my travelling-expenses. Accordingly,
+when the Saturday night came, and we were all waiting in the warehouse
+to be paid, and Tipp the carman, who always took precedence, went in
+first to draw his money, I shook Mick Walker by the hand; asked him,
+when it came to his turn to be paid, to say to Mr. Quinion that I had
+gone to move my box to Tipp’s; and, bidding a last good night to Mealy
+Potatoes, ran away.
+
+My box was at my old lodging, over the water, and I had written a
+direction for it on the back of one of our address cards that we nailed
+on the casks: ‘Master David, to be left till called for, at the Coach
+Office, Dover.’ This I had in my pocket ready to put on the box, after I
+should have got it out of the house; and as I went towards my lodging,
+I looked about me for someone who would help me to carry it to the
+booking-office.
+
+There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart,
+standing near the Obelisk, in the Blackfriars Road, whose eye I caught
+as I was going by, and who, addressing me as ‘Sixpenn’orth of bad
+ha’pence,’ hoped ‘I should know him agin to swear to’--in allusion, I
+have no doubt, to my staring at him. I stopped to assure him that I had
+not done so in bad manners, but uncertain whether he might or might not
+like a job.
+
+‘Wot job?’ said the long-legged young man.
+
+‘To move a box,’ I answered.
+
+‘Wot box?’ said the long-legged young man.
+
+I told him mine, which was down that street there, and which I wanted
+him to take to the Dover coach office for sixpence.
+
+‘Done with you for a tanner!’ said the long-legged young man, and
+directly got upon his cart, which was nothing but a large wooden tray on
+wheels, and rattled away at such a rate, that it was as much as I could
+do to keep pace with the donkey.
+
+There was a defiant manner about this young man, and particularly about
+the way in which he chewed straw as he spoke to me, that I did not much
+like; as the bargain was made, however, I took him upstairs to the room
+I was leaving, and we brought the box down, and put it on his cart.
+Now, I was unwilling to put the direction-card on there, lest any of my
+landlord’s family should fathom what I was doing, and detain me; so
+I said to the young man that I would be glad if he would stop for a
+minute, when he came to the dead-wall of the King’s Bench prison. The
+words were no sooner out of my mouth, than he rattled away as if he, my
+box, the cart, and the donkey, were all equally mad; and I was quite out
+of breath with running and calling after him, when I caught him at the
+place appointed.
+
+Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out of my
+pocket in pulling the card out. I put it in my mouth for safety, and
+though my hands trembled a good deal, had just tied the card on very
+much to my satisfaction, when I felt myself violently chucked under the
+chin by the long-legged young man, and saw my half-guinea fly out of my
+mouth into his hand.
+
+‘Wot!’ said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with a
+frightful grin. ‘This is a pollis case, is it? You’re a-going to bolt,
+are you? Come to the pollis, you young warmin, come to the pollis!’
+
+‘You give me my money back, if you please,’ said I, very much
+frightened; ‘and leave me alone.’
+
+‘Come to the pollis!’ said the young man. ‘You shall prove it yourn to
+the pollis.’
+
+‘Give me my box and money, will you,’ I cried, bursting into tears.
+
+The young man still replied: ‘Come to the pollis!’ and was dragging me
+against the donkey in a violent manner, as if there were any affinity
+between that animal and a magistrate, when he changed his mind, jumped
+into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that he would drive to
+the pollis straight, rattled away harder than ever.
+
+I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out
+with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had. I narrowly
+escaped being run over, twenty times at least, in half a mile. Now I
+lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him, now I was cut at with a whip,
+now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again, now running into
+somebody’s arms, now running headlong at a post. At length, confused by
+fright and heat, and doubting whether half London might not by this time
+be turning out for my apprehension, I left the young man to go where
+he would with my box and money; and, panting and crying, but never
+stopping, faced about for Greenwich, which I had understood was on
+the Dover Road: taking very little more out of the world, towards the
+retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsey, than I had brought into it, on the
+night when my arrival gave her so much umbrage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 13. THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION
+
+
+For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of running all the
+way to Dover, when I gave up the pursuit of the young man with the
+donkey-cart, and started for Greenwich. My scattered senses were soon
+collected as to that point, if I had; for I came to a stop in the Kent
+Road, at a terrace with a piece of water before it, and a great foolish
+image in the middle, blowing a dry shell. Here I sat down on a doorstep,
+quite spent and exhausted with the efforts I had already made, and with
+hardly breath enough to cry for the loss of my box and half-guinea.
+
+It was by this time dark; I heard the clocks strike ten, as I sat
+resting. But it was a summer night, fortunately, and fine weather. When
+I had recovered my breath, and had got rid of a stifling sensation in
+my throat, I rose up and went on. In the midst of my distress, I had no
+notion of going back. I doubt if I should have had any, though there had
+been a Swiss snow-drift in the Kent Road.
+
+But my standing possessed of only three-halfpence in the world (and I
+am sure I wonder how they came to be left in my pocket on a Saturday
+night!) troubled me none the less because I went on. I began to picture
+to myself, as a scrap of newspaper intelligence, my being found dead in
+a day or two, under some hedge; and I trudged on miserably, though as
+fast as I could, until I happened to pass a little shop, where it was
+written up that ladies’ and gentlemen’s wardrobes were bought, and that
+the best price was given for rags, bones, and kitchen-stuff. The master
+of this shop was sitting at the door in his shirt-sleeves, smoking; and
+as there were a great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from
+the low ceiling, and only two feeble candles burning inside to show
+what they were, I fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful
+disposition, who had hung all his enemies, and was enjoying himself.
+
+My late experiences with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber suggested to me that here
+might be a means of keeping off the wolf for a little while. I went up
+the next by-street, took off my waistcoat, rolled it neatly under my
+arm, and came back to the shop door.
+
+‘If you please, sir,’ I said, ‘I am to sell this for a fair price.’
+
+Mr. Dolloby--Dolloby was the name over the shop door, at least--took the
+waistcoat, stood his pipe on its head, against the door-post, went into
+the shop, followed by me, snuffed the two candles with his fingers,
+spread the waistcoat on the counter, and looked at it there, held it up
+against the light, and looked at it there, and ultimately said:
+
+‘What do you call a price, now, for this here little weskit?’
+
+‘Oh! you know best, sir,’ I returned modestly.
+
+‘I can’t be buyer and seller too,’ said Mr. Dolloby. ‘Put a price on
+this here little weskit.’
+
+‘Would eighteenpence be?’--I hinted, after some hesitation.
+
+Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again, and gave it me back. ‘I should rob my
+family,’ he said, ‘if I was to offer ninepence for it.’
+
+This was a disagreeable way of putting the business; because it imposed
+upon me, a perfect stranger, the unpleasantness of asking Mr. Dolloby to
+rob his family on my account. My circumstances being so very pressing,
+however, I said I would take ninepence for it, if he pleased. Mr.
+Dolloby, not without some grumbling, gave ninepence. I wished him good
+night, and walked out of the shop the richer by that sum, and the
+poorer by a waistcoat. But when I buttoned my jacket, that was not much.
+Indeed, I foresaw pretty clearly that my jacket would go next, and that
+I should have to make the best of my way to Dover in a shirt and a pair
+of trousers, and might deem myself lucky if I got there even in that
+trim. But my mind did not run so much on this as might be supposed.
+Beyond a general impression of the distance before me, and of the young
+man with the donkey-cart having used me cruelly, I think I had no
+very urgent sense of my difficulties when I once again set off with my
+ninepence in my pocket.
+
+A plan had occurred to me for passing the night, which I was going to
+carry into execution. This was, to lie behind the wall at the back of my
+old school, in a corner where there used to be a haystack. I imagined
+it would be a kind of company to have the boys, and the bedroom where
+I used to tell the stories, so near me: although the boys would know
+nothing of my being there, and the bedroom would yield me no shelter.
+
+I had had a hard day’s work, and was pretty well jaded when I came
+climbing out, at last, upon the level of Blackheath. It cost me some
+trouble to find out Salem House; but I found it, and I found a haystack
+in the corner, and I lay down by it; having first walked round the wall,
+and looked up at the windows, and seen that all was dark and silent
+within. Never shall I forget the lonely sensation of first lying down,
+without a roof above my head!
+
+Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts, against whom
+house-doors were locked, and house-dogs barked, that night--and I
+dreamed of lying on my old school-bed, talking to the boys in my room;
+and found myself sitting upright, with Steerforth’s name upon my lips,
+looking wildly at the stars that were glistening and glimmering above
+me. When I remembered where I was at that untimely hour, a feeling
+stole upon me that made me get up, afraid of I don’t know what, and walk
+about. But the fainter glimmering of the stars, and the pale light in
+the sky where the day was coming, reassured me: and my eyes being very
+heavy, I lay down again and slept--though with a knowledge in my sleep
+that it was cold--until the warm beams of the sun, and the ringing of
+the getting-up bell at Salem House, awoke me. If I could have hoped that
+Steerforth was there, I would have lurked about until he came out
+alone; but I knew he must have left long since. Traddles still remained,
+perhaps, but it was very doubtful; and I had not sufficient confidence
+in his discretion or good luck, however strong my reliance was on his
+good nature, to wish to trust him with my situation. So I crept away
+from the wall as Mr. Creakle’s boys were getting up, and struck into the
+long dusty track which I had first known to be the Dover Road when I was
+one of them, and when I little expected that any eyes would ever see me
+the wayfarer I was now, upon it.
+
+What a different Sunday morning from the old Sunday morning at Yarmouth!
+In due time I heard the church-bells ringing, as I plodded on; and I met
+people who were going to church; and I passed a church or two where the
+congregation were inside, and the sound of singing came out into the
+sunshine, while the beadle sat and cooled himself in the shade of the
+porch, or stood beneath the yew-tree, with his hand to his forehead,
+glowering at me going by. But the peace and rest of the old Sunday
+morning were on everything, except me. That was the difference. I felt
+quite wicked in my dirt and dust, with my tangled hair. But for the
+quiet picture I had conjured up, of my mother in her youth and beauty,
+weeping by the fire, and my aunt relenting to her, I hardly think I
+should have had the courage to go on until next day. But it always went
+before me, and I followed.
+
+I got, that Sunday, through three-and-twenty miles on the straight
+road, though not very easily, for I was new to that kind of toil. I
+see myself, as evening closes in, coming over the bridge at Rochester,
+footsore and tired, and eating bread that I had bought for supper.
+One or two little houses, with the notice, ‘Lodgings for Travellers’,
+hanging out, had tempted me; but I was afraid of spending the few pence
+I had, and was even more afraid of the vicious looks of the trampers I
+had met or overtaken. I sought no shelter, therefore, but the sky; and
+toiling into Chatham,--which, in that night’s aspect, is a mere dream of
+chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed
+like Noah’s arks,--crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery
+overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro. Here I
+lay down, near a cannon; and, happy in the society of the sentry’s
+footsteps, though he knew no more of my being above him than the boys
+at Salem House had known of my lying by the wall, slept soundly until
+morning.
+
+Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning, and quite dazed by the
+beating of drums and marching of troops, which seemed to hem me in on
+every side when I went down towards the long narrow street. Feeling
+that I could go but a very little way that day, if I were to reserve any
+strength for getting to my journey’s end, I resolved to make the sale
+of my jacket its principal business. Accordingly, I took the jacket off,
+that I might learn to do without it; and carrying it under my arm, began
+a tour of inspection of the various slop-shops.
+
+It was a likely place to sell a jacket in; for the dealers in
+second-hand clothes were numerous, and were, generally speaking, on the
+look-out for customers at their shop doors. But as most of them had,
+hanging up among their stock, an officer’s coat or two, epaulettes and
+all, I was rendered timid by the costly nature of their dealings, and
+walked about for a long time without offering my merchandise to anyone.
+
+This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine-store shops,
+and such shops as Mr. Dolloby’s, in preference to the regular dealers.
+At last I found one that I thought looked promising, at the corner of a
+dirty lane, ending in an enclosure full of stinging-nettles, against the
+palings of which some second-hand sailors’ clothes, that seemed to have
+overflowed the shop, were fluttering among some cots, and rusty guns,
+and oilskin hats, and certain trays full of so many old rusty keys of so
+many sizes that they seemed various enough to open all the doors in the
+world.
+
+Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was darkened
+rather than lighted by a little window, overhung with clothes, and was
+descended into by some steps, I went with a palpitating heart; which was
+not relieved when an ugly old man, with the lower part of his face all
+covered with a stubbly grey beard, rushed out of a dirty den behind it,
+and seized me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful old man to look
+at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smelling terribly of rum. His
+bedstead, covered with a tumbled and ragged piece of patchwork, was in
+the den he had come from, where another little window showed a prospect
+of more stinging-nettles, and a lame donkey.
+
+‘Oh, what do you want?’ grinned this old man, in a fierce, monotonous
+whine. ‘Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver,
+what do you want? Oh, goroo, goroo!’
+
+I was so much dismayed by these words, and particularly by the
+repetition of the last unknown one, which was a kind of rattle in his
+throat, that I could make no answer; hereupon the old man, still holding
+me by the hair, repeated:
+
+‘Oh, what do you want? Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my
+lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo!’--which he screwed out of
+himself, with an energy that made his eyes start in his head.
+
+‘I wanted to know,’ I said, trembling, ‘if you would buy a jacket.’
+
+‘Oh, let’s see the jacket!’ cried the old man. ‘Oh, my heart on fire,
+show the jacket to us! Oh, my eyes and limbs, bring the jacket out!’
+
+With that he took his trembling hands, which were like the claws of a
+great bird, out of my hair; and put on a pair of spectacles, not at all
+ornamental to his inflamed eyes.
+
+‘Oh, how much for the jacket?’ cried the old man, after examining it.
+‘Oh--goroo!--how much for the jacket?’
+
+‘Half-a-crown,’ I answered, recovering myself.
+
+‘Oh, my lungs and liver,’ cried the old man, ‘no! Oh, my eyes, no! Oh,
+my limbs, no! Eighteenpence. Goroo!’
+
+Every time he uttered this ejaculation, his eyes seemed to be in danger
+of starting out; and every sentence he spoke, he delivered in a sort
+of tune, always exactly the same, and more like a gust of wind, which
+begins low, mounts up high, and falls again, than any other comparison I
+can find for it.
+
+‘Well,’ said I, glad to have closed the bargain, ‘I’ll take
+eighteenpence.’
+
+‘Oh, my liver!’ cried the old man, throwing the jacket on a shelf. ‘Get
+out of the shop! Oh, my lungs, get out of the shop! Oh, my eyes and
+limbs--goroo!--don’t ask for money; make it an exchange.’ I never was
+so frightened in my life, before or since; but I told him humbly that
+I wanted money, and that nothing else was of any use to me, but that I
+would wait for it, as he desired, outside, and had no wish to hurry
+him. So I went outside, and sat down in the shade in a corner. And I sat
+there so many hours, that the shade became sunlight, and the sunlight
+became shade again, and still I sat there waiting for the money.
+
+There never was such another drunken madman in that line of business,
+I hope. That he was well known in the neighbourhood, and enjoyed the
+reputation of having sold himself to the devil, I soon understood from
+the visits he received from the boys, who continually came skirmishing
+about the shop, shouting that legend, and calling to him to bring out
+his gold. ‘You ain’t poor, you know, Charley, as you pretend. Bring out
+your gold. Bring out some of the gold you sold yourself to the devil
+for. Come! It’s in the lining of the mattress, Charley. Rip it open
+and let’s have some!’ This, and many offers to lend him a knife for
+the purpose, exasperated him to such a degree, that the whole day was a
+succession of rushes on his part, and flights on the part of the boys.
+Sometimes in his rage he would take me for one of them, and come at me,
+mouthing as if he were going to tear me in pieces; then, remembering
+me, just in time, would dive into the shop, and lie upon his bed, as I
+thought from the sound of his voice, yelling in a frantic way, to his
+own windy tune, the ‘Death of Nelson’; with an Oh! before every line,
+and innumerable Goroos interspersed. As if this were not bad enough for
+me, the boys, connecting me with the establishment, on account of the
+patience and perseverance with which I sat outside, half-dressed, pelted
+me, and used me very ill all day.
+
+He made many attempts to induce me to consent to an exchange; at one
+time coming out with a fishing-rod, at another with a fiddle, at another
+with a cocked hat, at another with a flute. But I resisted all these
+overtures, and sat there in desperation; each time asking him, with
+tears in my eyes, for my money or my jacket. At last he began to pay me
+in halfpence at a time; and was full two hours getting by easy stages to
+a shilling.
+
+‘Oh, my eyes and limbs!’ he then cried, peeping hideously out of the
+shop, after a long pause, ‘will you go for twopence more?’
+
+‘I can’t,’ I said; ‘I shall be starved.’
+
+‘Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for threepence?’
+
+‘I would go for nothing, if I could,’ I said, ‘but I want the money
+badly.’
+
+‘Oh, go-roo!’ (it is really impossible to express how he twisted this
+ejaculation out of himself, as he peeped round the door-post at me,
+showing nothing but his crafty old head); ‘will you go for fourpence?’
+
+I was so faint and weary that I closed with this offer; and taking the
+money out of his claw, not without trembling, went away more hungry and
+thirsty than I had ever been, a little before sunset. But at an expense
+of threepence I soon refreshed myself completely; and, being in better
+spirits then, limped seven miles upon my road.
+
+My bed at night was under another haystack, where I rested comfortably,
+after having washed my blistered feet in a stream, and dressed them as
+well as I was able, with some cool leaves. When I took the road again
+next morning, I found that it lay through a succession of hop-grounds
+and orchards. It was sufficiently late in the year for the orchards
+to be ruddy with ripe apples; and in a few places the hop-pickers were
+already at work. I thought it all extremely beautiful, and made up
+my mind to sleep among the hops that night: imagining some cheerful
+companionship in the long perspectives of poles, with the graceful
+leaves twining round them.
+
+The trampers were worse than ever that day, and inspired me with a
+dread that is yet quite fresh in my mind. Some of them were most
+ferocious-looking ruffians, who stared at me as I went by; and stopped,
+perhaps, and called after me to come back and speak to them, and when I
+took to my heels, stoned me. I recollect one young fellow--a tinker, I
+suppose, from his wallet and brazier--who had a woman with him, and
+who faced about and stared at me thus; and then roared to me in such a
+tremendous voice to come back, that I halted and looked round.
+
+‘Come here, when you’re called,’ said the tinker, ‘or I’ll rip your
+young body open.’
+
+I thought it best to go back. As I drew nearer to them, trying to
+propitiate the tinker by my looks, I observed that the woman had a black
+eye.
+
+‘Where are you going?’ said the tinker, gripping the bosom of my shirt
+with his blackened hand.
+
+‘I am going to Dover,’ I said.
+
+‘Where do you come from?’ asked the tinker, giving his hand another turn
+in my shirt, to hold me more securely.
+
+‘I come from London,’ I said.
+
+‘What lay are you upon?’ asked the tinker. ‘Are you a prig?’
+
+‘N-no,’ I said.
+
+‘Ain’t you, by G--? If you make a brag of your honesty to me,’ said the
+tinker, ‘I’ll knock your brains out.’
+
+With his disengaged hand he made a menace of striking me, and then
+looked at me from head to foot.
+
+‘Have you got the price of a pint of beer about you?’ said the tinker.
+‘If you have, out with it, afore I take it away!’
+
+I should certainly have produced it, but that I met the woman’s look,
+and saw her very slightly shake her head, and form ‘No!’ with her lips.
+
+‘I am very poor,’ I said, attempting to smile, ‘and have got no money.’
+
+‘Why, what do you mean?’ said the tinker, looking so sternly at me, that
+I almost feared he saw the money in my pocket.
+
+‘Sir!’ I stammered.
+
+‘What do you mean,’ said the tinker, ‘by wearing my brother’s silk
+handkerchief! Give it over here!’ And he had mine off my neck in a
+moment, and tossed it to the woman.
+
+The woman burst into a fit of laughter, as if she thought this a joke,
+and tossed it back to me, nodded once, as slightly as before, and made
+the word ‘Go!’ with her lips. Before I could obey, however, the tinker
+seized the handkerchief out of my hand with a roughness that threw me
+away like a feather, and putting it loosely round his own neck, turned
+upon the woman with an oath, and knocked her down. I never shall forget
+seeing her fall backward on the hard road, and lie there with her bonnet
+tumbled off, and her hair all whitened in the dust; nor, when I looked
+back from a distance, seeing her sitting on the pathway, which was a
+bank by the roadside, wiping the blood from her face with a corner of
+her shawl, while he went on ahead.
+
+This adventure frightened me so, that, afterwards, when I saw any of
+these people coming, I turned back until I could find a hiding-place,
+where I remained until they had gone out of sight; which happened so
+often, that I was very seriously delayed. But under this difficulty, as
+under all the other difficulties of my journey, I seemed to be sustained
+and led on by my fanciful picture of my mother in her youth, before I
+came into the world. It always kept me company. It was there, among
+the hops, when I lay down to sleep; it was with me on my waking in the
+morning; it went before me all day. I have associated it, ever since,
+with the sunny street of Canterbury, dozing as it were in the hot light;
+and with the sight of its old houses and gateways, and the stately,
+grey Cathedral, with the rooks sailing round the towers. When I came,
+at last, upon the bare, wide downs near Dover, it relieved the solitary
+aspect of the scene with hope; and not until I reached that first great
+aim of my journey, and actually set foot in the town itself, on the
+sixth day of my flight, did it desert me. But then, strange to say,
+when I stood with my ragged shoes, and my dusty, sunburnt, half-clothed
+figure, in the place so long desired, it seemed to vanish like a dream,
+and to leave me helpless and dispirited.
+
+I inquired about my aunt among the boatmen first, and received various
+answers. One said she lived in the South Foreland Light, and had singed
+her whiskers by doing so; another, that she was made fast to the great
+buoy outside the harbour, and could only be visited at half-tide; a
+third, that she was locked up in Maidstone jail for child-stealing; a
+fourth, that she was seen to mount a broom in the last high wind, and
+make direct for Calais. The fly-drivers, among whom I inquired next,
+were equally jocose and equally disrespectful; and the shopkeepers, not
+liking my appearance, generally replied, without hearing what I had
+to say, that they had got nothing for me. I felt more miserable and
+destitute than I had done at any period of my running away. My money was
+all gone, I had nothing left to dispose of; I was hungry, thirsty, and
+worn out; and seemed as distant from my end as if I had remained in
+London.
+
+The morning had worn away in these inquiries, and I was sitting on
+the step of an empty shop at a street corner, near the market-place,
+deliberating upon wandering towards those other places which had been
+mentioned, when a fly-driver, coming by with his carriage, dropped a
+horsecloth. Something good-natured in the man’s face, as I handed it up,
+encouraged me to ask him if he could tell me where Miss Trotwood lived;
+though I had asked the question so often, that it almost died upon my
+lips.
+
+‘Trotwood,’ said he. ‘Let me see. I know the name, too. Old lady?’
+
+‘Yes,’ I said, ‘rather.’
+
+‘Pretty stiff in the back?’ said he, making himself upright.
+
+‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I should think it very likely.’
+
+‘Carries a bag?’ said he--‘bag with a good deal of room in it--is
+gruffish, and comes down upon you, sharp?’
+
+My heart sank within me as I acknowledged the undoubted accuracy of this
+description.
+
+‘Why then, I tell you what,’ said he. ‘If you go up there,’ pointing
+with his whip towards the heights, ‘and keep right on till you come to
+some houses facing the sea, I think you’ll hear of her. My opinion is
+she won’t stand anything, so here’s a penny for you.’
+
+I accepted the gift thankfully, and bought a loaf with it. Dispatching
+this refreshment by the way, I went in the direction my friend had
+indicated, and walked on a good distance without coming to the houses
+he had mentioned. At length I saw some before me; and approaching them,
+went into a little shop (it was what we used to call a general shop,
+at home), and inquired if they could have the goodness to tell me where
+Miss Trotwood lived. I addressed myself to a man behind the counter,
+who was weighing some rice for a young woman; but the latter, taking the
+inquiry to herself, turned round quickly.
+
+‘My mistress?’ she said. ‘What do you want with her, boy?’
+
+‘I want,’ I replied, ‘to speak to her, if you please.’
+
+‘To beg of her, you mean,’ retorted the damsel.
+
+‘No,’ I said, ‘indeed.’ But suddenly remembering that in truth I came
+for no other purpose, I held my peace in confusion, and felt my face
+burn.
+
+My aunt’s handmaid, as I supposed she was from what she had said, put
+her rice in a little basket and walked out of the shop; telling me that
+I could follow her, if I wanted to know where Miss Trotwood lived. I
+needed no second permission; though I was by this time in such a state
+of consternation and agitation, that my legs shook under me. I followed
+the young woman, and we soon came to a very neat little cottage with
+cheerful bow-windows: in front of it, a small square gravelled court or
+garden full of flowers, carefully tended, and smelling deliciously.
+
+‘This is Miss Trotwood’s,’ said the young woman. ‘Now you know; and
+that’s all I have got to say.’ With which words she hurried into the
+house, as if to shake off the responsibility of my appearance; and left
+me standing at the garden-gate, looking disconsolately over the top of
+it towards the parlour window, where a muslin curtain partly undrawn
+in the middle, a large round green screen or fan fastened on to the
+windowsill, a small table, and a great chair, suggested to me that my
+aunt might be at that moment seated in awful state.
+
+My shoes were by this time in a woeful condition. The soles had shed
+themselves bit by bit, and the upper leathers had broken and burst until
+the very shape and form of shoes had departed from them. My hat (which
+had served me for a night-cap, too) was so crushed and bent, that no old
+battered handleless saucepan on a dunghill need have been ashamed to vie
+with it. My shirt and trousers, stained with heat, dew, grass, and
+the Kentish soil on which I had slept--and torn besides--might have
+frightened the birds from my aunt’s garden, as I stood at the gate. My
+hair had known no comb or brush since I left London. My face, neck, and
+hands, from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burnt to a
+berry-brown. From head to foot I was powdered almost as white with chalk
+and dust, as if I had come out of a lime-kiln. In this plight, and with
+a strong consciousness of it, I waited to introduce myself to, and make
+my first impression on, my formidable aunt.
+
+The unbroken stillness of the parlour window leading me to infer, after
+a while, that she was not there, I lifted up my eyes to the window above
+it, where I saw a florid, pleasant-looking gentleman, with a grey head,
+who shut up one eye in a grotesque manner, nodded his head at me several
+times, shook it at me as often, laughed, and went away.
+
+I had been discomposed enough before; but I was so much the more
+discomposed by this unexpected behaviour, that I was on the point of
+slinking off, to think how I had best proceed, when there came out of
+the house a lady with her handkerchief tied over her cap, and a pair
+of gardening gloves on her hands, wearing a gardening pocket like a
+toll-man’s apron, and carrying a great knife. I knew her immediately
+to be Miss Betsey, for she came stalking out of the house exactly as
+my poor mother had so often described her stalking up our garden at
+Blunderstone Rookery.
+
+‘Go away!’ said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, and making a distant chop
+in the air with her knife. ‘Go along! No boys here!’
+
+I watched her, with my heart at my lips, as she marched to a corner of
+her garden, and stooped to dig up some little root there. Then, without
+a scrap of courage, but with a great deal of desperation, I went softly
+in and stood beside her, touching her with my finger.
+
+‘If you please, ma’am,’ I began.
+
+She started and looked up.
+
+‘If you please, aunt.’
+
+‘EH?’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, in a tone of amazement I have never heard
+approached.
+
+‘If you please, aunt, I am your nephew.’
+
+‘Oh, Lord!’ said my aunt. And sat flat down in the garden-path.
+
+‘I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk--where you came,
+on the night when I was born, and saw my dear mama. I have been very
+unhappy since she died. I have been slighted, and taught nothing, and
+thrown upon myself, and put to work not fit for me. It made me run away
+to you. I was robbed at first setting out, and have walked all the
+way, and have never slept in a bed since I began the journey.’ Here
+my self-support gave way all at once; and with a movement of my hands,
+intended to show her my ragged state, and call it to witness that I had
+suffered something, I broke into a passion of crying, which I suppose
+had been pent up within me all the week.
+
+My aunt, with every sort of expression but wonder discharged from her
+countenance, sat on the gravel, staring at me, until I began to cry;
+when she got up in a great hurry, collared me, and took me into the
+parlour. Her first proceeding there was to unlock a tall press, bring
+out several bottles, and pour some of the contents of each into my
+mouth. I think they must have been taken out at random, for I am sure
+I tasted aniseed water, anchovy sauce, and salad dressing. When she had
+administered these restoratives, as I was still quite hysterical, and
+unable to control my sobs, she put me on the sofa, with a shawl under
+my head, and the handkerchief from her own head under my feet, lest I
+should sully the cover; and then, sitting herself down behind the green
+fan or screen I have already mentioned, so that I could not see her
+face, ejaculated at intervals, ‘Mercy on us!’ letting those exclamations
+off like minute guns.
+
+After a time she rang the bell. ‘Janet,’ said my aunt, when her servant
+came in. ‘Go upstairs, give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and say I wish
+to speak to him.’
+
+Janet looked a little surprised to see me lying stiffly on the sofa (I
+was afraid to move lest it should be displeasing to my aunt), but went
+on her errand. My aunt, with her hands behind her, walked up and down
+the room, until the gentleman who had squinted at me from the upper
+window came in laughing.
+
+‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘don’t be a fool, because nobody can be more
+discreet than you can, when you choose. We all know that. So don’t be a
+fool, whatever you are.’
+
+The gentleman was serious immediately, and looked at me, I thought, as
+if he would entreat me to say nothing about the window.
+
+‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘you have heard me mention David Copperfield?
+Now don’t pretend not to have a memory, because you and I know better.’
+
+‘David Copperfield?’ said Mr. Dick, who did not appear to me to
+remember much about it. ‘David Copperfield? Oh yes, to be sure. David,
+certainly.’
+
+‘Well,’ said my aunt, ‘this is his boy--his son. He would be as like his
+father as it’s possible to be, if he was not so like his mother, too.’
+
+‘His son?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘David’s son? Indeed!’
+
+‘Yes,’ pursued my aunt, ‘and he has done a pretty piece of business.
+He has run away. Ah! His sister, Betsey Trotwood, never would have run
+away.’ My aunt shook her head firmly, confident in the character and
+behaviour of the girl who never was born.
+
+‘Oh! you think she wouldn’t have run away?’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘Bless and save the man,’ exclaimed my aunt, sharply, ‘how he talks!
+Don’t I know she wouldn’t? She would have lived with her god-mother,
+and we should have been devoted to one another. Where, in the name of
+wonder, should his sister, Betsey Trotwood, have run from, or to?’
+
+‘Nowhere,’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘Well then,’ returned my aunt, softened by the reply, ‘how can you
+pretend to be wool-gathering, Dick, when you are as sharp as a surgeon’s
+lancet? Now, here you see young David Copperfield, and the question I
+put to you is, what shall I do with him?’
+
+‘What shall you do with him?’ said Mr. Dick, feebly, scratching his
+head. ‘Oh! do with him?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said my aunt, with a grave look, and her forefinger held up.
+‘Come! I want some very sound advice.’
+
+‘Why, if I was you,’ said Mr. Dick, considering, and looking vacantly
+at me, ‘I should--’ The contemplation of me seemed to inspire him with a
+sudden idea, and he added, briskly, ‘I should wash him!’
+
+‘Janet,’ said my aunt, turning round with a quiet triumph, which I did
+not then understand, ‘Mr. Dick sets us all right. Heat the bath!’
+
+Although I was deeply interested in this dialogue, I could not help
+observing my aunt, Mr. Dick, and Janet, while it was in progress, and
+completing a survey I had already been engaged in making of the room.
+
+My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking.
+There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and
+carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon
+a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome
+than otherwise, though unbending and austere. I particularly noticed
+that she had a very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was grey, was
+arranged in two plain divisions, under what I believe would be called a
+mob-cap; I mean a cap, much more common then than now, with side-pieces
+fastening under the chin. Her dress was of a lavender colour, and
+perfectly neat; but scantily made, as if she desired to be as little
+encumbered as possible. I remember that I thought it, in form, more like
+a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else.
+She wore at her side a gentleman’s gold watch, if I might judge from its
+size and make, with an appropriate chain and seals; she had some linen
+at her throat not unlike a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists like
+little shirt-wristbands.
+
+Mr. Dick, as I have already said, was grey-headed, and florid: I should
+have said all about him, in saying so, had not his head been curiously
+bowed--not by age; it reminded me of one of Mr. Creakle’s boys’ heads
+after a beating--and his grey eyes prominent and large, with a strange
+kind of watery brightness in them that made me, in combination with his
+vacant manner, his submission to my aunt, and his childish delight when
+she praised him, suspect him of being a little mad; though, if he were
+mad, how he came to be there puzzled me extremely. He was dressed
+like any other ordinary gentleman, in a loose grey morning coat and
+waistcoat, and white trousers; and had his watch in his fob, and his
+money in his pockets: which he rattled as if he were very proud of it.
+
+Janet was a pretty blooming girl, of about nineteen or twenty, and a
+perfect picture of neatness. Though I made no further observation of
+her at the moment, I may mention here what I did not discover until
+afterwards, namely, that she was one of a series of protegees whom my
+aunt had taken into her service expressly to educate in a renouncement
+of mankind, and who had generally completed their abjuration by marrying
+the baker.
+
+The room was as neat as Janet or my aunt. As I laid down my pen, a
+moment since, to think of it, the air from the sea came blowing
+in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers; and I saw the
+old-fashioned furniture brightly rubbed and polished, my aunt’s
+inviolable chair and table by the round green fan in the bow-window, the
+drugget-covered carpet, the cat, the kettle-holder, the two canaries,
+the old china, the punchbowl full of dried rose-leaves, the tall press
+guarding all sorts of bottles and pots, and, wonderfully out of keeping
+with the rest, my dusty self upon the sofa, taking note of everything.
+
+Janet had gone away to get the bath ready, when my aunt, to my great
+alarm, became in one moment rigid with indignation, and had hardly voice
+to cry out, ‘Janet! Donkeys!’
+
+Upon which, Janet came running up the stairs as if the house were in
+flames, darted out on a little piece of green in front, and warned off
+two saddle-donkeys, lady-ridden, that had presumed to set hoof upon it;
+while my aunt, rushing out of the house, seized the bridle of a third
+animal laden with a bestriding child, turned him, led him forth from
+those sacred precincts, and boxed the ears of the unlucky urchin in
+attendance who had dared to profane that hallowed ground.
+
+To this hour I don’t know whether my aunt had any lawful right of way
+over that patch of green; but she had settled it in her own mind that
+she had, and it was all the same to her. The one great outrage of her
+life, demanding to be constantly avenged, was the passage of a donkey
+over that immaculate spot. In whatever occupation she was engaged,
+however interesting to her the conversation in which she was taking
+part, a donkey turned the current of her ideas in a moment, and she was
+upon him straight. Jugs of water, and watering-pots, were kept in secret
+places ready to be discharged on the offending boys; sticks were laid
+in ambush behind the door; sallies were made at all hours; and
+incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the
+donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding
+how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming
+that way. I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was
+ready; and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of all,
+I saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen,
+and bump his sandy head against her own gate, before he seemed to
+comprehend what was the matter. These interruptions were of the more
+ridiculous to me, because she was giving me broth out of a table-spoon
+at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually
+starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very small
+quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, she
+would put it back into the basin, cry ‘Janet! Donkeys!’ and go out to
+the assault.
+
+The bath was a great comfort. For I began to be sensible of acute pains
+in my limbs from lying out in the fields, and was now so tired and low
+that I could hardly keep myself awake for five minutes together. When I
+had bathed, they (I mean my aunt and Janet) enrobed me in a shirt and a
+pair of trousers belonging to Mr. Dick, and tied me up in two or three
+great shawls. What sort of bundle I looked like, I don’t know, but I
+felt a very hot one. Feeling also very faint and drowsy, I soon lay down
+on the sofa again and fell asleep.
+
+It might have been a dream, originating in the fancy which had occupied
+my mind so long, but I awoke with the impression that my aunt had come
+and bent over me, and had put my hair away from my face, and laid my
+head more comfortably, and had then stood looking at me. The words,
+‘Pretty fellow,’ or ‘Poor fellow,’ seemed to be in my ears, too; but
+certainly there was nothing else, when I awoke, to lead me to believe
+that they had been uttered by my aunt, who sat in the bow-window gazing
+at the sea from behind the green fan, which was mounted on a kind of
+swivel, and turned any way.
+
+We dined soon after I awoke, off a roast fowl and a pudding; I sitting
+at table, not unlike a trussed bird myself, and moving my arms with
+considerable difficulty. But as my aunt had swathed me up, I made no
+complaint of being inconvenienced. All this time I was deeply anxious
+to know what she was going to do with me; but she took her dinner in
+profound silence, except when she occasionally fixed her eyes on me
+sitting opposite, and said, ‘Mercy upon us!’ which did not by any means
+relieve my anxiety.
+
+The cloth being drawn, and some sherry put upon the table (of which I
+had a glass), my aunt sent up for Mr. Dick again, who joined us, and
+looked as wise as he could when she requested him to attend to my story,
+which she elicited from me, gradually, by a course of questions. During
+my recital, she kept her eyes on Mr. Dick, who I thought would have gone
+to sleep but for that, and who, whensoever he lapsed into a smile, was
+checked by a frown from my aunt.
+
+‘Whatever possessed that poor unfortunate Baby, that she must go and be
+married again,’ said my aunt, when I had finished, ‘I can’t conceive.’
+
+‘Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband,’ Mr. Dick suggested.
+
+‘Fell in love!’ repeated my aunt. ‘What do you mean? What business had
+she to do it?’
+
+‘Perhaps,’ Mr. Dick simpered, after thinking a little, ‘she did it for
+pleasure.’
+
+‘Pleasure, indeed!’ replied my aunt. ‘A mighty pleasure for the poor
+Baby to fix her simple faith upon any dog of a fellow, certain to
+ill-use her in some way or other. What did she propose to herself,
+I should like to know! She had had one husband. She had seen David
+Copperfield out of the world, who was always running after wax dolls
+from his cradle. She had got a baby--oh, there were a pair of babies
+when she gave birth to this child sitting here, that Friday night!--and
+what more did she want?’
+
+Mr. Dick secretly shook his head at me, as if he thought there was no
+getting over this.
+
+‘She couldn’t even have a baby like anybody else,’ said my aunt. ‘Where
+was this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood? Not forthcoming. Don’t tell
+me!’
+
+Mr. Dick seemed quite frightened.
+
+‘That little man of a doctor, with his head on one side,’ said my aunt,
+‘Jellips, or whatever his name was, what was he about? All he could do,
+was to say to me, like a robin redbreast--as he is--“It’s a boy.” A boy!
+Yah, the imbecility of the whole set of ‘em!’
+
+The heartiness of the ejaculation startled Mr. Dick exceedingly; and me,
+too, if I am to tell the truth.
+
+‘And then, as if this was not enough, and she had not stood sufficiently
+in the light of this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt,
+‘she marries a second time--goes and marries a Murderer--or a man with
+a name like it--and stands in THIS child’s light! And the natural
+consequence is, as anybody but a baby might have foreseen, that he
+prowls and wanders. He’s as like Cain before he was grown up, as he can
+be.’
+
+Mr. Dick looked hard at me, as if to identify me in this character.
+
+‘And then there’s that woman with the Pagan name,’ said my aunt, ‘that
+Peggotty, she goes and gets married next. Because she has not seen
+enough of the evil attending such things, she goes and gets married
+next, as the child relates. I only hope,’ said my aunt, shaking her
+head, ‘that her husband is one of those Poker husbands who abound in the
+newspapers, and will beat her well with one.’
+
+I could not bear to hear my old nurse so decried, and made the subject
+of such a wish. I told my aunt that indeed she was mistaken. That
+Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most faithful, most devoted, and
+most self-denying friend and servant in the world; who had ever loved
+me dearly, who had ever loved my mother dearly; who had held my mother’s
+dying head upon her arm, on whose face my mother had imprinted her last
+grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them both, choking me, I broke down
+as I was trying to say that her home was my home, and that all she had
+was mine, and that I would have gone to her for shelter, but for her
+humble station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble on
+her--I broke down, I say, as I was trying to say so, and laid my face in
+my hands upon the table.
+
+‘Well, well!’ said my aunt, ‘the child is right to stand by those who
+have stood by him--Janet! Donkeys!’
+
+I thoroughly believe that but for those unfortunate donkeys, we should
+have come to a good understanding; for my aunt had laid her hand on my
+shoulder, and the impulse was upon me, thus emboldened, to embrace her
+and beseech her protection. But the interruption, and the disorder she
+was thrown into by the struggle outside, put an end to all softer ideas
+for the present, and kept my aunt indignantly declaiming to Mr. Dick
+about her determination to appeal for redress to the laws of her
+country, and to bring actions for trespass against the whole donkey
+proprietorship of Dover, until tea-time.
+
+After tea, we sat at the window--on the look-out, as I imagined, from
+my aunt’s sharp expression of face, for more invaders--until dusk, when
+Janet set candles, and a backgammon-board, on the table, and pulled down
+the blinds.
+
+‘Now, Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, with her grave look, and her forefinger
+up as before, ‘I am going to ask you another question. Look at this
+child.’
+
+‘David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick, with an attentive, puzzled face.
+
+‘Exactly so,’ returned my aunt. ‘What would you do with him, now?’
+
+‘Do with David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘Ay,’ replied my aunt, ‘with David’s son.’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Yes. Do with--I should put him to bed.’
+
+‘Janet!’ cried my aunt, with the same complacent triumph that I had
+remarked before. ‘Mr. Dick sets us all right. If the bed is ready, we’ll
+take him up to it.’
+
+Janet reporting it to be quite ready, I was taken up to it; kindly, but
+in some sort like a prisoner; my aunt going in front and Janet bringing
+up the rear. The only circumstance which gave me any new hope, was my
+aunt’s stopping on the stairs to inquire about a smell of fire that was
+prevalent there; and janet’s replying that she had been making tinder
+down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in
+my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there,
+with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five
+minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things
+over in my mind I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know
+nothing of me, might suspect I had a habit of running away, and took
+precautions, on that account, to have me in safe keeping.
+
+The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house, overlooking the
+sea, on which the moon was shining brilliantly. After I had said my
+prayers, and the candle had burnt out, I remember how I still sat
+looking at the moonlight on the water, as if I could hope to read my
+fortune in it, as in a bright book; or to see my mother with her child,
+coming from Heaven, along that shining path, to look upon me as she had
+looked when I last saw her sweet face. I remember how the solemn feeling
+with which at length I turned my eyes away, yielded to the sensation of
+gratitude and rest which the sight of the white-curtained bed--and how
+much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-white
+sheets!--inspired. I remember how I thought of all the solitary places
+under the night sky where I had slept, and how I prayed that I never
+might be houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless. I
+remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that
+track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 14. MY AUNT MAKES UP HER MIND ABOUT ME
+
+
+On going down in the morning, I found my aunt musing so profoundly over
+the breakfast table, with her elbow on the tray, that the contents of
+the urn had overflowed the teapot and were laying the whole table-cloth
+under water, when my entrance put her meditations to flight. I felt sure
+that I had been the subject of her reflections, and was more than ever
+anxious to know her intentions towards me. Yet I dared not express my
+anxiety, lest it should give her offence.
+
+My eyes, however, not being so much under control as my tongue, were
+attracted towards my aunt very often during breakfast. I never could
+look at her for a few moments together but I found her looking at me--in
+an odd thoughtful manner, as if I were an immense way off, instead of
+being on the other side of the small round table. When she had finished
+her breakfast, my aunt very deliberately leaned back in her chair,
+knitted her brows, folded her arms, and contemplated me at her leisure,
+with such a fixedness of attention that I was quite overpowered by
+embarrassment. Not having as yet finished my own breakfast, I attempted
+to hide my confusion by proceeding with it; but my knife tumbled over my
+fork, my fork tripped up my knife, I chipped bits of bacon a surprising
+height into the air instead of cutting them for my own eating, and
+choked myself with my tea, which persisted in going the wrong way
+instead of the right one, until I gave in altogether, and sat blushing
+under my aunt’s close scrutiny.
+
+‘Hallo!’ said my aunt, after a long time.
+
+I looked up, and met her sharp bright glance respectfully.
+
+‘I have written to him,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘To--?’
+
+‘To your father-in-law,’ said my aunt. ‘I have sent him a letter that
+I’ll trouble him to attend to, or he and I will fall out, I can tell
+him!’
+
+‘Does he know where I am, aunt?’ I inquired, alarmed.
+
+‘I have told him,’ said my aunt, with a nod.
+
+‘Shall I--be--given up to him?’ I faltered.
+
+‘I don’t know,’ said my aunt. ‘We shall see.’
+
+‘Oh! I can’t think what I shall do,’ I exclaimed, ‘if I have to go back
+to Mr. Murdstone!’
+
+‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said my aunt, shaking her head. ‘I
+can’t say, I am sure. We shall see.’
+
+My spirits sank under these words, and I became very downcast and heavy
+of heart. My aunt, without appearing to take much heed of me, put on a
+coarse apron with a bib, which she took out of the press; washed up the
+teacups with her own hands; and, when everything was washed and set in
+the tray again, and the cloth folded and put on the top of the whole,
+rang for Janet to remove it. She next swept up the crumbs with a little
+broom (putting on a pair of gloves first), until there did not appear
+to be one microscopic speck left on the carpet; next dusted and arranged
+the room, which was dusted and arranged to a hair’s breadth already.
+When all these tasks were performed to her satisfaction, she took off
+the gloves and apron, folded them up, put them in the particular corner
+of the press from which they had been taken, brought out her work-box
+to her own table in the open window, and sat down, with the green fan
+between her and the light, to work.
+
+‘I wish you’d go upstairs,’ said my aunt, as she threaded her needle,
+‘and give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and I’ll be glad to know how he
+gets on with his Memorial.’
+
+I rose with all alacrity, to acquit myself of this commission.
+
+‘I suppose,’ said my aunt, eyeing me as narrowly as she had eyed the
+needle in threading it, ‘you think Mr. Dick a short name, eh?’
+
+‘I thought it was rather a short name, yesterday,’ I confessed.
+
+‘You are not to suppose that he hasn’t got a longer name, if he chose
+to use it,’ said my aunt, with a loftier air. ‘Babley--Mr. Richard
+Babley--that’s the gentleman’s true name.’
+
+I was going to suggest, with a modest sense of my youth and the
+familiarity I had been already guilty of, that I had better give him the
+full benefit of that name, when my aunt went on to say:
+
+‘But don’t you call him by it, whatever you do. He can’t bear his name.
+That’s a peculiarity of his. Though I don’t know that it’s much of a
+peculiarity, either; for he has been ill-used enough, by some that bear
+it, to have a mortal antipathy for it, Heaven knows. Mr. Dick is his
+name here, and everywhere else, now--if he ever went anywhere else,
+which he don’t. So take care, child, you don’t call him anything BUT Mr.
+Dick.’
+
+I promised to obey, and went upstairs with my message; thinking, as I
+went, that if Mr. Dick had been working at his Memorial long, at the
+same rate as I had seen him working at it, through the open door, when
+I came down, he was probably getting on very well indeed. I found him
+still driving at it with a long pen, and his head almost laid upon the
+paper. He was so intent upon it, that I had ample leisure to observe the
+large paper kite in a corner, the confusion of bundles of manuscript,
+the number of pens, and, above all, the quantity of ink (which he seemed
+to have in, in half-gallon jars by the dozen), before he observed my
+being present.
+
+‘Ha! Phoebus!’ said Mr. Dick, laying down his pen. ‘How does the world
+go? I’ll tell you what,’ he added, in a lower tone, ‘I shouldn’t wish it
+to be mentioned, but it’s a--’ here he beckoned to me, and put his lips
+close to my ear--‘it’s a mad world. Mad as Bedlam, boy!’ said Mr. Dick,
+taking snuff from a round box on the table, and laughing heartily.
+
+Without presuming to give my opinion on this question, I delivered my
+message.
+
+‘Well,’ said Mr. Dick, in answer, ‘my compliments to her, and I--I
+believe I have made a start. I think I have made a start,’ said Mr.
+Dick, passing his hand among his grey hair, and casting anything but a
+confident look at his manuscript. ‘You have been to school?’
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ I answered; ‘for a short time.’
+
+‘Do you recollect the date,’ said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and
+taking up his pen to note it down, ‘when King Charles the First had his
+head cut off?’ I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen hundred
+and forty-nine.
+
+‘Well,’ returned Mr. Dick, scratching his ear with his pen, and looking
+dubiously at me. ‘So the books say; but I don’t see how that can be.
+Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made
+that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it
+was taken off, into mine?’
+
+I was very much surprised by the inquiry; but could give no information
+on this point.
+
+‘It’s very strange,’ said Mr. Dick, with a despondent look upon his
+papers, and with his hand among his hair again, ‘that I never can get
+that quite right. I never can make that perfectly clear. But no matter,
+no matter!’ he said cheerfully, and rousing himself, ‘there’s time
+enough! My compliments to Miss Trotwood, I am getting on very well
+indeed.’
+
+I was going away, when he directed my attention to the kite.
+
+‘What do you think of that for a kite?’ he said.
+
+I answered that it was a beautiful one. I should think it must have been
+as much as seven feet high.
+
+‘I made it. We’ll go and fly it, you and I,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Do you see
+this?’
+
+He showed me that it was covered with manuscript, very closely and
+laboriously written; but so plainly, that as I looked along the lines,
+I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles the First’s head again, in
+one or two places.
+
+‘There’s plenty of string,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘and when it flies high, it
+takes the facts a long way. That’s my manner of diffusing ‘em. I don’t
+know where they may come down. It’s according to circumstances, and the
+wind, and so forth; but I take my chance of that.’
+
+His face was so very mild and pleasant, and had something so reverend in
+it, though it was hale and hearty, that I was not sure but that he was
+having a good-humoured jest with me. So I laughed, and he laughed, and
+we parted the best friends possible.
+
+‘Well, child,’ said my aunt, when I went downstairs. ‘And what of Mr.
+Dick, this morning?’
+
+I informed her that he sent his compliments, and was getting on very
+well indeed.
+
+‘What do you think of him?’ said my aunt.
+
+I had some shadowy idea of endeavouring to evade the question, by
+replying that I thought him a very nice gentleman; but my aunt was
+not to be so put off, for she laid her work down in her lap, and said,
+folding her hands upon it:
+
+‘Come! Your sister Betsey Trotwood would have told me what she thought
+of anyone, directly. Be as like your sister as you can, and speak out!’
+
+‘Is he--is Mr. Dick--I ask because I don’t know, aunt--is he at all out
+of his mind, then?’ I stammered; for I felt I was on dangerous ground.
+
+‘Not a morsel,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Oh, indeed!’ I observed faintly.
+
+‘If there is anything in the world,’ said my aunt, with great decision
+and force of manner, ‘that Mr. Dick is not, it’s that.’
+
+I had nothing better to offer, than another timid, ‘Oh, indeed!’
+
+‘He has been CALLED mad,’ said my aunt. ‘I have a selfish pleasure in
+saying he has been called mad, or I should not have had the benefit of
+his society and advice for these last ten years and upwards--in fact,
+ever since your sister, Betsey Trotwood, disappointed me.’
+
+‘So long as that?’ I said.
+
+‘And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call him mad,’
+pursued my aunt. ‘Mr. Dick is a sort of distant connexion of mine--it
+doesn’t matter how; I needn’t enter into that. If it hadn’t been for me,
+his own brother would have shut him up for life. That’s all.’
+
+I am afraid it was hypocritical in me, but seeing that my aunt felt
+strongly on the subject, I tried to look as if I felt strongly too.
+
+‘A proud fool!’ said my aunt. ‘Because his brother was a little
+eccentric--though he is not half so eccentric as a good many people--he
+didn’t like to have him visible about his house, and sent him away to
+some private asylum-place: though he had been left to his particular
+care by their deceased father, who thought him almost a natural. And a
+wise man he must have been to think so! Mad himself, no doubt.’
+
+Again, as my aunt looked quite convinced, I endeavoured to look quite
+convinced also.
+
+‘So I stepped in,’ said my aunt, ‘and made him an offer. I said, “Your
+brother’s sane--a great deal more sane than you are, or ever will be, it
+is to be hoped. Let him have his little income, and come and live with
+me. I am not afraid of him, I am not proud, I am ready to take care
+of him, and shall not ill-treat him as some people (besides the
+asylum-folks) have done.” After a good deal of squabbling,’ said my
+aunt, ‘I got him; and he has been here ever since. He is the most
+friendly and amenable creature in existence; and as for advice!--But
+nobody knows what that man’s mind is, except myself.’
+
+My aunt smoothed her dress and shook her head, as if she smoothed
+defiance of the whole world out of the one, and shook it out of the
+other.
+
+‘He had a favourite sister,’ said my aunt, ‘a good creature, and very
+kind to him. But she did what they all do--took a husband. And HE did
+what they all do--made her wretched. It had such an effect upon the mind
+of Mr. Dick (that’s not madness, I hope!) that, combined with his fear
+of his brother, and his sense of his unkindness, it threw him into a
+fever. That was before he came to me, but the recollection of it is
+oppressive to him even now. Did he say anything to you about King
+Charles the First, child?’
+
+‘Yes, aunt.’
+
+‘Ah!’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose as if she were a little vexed.
+‘That’s his allegorical way of expressing it. He connects his illness
+with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that’s the figure,
+or the simile, or whatever it’s called, which he chooses to use. And why
+shouldn’t he, if he thinks proper!’
+
+I said: ‘Certainly, aunt.’
+
+‘It’s not a business-like way of speaking,’ said my aunt, ‘nor a worldly
+way. I am aware of that; and that’s the reason why I insist upon it,
+that there shan’t be a word about it in his Memorial.’
+
+‘Is it a Memorial about his own history that he is writing, aunt?’
+
+‘Yes, child,’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose again. ‘He is memorializing
+the Lord Chancellor, or the Lord Somebody or other--one of those people,
+at all events, who are paid to be memorialized--about his affairs. I
+suppose it will go in, one of these days. He hasn’t been able to draw
+it up yet, without introducing that mode of expressing himself; but it
+don’t signify; it keeps him employed.’
+
+In fact, I found out afterwards that Mr. Dick had been for upwards
+of ten years endeavouring to keep King Charles the First out of the
+Memorial; but he had been constantly getting into it, and was there now.
+
+‘I say again,’ said my aunt, ‘nobody knows what that man’s mind is
+except myself; and he’s the most amenable and friendly creature in
+existence. If he likes to fly a kite sometimes, what of that! Franklin
+used to fly a kite. He was a Quaker, or something of that sort, if I
+am not mistaken. And a Quaker flying a kite is a much more ridiculous
+object than anybody else.’
+
+If I could have supposed that my aunt had recounted these particulars
+for my especial behoof, and as a piece of confidence in me, I should
+have felt very much distinguished, and should have augured favourably
+from such a mark of her good opinion. But I could hardly help observing
+that she had launched into them, chiefly because the question was raised
+in her own mind, and with very little reference to me, though she had
+addressed herself to me in the absence of anybody else.
+
+At the same time, I must say that the generosity of her championship
+of poor harmless Mr. Dick, not only inspired my young breast with
+some selfish hope for myself, but warmed it unselfishly towards her.
+I believe that I began to know that there was something about my aunt,
+notwithstanding her many eccentricities and odd humours, to be honoured
+and trusted in. Though she was just as sharp that day as on the day
+before, and was in and out about the donkeys just as often, and was
+thrown into a tremendous state of indignation, when a young man, going
+by, ogled Janet at a window (which was one of the gravest misdemeanours
+that could be committed against my aunt’s dignity), she seemed to me to
+command more of my respect, if not less of my fear.
+
+The anxiety I underwent, in the interval which necessarily elapsed
+before a reply could be received to her letter to Mr. Murdstone, was
+extreme; but I made an endeavour to suppress it, and to be as agreeable
+as I could in a quiet way, both to my aunt and Mr. Dick. The latter and
+I would have gone out to fly the great kite; but that I had still no
+other clothes than the anything but ornamental garments with which I
+had been decorated on the first day, and which confined me to the house,
+except for an hour after dark, when my aunt, for my health’s sake,
+paraded me up and down on the cliff outside, before going to bed. At
+length the reply from Mr. Murdstone came, and my aunt informed me, to my
+infinite terror, that he was coming to speak to her herself on the next
+day. On the next day, still bundled up in my curious habiliments, I sat
+counting the time, flushed and heated by the conflict of sinking hopes
+and rising fears within me; and waiting to be startled by the sight of
+the gloomy face, whose non-arrival startled me every minute.
+
+My aunt was a little more imperious and stern than usual, but I observed
+no other token of her preparing herself to receive the visitor so much
+dreaded by me. She sat at work in the window, and I sat by, with my
+thoughts running astray on all possible and impossible results of Mr.
+Murdstone’s visit, until pretty late in the afternoon. Our dinner had
+been indefinitely postponed; but it was growing so late, that my aunt
+had ordered it to be got ready, when she gave a sudden alarm of donkeys,
+and to my consternation and amazement, I beheld Miss Murdstone, on a
+side-saddle, ride deliberately over the sacred piece of green, and stop
+in front of the house, looking about her.
+
+‘Go along with you!’ cried my aunt, shaking her head and her fist at the
+window. ‘You have no business there. How dare you trespass? Go along!
+Oh! you bold-faced thing!’
+
+My aunt was so exasperated by the coolness with which Miss Murdstone
+looked about her, that I really believe she was motionless, and unable
+for the moment to dart out according to custom. I seized the opportunity
+to inform her who it was; and that the gentleman now coming near the
+offender (for the way up was very steep, and he had dropped behind), was
+Mr. Murdstone himself.
+
+‘I don’t care who it is!’ cried my aunt, still shaking her head and
+gesticulating anything but welcome from the bow-window. ‘I won’t be
+trespassed upon. I won’t allow it. Go away! Janet, turn him round.
+Lead him off!’ and I saw, from behind my aunt, a sort of hurried
+battle-piece, in which the donkey stood resisting everybody, with all
+his four legs planted different ways, while Janet tried to pull him
+round by the bridle, Mr. Murdstone tried to lead him on, Miss Murdstone
+struck at Janet with a parasol, and several boys, who had come to see
+the engagement, shouted vigorously. But my aunt, suddenly descrying
+among them the young malefactor who was the donkey’s guardian, and who
+was one of the most inveterate offenders against her, though hardly in
+his teens, rushed out to the scene of action, pounced upon him, captured
+him, dragged him, with his jacket over his head, and his heels grinding
+the ground, into the garden, and, calling upon Janet to fetch the
+constables and justices, that he might be taken, tried, and executed on
+the spot, held him at bay there. This part of the business, however, did
+not last long; for the young rascal, being expert at a variety of feints
+and dodges, of which my aunt had no conception, soon went whooping away,
+leaving some deep impressions of his nailed boots in the flower-beds,
+and taking his donkey in triumph with him.
+
+Miss Murdstone, during the latter portion of the contest, had
+dismounted, and was now waiting with her brother at the bottom of the
+steps, until my aunt should be at leisure to receive them. My aunt, a
+little ruffled by the combat, marched past them into the house, with
+great dignity, and took no notice of their presence, until they were
+announced by Janet.
+
+‘Shall I go away, aunt?’ I asked, trembling.
+
+‘No, sir,’ said my aunt. ‘Certainly not!’ With which she pushed me into
+a corner near her, and fenced Me in with a chair, as if it were a prison
+or a bar of justice. This position I continued to occupy during the
+whole interview, and from it I now saw Mr. and Miss Murdstone enter the
+room.
+
+‘Oh!’ said my aunt, ‘I was not aware at first to whom I had the pleasure
+of objecting. But I don’t allow anybody to ride over that turf. I make
+no exceptions. I don’t allow anybody to do it.’
+
+‘Your regulation is rather awkward to strangers,’ said Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Is it!’ said my aunt.
+
+Mr. Murdstone seemed afraid of a renewal of hostilities, and interposing
+began:
+
+‘Miss Trotwood!’
+
+‘I beg your pardon,’ observed my aunt with a keen look. ‘You are the Mr.
+Murdstone who married the widow of my late nephew, David Copperfield, of
+Blunderstone Rookery!--Though why Rookery, I don’t know!’
+
+‘I am,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
+
+‘You’ll excuse my saying, sir,’ returned my aunt, ‘that I think it would
+have been a much better and happier thing if you had left that poor
+child alone.’
+
+‘I so far agree with what Miss Trotwood has remarked,’ observed Miss
+Murdstone, bridling, ‘that I consider our lamented Clara to have been,
+in all essential respects, a mere child.’
+
+‘It is a comfort to you and me, ma’am,’ said my aunt, ‘who are getting
+on in life, and are not likely to be made unhappy by our personal
+attractions, that nobody can say the same of us.’
+
+‘No doubt!’ returned Miss Murdstone, though, I thought, not with a very
+ready or gracious assent. ‘And it certainly might have been, as you say,
+a better and happier thing for my brother if he had never entered into
+such a marriage. I have always been of that opinion.’
+
+‘I have no doubt you have,’ said my aunt. ‘Janet,’ ringing the bell, ‘my
+compliments to Mr. Dick, and beg him to come down.’
+
+Until he came, my aunt sat perfectly upright and stiff, frowning at the
+wall. When he came, my aunt performed the ceremony of introduction.
+
+‘Mr. Dick. An old and intimate friend. On whose judgement,’ said my
+aunt, with emphasis, as an admonition to Mr. Dick, who was biting his
+forefinger and looking rather foolish, ‘I rely.’
+
+Mr. Dick took his finger out of his mouth, on this hint, and stood among
+the group, with a grave and attentive expression of face.
+
+My aunt inclined her head to Mr. Murdstone, who went on:
+
+‘Miss Trotwood: on the receipt of your letter, I considered it an act of
+greater justice to myself, and perhaps of more respect to you--’
+
+‘Thank you,’ said my aunt, still eyeing him keenly. ‘You needn’t mind
+me.’
+
+‘To answer it in person, however inconvenient the journey,’ pursued Mr.
+Murdstone, ‘rather than by letter. This unhappy boy who has run away
+from his friends and his occupation--’
+
+‘And whose appearance,’ interposed his sister, directing general
+attention to me in my indefinable costume, ‘is perfectly scandalous and
+disgraceful.’
+
+‘Jane Murdstone,’ said her brother, ‘have the goodness not to interrupt
+me. This unhappy boy, Miss Trotwood, has been the occasion of much
+domestic trouble and uneasiness; both during the lifetime of my late
+dear wife, and since. He has a sullen, rebellious spirit; a violent
+temper; and an untoward, intractable disposition. Both my sister and
+myself have endeavoured to correct his vices, but ineffectually. And
+I have felt--we both have felt, I may say; my sister being fully in
+my confidence--that it is right you should receive this grave and
+dispassionate assurance from our lips.’
+
+‘It can hardly be necessary for me to confirm anything stated by my
+brother,’ said Miss Murdstone; ‘but I beg to observe, that, of all the
+boys in the world, I believe this is the worst boy.’
+
+‘Strong!’ said my aunt, shortly.
+
+‘But not at all too strong for the facts,’ returned Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Ha!’ said my aunt. ‘Well, sir?’
+
+‘I have my own opinions,’ resumed Mr. Murdstone, whose face darkened
+more and more, the more he and my aunt observed each other, which they
+did very narrowly, ‘as to the best mode of bringing him up; they are
+founded, in part, on my knowledge of him, and in part on my knowledge of
+my own means and resources. I am responsible for them to myself, I act
+upon them, and I say no more about them. It is enough that I place this
+boy under the eye of a friend of my own, in a respectable business;
+that it does not please him; that he runs away from it; makes himself a
+common vagabond about the country; and comes here, in rags, to appeal
+to you, Miss Trotwood. I wish to set before you, honourably, the exact
+consequences--so far as they are within my knowledge--of your abetting
+him in this appeal.’
+
+‘But about the respectable business first,’ said my aunt. ‘If he had
+been your own boy, you would have put him to it, just the same, I
+suppose?’
+
+‘If he had been my brother’s own boy,’ returned Miss Murdstone, striking
+in, ‘his character, I trust, would have been altogether different.’
+
+‘Or if the poor child, his mother, had been alive, he would still have
+gone into the respectable business, would he?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘I believe,’ said Mr. Murdstone, with an inclination of his head,
+‘that Clara would have disputed nothing which myself and my sister Jane
+Murdstone were agreed was for the best.’
+
+Miss Murdstone confirmed this with an audible murmur.
+
+‘Humph!’ said my aunt. ‘Unfortunate baby!’
+
+Mr. Dick, who had been rattling his money all this time, was rattling it
+so loudly now, that my aunt felt it necessary to check him with a look,
+before saying:
+
+‘The poor child’s annuity died with her?’
+
+‘Died with her,’ replied Mr. Murdstone.
+
+‘And there was no settlement of the little property--the house and
+garden--the what’s-its-name Rookery without any rooks in it--upon her
+boy?’
+
+‘It had been left to her, unconditionally, by her first husband,’
+Mr. Murdstone began, when my aunt caught him up with the greatest
+irascibility and impatience.
+
+‘Good Lord, man, there’s no occasion to say that. Left to her
+unconditionally! I think I see David Copperfield looking forward to any
+condition of any sort or kind, though it stared him point-blank in the
+face! Of course it was left to her unconditionally. But when she married
+again--when she took that most disastrous step of marrying you, in
+short,’ said my aunt, ‘to be plain--did no one put in a word for the boy
+at that time?’
+
+‘My late wife loved her second husband, ma’am,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘and
+trusted implicitly in him.’
+
+‘Your late wife, sir, was a most unworldly, most unhappy, most
+unfortunate baby,’ returned my aunt, shaking her head at him. ‘That’s
+what she was. And now, what have you got to say next?’
+
+‘Merely this, Miss Trotwood,’ he returned. ‘I am here to take David
+back--to take him back unconditionally, to dispose of him as I think
+proper, and to deal with him as I think right. I am not here to make any
+promise, or give any pledge to anybody. You may possibly have some
+idea, Miss Trotwood, of abetting him in his running away, and in his
+complaints to you. Your manner, which I must say does not seem intended
+to propitiate, induces me to think it possible. Now I must caution you
+that if you abet him once, you abet him for good and all; if you step
+in between him and me, now, you must step in, Miss Trotwood, for ever.
+I cannot trifle, or be trifled with. I am here, for the first and last
+time, to take him away. Is he ready to go? If he is not--and you tell me
+he is not; on any pretence; it is indifferent to me what--my doors are
+shut against him henceforth, and yours, I take it for granted, are open
+to him.’
+
+To this address, my aunt had listened with the closest attention,
+sitting perfectly upright, with her hands folded on one knee, and
+looking grimly on the speaker. When he had finished, she turned her
+eyes so as to command Miss Murdstone, without otherwise disturbing her
+attitude, and said:
+
+‘Well, ma’am, have YOU got anything to remark?’
+
+‘Indeed, Miss Trotwood,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘all that I could say has
+been so well said by my brother, and all that I know to be the fact
+has been so plainly stated by him, that I have nothing to add except my
+thanks for your politeness. For your very great politeness, I am sure,’
+said Miss Murdstone; with an irony which no more affected my aunt, than
+it discomposed the cannon I had slept by at Chatham.
+
+‘And what does the boy say?’ said my aunt. ‘Are you ready to go, David?’
+
+I answered no, and entreated her not to let me go. I said that neither
+Mr. nor Miss Murdstone had ever liked me, or had ever been kind to me.
+That they had made my mama, who always loved me dearly, unhappy about
+me, and that I knew it well, and that Peggotty knew it. I said that I
+had been more miserable than I thought anybody could believe, who only
+knew how young I was. And I begged and prayed my aunt--I forget in
+what terms now, but I remember that they affected me very much then--to
+befriend and protect me, for my father’s sake.
+
+‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘what shall I do with this child?’
+
+Mr. Dick considered, hesitated, brightened, and rejoined, ‘Have him
+measured for a suit of clothes directly.’
+
+‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt triumphantly, ‘give me your hand, for your
+common sense is invaluable.’ Having shaken it with great cordiality, she
+pulled me towards her and said to Mr. Murdstone:
+
+‘You can go when you like; I’ll take my chance with the boy. If he’s all
+you say he is, at least I can do as much for him then, as you have done.
+But I don’t believe a word of it.’
+
+‘Miss Trotwood,’ rejoined Mr. Murdstone, shrugging his shoulders, as he
+rose, ‘if you were a gentleman--’
+
+‘Bah! Stuff and nonsense!’ said my aunt. ‘Don’t talk to me!’
+
+‘How exquisitely polite!’ exclaimed Miss Murdstone, rising.
+‘Overpowering, really!’
+
+‘Do you think I don’t know,’ said my aunt, turning a deaf ear to the
+sister, and continuing to address the brother, and to shake her head at
+him with infinite expression, ‘what kind of life you must have led that
+poor, unhappy, misdirected baby? Do you think I don’t know what a woeful
+day it was for the soft little creature when you first came in her
+way--smirking and making great eyes at her, I’ll be bound, as if you
+couldn’t say boh! to a goose!’
+
+‘I never heard anything so elegant!’ said Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Do you think I can’t understand you as well as if I had seen you,’
+pursued my aunt, ‘now that I DO see and hear you--which, I tell you
+candidly, is anything but a pleasure to me? Oh yes, bless us! who so
+smooth and silky as Mr. Murdstone at first! The poor, benighted innocent
+had never seen such a man. He was made of sweetness. He worshipped her.
+He doted on her boy--tenderly doted on him! He was to be another father
+to him, and they were all to live together in a garden of roses, weren’t
+they? Ugh! Get along with you, do!’ said my aunt.
+
+‘I never heard anything like this person in my life!’ exclaimed Miss
+Murdstone.
+
+‘And when you had made sure of the poor little fool,’ said my aunt--‘God
+forgive me that I should call her so, and she gone where YOU won’t go in
+a hurry--because you had not done wrong enough to her and hers, you
+must begin to train her, must you? begin to break her, like a poor
+caged bird, and wear her deluded life away, in teaching her to sing YOUR
+notes?’
+
+‘This is either insanity or intoxication,’ said Miss Murdstone, in a
+perfect agony at not being able to turn the current of my aunt’s address
+towards herself; ‘and my suspicion is that it’s intoxication.’
+
+Miss Betsey, without taking the least notice of the interruption,
+continued to address herself to Mr. Murdstone as if there had been no
+such thing.
+
+‘Mr. Murdstone,’ she said, shaking her finger at him, ‘you were a tyrant
+to the simple baby, and you broke her heart. She was a loving baby--I
+know that; I knew it, years before you ever saw her--and through the
+best part of her weakness you gave her the wounds she died of. There
+is the truth for your comfort, however you like it. And you and your
+instruments may make the most of it.’
+
+‘Allow me to inquire, Miss Trotwood,’ interposed Miss Murdstone,
+‘whom you are pleased to call, in a choice of words in which I am not
+experienced, my brother’s instruments?’
+
+‘It was clear enough, as I have told you, years before YOU ever saw
+her--and why, in the mysterious dispensations of Providence, you ever
+did see her, is more than humanity can comprehend--it was clear enough
+that the poor soft little thing would marry somebody, at some time or
+other; but I did hope it wouldn’t have been as bad as it has turned out.
+That was the time, Mr. Murdstone, when she gave birth to her boy here,’
+said my aunt; ‘to the poor child you sometimes tormented her through
+afterwards, which is a disagreeable remembrance and makes the sight of
+him odious now. Aye, aye! you needn’t wince!’ said my aunt. ‘I know it’s
+true without that.’
+
+He had stood by the door, all this while, observant of her with a smile
+upon his face, though his black eyebrows were heavily contracted. I
+remarked now, that, though the smile was on his face still, his colour
+had gone in a moment, and he seemed to breathe as if he had been
+running.
+
+‘Good day, sir,’ said my aunt, ‘and good-bye! Good day to you, too,
+ma’am,’ said my aunt, turning suddenly upon his sister. ‘Let me see you
+ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have a head upon
+your shoulders, I’ll knock your bonnet off, and tread upon it!’
+
+It would require a painter, and no common painter too, to depict my
+aunt’s face as she delivered herself of this very unexpected sentiment,
+and Miss Murdstone’s face as she heard it. But the manner of the speech,
+no less than the matter, was so fiery, that Miss Murdstone, without a
+word in answer, discreetly put her arm through her brother’s, and walked
+haughtily out of the cottage; my aunt remaining in the window looking
+after them; prepared, I have no doubt, in case of the donkey’s
+reappearance, to carry her threat into instant execution.
+
+No attempt at defiance being made, however, her face gradually relaxed,
+and became so pleasant, that I was emboldened to kiss and thank her;
+which I did with great heartiness, and with both my arms clasped round
+her neck. I then shook hands with Mr. Dick, who shook hands with me a
+great many times, and hailed this happy close of the proceedings with
+repeated bursts of laughter.
+
+‘You’ll consider yourself guardian, jointly with me, of this child, Mr.
+Dick,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘I shall be delighted,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘to be the guardian of David’s
+son.’
+
+‘Very good,’ returned my aunt, ‘that’s settled. I have been thinking, do
+you know, Mr. Dick, that I might call him Trotwood?’
+
+‘Certainly, certainly. Call him Trotwood, certainly,’ said Mr. Dick.
+‘David’s son’s Trotwood.’
+
+‘Trotwood Copperfield, you mean,’ returned my aunt.
+
+‘Yes, to be sure. Yes. Trotwood Copperfield,’ said Mr. Dick, a little
+abashed.
+
+My aunt took so kindly to the notion, that some ready-made clothes,
+which were purchased for me that afternoon, were marked ‘Trotwood
+Copperfield’, in her own handwriting, and in indelible marking-ink,
+before I put them on; and it was settled that all the other clothes
+which were ordered to be made for me (a complete outfit was bespoke that
+afternoon) should be marked in the same way.
+
+Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and with everything new about
+me. Now that the state of doubt was over, I felt, for many days,
+like one in a dream. I never thought that I had a curious couple of
+guardians, in my aunt and Mr. Dick. I never thought of anything about
+myself, distinctly. The two things clearest in my mind were, that a
+remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life--which seemed to lie
+in the haze of an immeasurable distance; and that a curtain had for ever
+fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby’s. No one has ever raised that
+curtain since. I have lifted it for a moment, even in this narrative,
+with a reluctant hand, and dropped it gladly. The remembrance of that
+life is fraught with so much pain to me, with so much mental suffering
+and want of hope, that I have never had the courage even to examine how
+long I was doomed to lead it. Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or
+less, I do not know. I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that
+I have written, and there I leave it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 15. I MAKE ANOTHER BEGINNING
+
+
+Mr. Dick and I soon became the best of friends, and very often, when his
+day’s work was done, went out together to fly the great kite. Every day
+of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial, which never made the
+least progress, however hard he laboured, for King Charles the First
+always strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside,
+and another one begun. The patience and hope with which he bore these
+perpetual disappointments, the mild perception he had that there was
+something wrong about King Charles the First, the feeble efforts he made
+to keep him out, and the certainty with which he came in, and tumbled
+the Memorial out of all shape, made a deep impression on me. What Mr.
+Dick supposed would come of the Memorial, if it were completed; where he
+thought it was to go, or what he thought it was to do; he knew no more
+than anybody else, I believe. Nor was it at all necessary that he should
+trouble himself with such questions, for if anything were certain under
+the sun, it was certain that the Memorial never would be finished. It
+was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite
+when it was up a great height in the air. What he had told me, in his
+room, about his belief in its disseminating the statements pasted on it,
+which were nothing but old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have been
+a fancy with him sometimes; but not when he was out, looking up at
+the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He never
+looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an
+evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in the quiet
+air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was
+my boyish thought) into the skies. As he wound the string in and it came
+lower and lower down out of the beautiful light, until it fluttered to
+the ground, and lay there like a dead thing, he seemed to wake gradually
+out of a dream; and I remember to have seen him take it up, and look
+about him in a lost way, as if they had both come down together, so that
+I pitied him with all my heart.
+
+While I advanced in friendship and intimacy with Mr. Dick, I did not
+go backward in the favour of his staunch friend, my aunt. She took
+so kindly to me, that, in the course of a few weeks, she shortened my
+adopted name of Trotwood into Trot; and even encouraged me to hope, that
+if I went on as I had begun, I might take equal rank in her affections
+with my sister Betsey Trotwood.
+
+‘Trot,’ said my aunt one evening, when the backgammon-board was placed
+as usual for herself and Mr. Dick, ‘we must not forget your education.’
+
+This was my only subject of anxiety, and I felt quite delighted by her
+referring to it.
+
+‘Should you like to go to school at Canterbury?’ said my aunt.
+
+I replied that I should like it very much, as it was so near her.
+
+‘Good,’ said my aunt. ‘Should you like to go tomorrow?’
+
+Being already no stranger to the general rapidity of my aunt’s
+evolutions, I was not surprised by the suddenness of the proposal, and
+said: ‘Yes.’
+
+‘Good,’ said my aunt again. ‘Janet, hire the grey pony and chaise
+tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, and pack up Master Trotwood’s clothes
+tonight.’
+
+I was greatly elated by these orders; but my heart smote me for my
+selfishness, when I witnessed their effect on Mr. Dick, who was so
+low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill in
+consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory raps on
+the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play
+with him any more. But, on hearing from my aunt that I should sometimes
+come over on a Saturday, and that he could sometimes come and see me
+on a Wednesday, he revived; and vowed to make another kite for those
+occasions, of proportions greatly surpassing the present one. In the
+morning he was downhearted again, and would have sustained himself by
+giving me all the money he had in his possession, gold and silver too,
+if my aunt had not interposed, and limited the gift to five shillings,
+which, at his earnest petition, were afterwards increased to ten. We
+parted at the garden-gate in a most affectionate manner, and Mr. Dick
+did not go into the house until my aunt had driven me out of sight of
+it.
+
+My aunt, who was perfectly indifferent to public opinion, drove the grey
+pony through Dover in a masterly manner; sitting high and stiff like
+a state coachman, keeping a steady eye upon him wherever he went, and
+making a point of not letting him have his own way in any respect. When
+we came into the country road, she permitted him to relax a little,
+however; and looking at me down in a valley of cushion by her side,
+asked me whether I was happy?
+
+‘Very happy indeed, thank you, aunt,’ I said.
+
+She was much gratified; and both her hands being occupied, patted me on
+the head with her whip.
+
+‘Is it a large school, aunt?’ I asked.
+
+‘Why, I don’t know,’ said my aunt. ‘We are going to Mr. Wickfield’s
+first.’
+
+‘Does he keep a school?’ I asked.
+
+‘No, Trot,’ said my aunt. ‘He keeps an office.’
+
+I asked for no more information about Mr. Wickfield, as she offered
+none, and we conversed on other subjects until we came to Canterbury,
+where, as it was market-day, my aunt had a great opportunity of
+insinuating the grey pony among carts, baskets, vegetables, and
+huckster’s goods. The hair-breadth turns and twists we made, drew down
+upon us a variety of speeches from the people standing about, which
+were not always complimentary; but my aunt drove on with perfect
+indifference, and I dare say would have taken her own way with as much
+coolness through an enemy’s country.
+
+At length we stopped before a very old house bulging out over the road;
+a house with long low lattice-windows bulging out still farther, and
+beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too, so that I fancied
+the whole house was leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on
+the narrow pavement below. It was quite spotless in its cleanliness.
+The old-fashioned brass knocker on the low arched door, ornamented with
+carved garlands of fruit and flowers, twinkled like a star; the two
+stone steps descending to the door were as white as if they had been
+covered with fair linen; and all the angles and corners, and carvings
+and mouldings, and quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little
+windows, though as old as the hills, were as pure as any snow that ever
+fell upon the hills.
+
+When the pony-chaise stopped at the door, and my eyes were intent upon
+the house, I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window on the
+ground floor (in a little round tower that formed one side of the
+house), and quickly disappear. The low arched door then opened, and
+the face came out. It was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the
+window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is
+sometimes to be observed in the skins of red-haired people. It belonged
+to a red-haired person--a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but
+looking much older--whose hair was cropped as close as the closest
+stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a
+red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he
+went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black,
+with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a
+long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as
+he stood at the pony’s head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at
+us in the chaise.
+
+‘Is Mr. Wickfield at home, Uriah Heep?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Mr. Wickfield’s at home, ma’am,’ said Uriah Heep, ‘if you’ll please to
+walk in there’--pointing with his long hand to the room he meant.
+
+We got out; and leaving him to hold the pony, went into a long low
+parlour looking towards the street, from the window of which I caught a
+glimpse, as I went in, of Uriah Heep breathing into the pony’s nostrils,
+and immediately covering them with his hand, as if he were putting
+some spell upon him. Opposite to the tall old chimney-piece were two
+portraits: one of a gentleman with grey hair (though not by any means
+an old man) and black eyebrows, who was looking over some papers tied
+together with red tape; the other, of a lady, with a very placid and
+sweet expression of face, who was looking at me.
+
+I believe I was turning about in search of Uriah’s picture, when, a door
+at the farther end of the room opening, a gentleman entered, at sight of
+whom I turned to the first-mentioned portrait again, to make quite sure
+that it had not come out of its frame. But it was stationary; and as the
+gentleman advanced into the light, I saw that he was some years older
+than when he had had his picture painted.
+
+‘Miss Betsey Trotwood,’ said the gentleman, ‘pray walk in. I was engaged
+for a moment, but you’ll excuse my being busy. You know my motive. I
+have but one in life.’
+
+Miss Betsey thanked him, and we went into his room, which was furnished
+as an office, with books, papers, tin boxes, and so forth. It looked
+into a garden, and had an iron safe let into the wall; so immediately
+over the mantelshelf, that I wondered, as I sat down, how the sweeps got
+round it when they swept the chimney.
+
+‘Well, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield; for I soon found that it
+was he, and that he was a lawyer, and steward of the estates of a rich
+gentleman of the county; ‘what wind blows you here? Not an ill wind, I
+hope?’
+
+‘No,’ replied my aunt. ‘I have not come for any law.’
+
+‘That’s right, ma’am,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘You had better come for
+anything else.’ His hair was quite white now, though his eyebrows were
+still black. He had a very agreeable face, and, I thought, was handsome.
+There was a certain richness in his complexion, which I had been long
+accustomed, under Peggotty’s tuition, to connect with port wine; and I
+fancied it was in his voice too, and referred his growing corpulency
+to the same cause. He was very cleanly dressed, in a blue coat, striped
+waistcoat, and nankeen trousers; and his fine frilled shirt and cambric
+neckcloth looked unusually soft and white, reminding my strolling fancy
+(I call to mind) of the plumage on the breast of a swan.
+
+‘This is my nephew,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Wasn’t aware you had one, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘My grand-nephew, that is to say,’ observed my aunt.
+
+‘Wasn’t aware you had a grand-nephew, I give you my word,’ said Mr.
+Wickfield.
+
+‘I have adopted him,’ said my aunt, with a wave of her hand, importing
+that his knowledge and his ignorance were all one to her, ‘and I have
+brought him here, to put to a school where he may be thoroughly well
+taught, and well treated. Now tell me where that school is, and what it
+is, and all about it.’
+
+‘Before I can advise you properly,’ said Mr. Wickfield--‘the old
+question, you know. What’s your motive in this?’
+
+‘Deuce take the man!’ exclaimed my aunt. ‘Always fishing for motives,
+when they’re on the surface! Why, to make the child happy and useful.’
+
+‘It must be a mixed motive, I think,’ said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his
+head and smiling incredulously.
+
+‘A mixed fiddlestick,’ returned my aunt. ‘You claim to have one plain
+motive in all you do yourself. You don’t suppose, I hope, that you are
+the only plain dealer in the world?’
+
+‘Ay, but I have only one motive in life, Miss Trotwood,’ he rejoined,
+smiling. ‘Other people have dozens, scores, hundreds. I have only one.
+There’s the difference. However, that’s beside the question. The best
+school? Whatever the motive, you want the best?’
+
+My aunt nodded assent.
+
+‘At the best we have,’ said Mr. Wickfield, considering, ‘your nephew
+couldn’t board just now.’
+
+‘But he could board somewhere else, I suppose?’ suggested my aunt.
+
+Mr. Wickfield thought I could. After a little discussion, he proposed to
+take my aunt to the school, that she might see it and judge for herself;
+also, to take her, with the same object, to two or three houses where he
+thought I could be boarded. My aunt embracing the proposal, we were all
+three going out together, when he stopped and said:
+
+‘Our little friend here might have some motive, perhaps, for objecting
+to the arrangements. I think we had better leave him behind?’
+
+My aunt seemed disposed to contest the point; but to facilitate matters
+I said I would gladly remain behind, if they pleased; and returned into
+Mr. Wickfield’s office, where I sat down again, in the chair I had first
+occupied, to await their return.
+
+It so happened that this chair was opposite a narrow passage, which
+ended in the little circular room where I had seen Uriah Heep’s pale
+face looking out of the window. Uriah, having taken the pony to a
+neighbouring stable, was at work at a desk in this room, which had a
+brass frame on the top to hang paper upon, and on which the writing he
+was making a copy of was then hanging. Though his face was towards me, I
+thought, for some time, the writing being between us, that he could not
+see me; but looking that way more attentively, it made me uncomfortable
+to observe that, every now and then, his sleepless eyes would come below
+the writing, like two red suns, and stealthily stare at me for I dare
+say a whole minute at a time, during which his pen went, or pretended
+to go, as cleverly as ever. I made several attempts to get out of their
+way--such as standing on a chair to look at a map on the other side of
+the room, and poring over the columns of a Kentish newspaper--but they
+always attracted me back again; and whenever I looked towards those two
+red suns, I was sure to find them, either just rising or just setting.
+
+At length, much to my relief, my aunt and Mr. Wickfield came back,
+after a pretty long absence. They were not so successful as I could have
+wished; for though the advantages of the school were undeniable, my aunt
+had not approved of any of the boarding-houses proposed for me.
+
+‘It’s very unfortunate,’ said my aunt. ‘I don’t know what to do, Trot.’
+
+‘It does happen unfortunately,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘But I’ll tell you
+what you can do, Miss Trotwood.’
+
+‘What’s that?’ inquired my aunt.
+
+‘Leave your nephew here, for the present. He’s a quiet fellow. He
+won’t disturb me at all. It’s a capital house for study. As quiet as a
+monastery, and almost as roomy. Leave him here.’
+
+My aunt evidently liked the offer, though she was delicate of accepting
+it. So did I. ‘Come, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘This is the
+way out of the difficulty. It’s only a temporary arrangement, you know.
+If it don’t act well, or don’t quite accord with our mutual convenience,
+he can easily go to the right-about. There will be time to find some
+better place for him in the meanwhile. You had better determine to leave
+him here for the present!’
+
+‘I am very much obliged to you,’ said my aunt; ‘and so is he, I see;
+but--’
+
+‘Come! I know what you mean,’ cried Mr. Wickfield. ‘You shall not be
+oppressed by the receipt of favours, Miss Trotwood. You may pay for
+him, if you like. We won’t be hard about terms, but you shall pay if you
+will.’
+
+‘On that understanding,’ said my aunt, ‘though it doesn’t lessen the
+real obligation, I shall be very glad to leave him.’
+
+‘Then come and see my little housekeeper,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
+
+We accordingly went up a wonderful old staircase; with a balustrade
+so broad that we might have gone up that, almost as easily; and into
+a shady old drawing-room, lighted by some three or four of the quaint
+windows I had looked up at from the street: which had old oak seats
+in them, that seemed to have come of the same trees as the shining oak
+floor, and the great beams in the ceiling. It was a prettily furnished
+room, with a piano and some lively furniture in red and green, and some
+flowers. It seemed to be all old nooks and corners; and in every nook
+and corner there was some queer little table, or cupboard, or bookcase,
+or seat, or something or other, that made me think there was not such
+another good corner in the room; until I looked at the next one, and
+found it equal to it, if not better. On everything there was the same
+air of retirement and cleanliness that marked the house outside.
+
+Mr. Wickfield tapped at a door in a corner of the panelled wall, and a
+girl of about my own age came quickly out and kissed him. On her face,
+I saw immediately the placid and sweet expression of the lady whose
+picture had looked at me downstairs. It seemed to my imagination as
+if the portrait had grown womanly, and the original remained a child.
+Although her face was quite bright and happy, there was a tranquillity
+about it, and about her--a quiet, good, calm spirit--that I never have
+forgotten; that I shall never forget. This was his little housekeeper,
+his daughter Agnes, Mr. Wickfield said. When I heard how he said it, and
+saw how he held her hand, I guessed what the one motive of his life was.
+
+She had a little basket-trifle hanging at her side, with keys in it; and
+she looked as staid and as discreet a housekeeper as the old house
+could have. She listened to her father as he told her about me, with a
+pleasant face; and when he had concluded, proposed to my aunt that we
+should go upstairs and see my room. We all went together, she before us:
+and a glorious old room it was, with more oak beams, and diamond panes;
+and the broad balustrade going all the way up to it.
+
+I cannot call to mind where or when, in my childhood, I had seen a
+stained glass window in a church. Nor do I recollect its subject. But
+I know that when I saw her turn round, in the grave light of the old
+staircase, and wait for us, above, I thought of that window; and I
+associated something of its tranquil brightness with Agnes Wickfield
+ever afterwards.
+
+My aunt was as happy as I was, in the arrangement made for me; and we
+went down to the drawing-room again, well pleased and gratified. As she
+would not hear of staying to dinner, lest she should by any chance fail
+to arrive at home with the grey pony before dark; and as I apprehend Mr.
+Wickfield knew her too well to argue any point with her; some lunch was
+provided for her there, and Agnes went back to her governess, and Mr.
+Wickfield to his office. So we were left to take leave of one another
+without any restraint.
+
+She told me that everything would be arranged for me by Mr. Wickfield,
+and that I should want for nothing, and gave me the kindest words and
+the best advice.
+
+‘Trot,’ said my aunt in conclusion, ‘be a credit to yourself, to me, and
+Mr. Dick, and Heaven be with you!’
+
+I was greatly overcome, and could only thank her, again and again, and
+send my love to Mr. Dick.
+
+‘Never,’ said my aunt, ‘be mean in anything; never be false; never be
+cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of
+you.’
+
+I promised, as well as I could, that I would not abuse her kindness or
+forget her admonition.
+
+‘The pony’s at the door,’ said my aunt, ‘and I am off! Stay here.’ With
+these words she embraced me hastily, and went out of the room, shutting
+the door after her. At first I was startled by so abrupt a departure,
+and almost feared I had displeased her; but when I looked into the
+street, and saw how dejectedly she got into the chaise, and drove away
+without looking up, I understood her better and did not do her that
+injustice.
+
+By five o’clock, which was Mr. Wickfield’s dinner-hour, I had mustered
+up my spirits again, and was ready for my knife and fork. The cloth was
+only laid for us two; but Agnes was waiting in the drawing-room before
+dinner, went down with her father, and sat opposite to him at table. I
+doubted whether he could have dined without her.
+
+We did not stay there, after dinner, but came upstairs into the
+drawing-room again: in one snug corner of which, Agnes set glasses for
+her father, and a decanter of port wine. I thought he would have missed
+its usual flavour, if it had been put there for him by any other hands.
+
+There he sat, taking his wine, and taking a good deal of it, for two
+hours; while Agnes played on the piano, worked, and talked to him and
+me. He was, for the most part, gay and cheerful with us; but sometimes
+his eyes rested on her, and he fell into a brooding state, and was
+silent. She always observed this quickly, I thought, and always roused
+him with a question or caress. Then he came out of his meditation, and
+drank more wine.
+
+Agnes made the tea, and presided over it; and the time passed away after
+it, as after dinner, until she went to bed; when her father took her
+in his arms and kissed her, and, she being gone, ordered candles in his
+office. Then I went to bed too.
+
+But in the course of the evening I had rambled down to the door, and a
+little way along the street, that I might have another peep at the old
+houses, and the grey Cathedral; and might think of my coming through
+that old city on my journey, and of my passing the very house I lived
+in, without knowing it. As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting up
+the office; and feeling friendly towards everybody, went in and spoke
+to him, and at parting, gave him my hand. But oh, what a clammy hand his
+was! as ghostly to the touch as to the sight! I rubbed mine afterwards,
+to warm it, AND TO RUB HIS OFF.
+
+It was such an uncomfortable hand, that, when I went to my room, it was
+still cold and wet upon my memory. Leaning out of the window, and seeing
+one of the faces on the beam-ends looking at me sideways, I fancied it
+was Uriah Heep got up there somehow, and shut him out in a hurry.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 16. I AM A NEW BOY IN MORE SENSES THAN ONE
+
+
+Next morning, after breakfast, I entered on school life again. I went,
+accompanied by Mr. Wickfield, to the scene of my future studies--a grave
+building in a courtyard, with a learned air about it that seemed very
+well suited to the stray rooks and jackdaws who came down from the
+Cathedral towers to walk with a clerkly bearing on the grass-plot--and
+was introduced to my new master, Doctor Strong.
+
+Doctor Strong looked almost as rusty, to my thinking, as the tall iron
+rails and gates outside the house; and almost as stiff and heavy as the
+great stone urns that flanked them, and were set up, on the top of
+the red-brick wall, at regular distances all round the court, like
+sublimated skittles, for Time to play at. He was in his library (I mean
+Doctor Strong was), with his clothes not particularly well brushed, and
+his hair not particularly well combed; his knee-smalls unbraced; his
+long black gaiters unbuttoned; and his shoes yawning like two caverns on
+the hearth-rug. Turning upon me a lustreless eye, that reminded me of
+a long-forgotten blind old horse who once used to crop the grass, and
+tumble over the graves, in Blunderstone churchyard, he said he was glad
+to see me: and then he gave me his hand; which I didn’t know what to do
+with, as it did nothing for itself.
+
+But, sitting at work, not far from Doctor Strong, was a very pretty
+young lady--whom he called Annie, and who was his daughter, I
+supposed--who got me out of my difficulty by kneeling down to put Doctor
+Strong’s shoes on, and button his gaiters, which she did with great
+cheerfulness and quickness. When she had finished, and we were going
+out to the schoolroom, I was much surprised to hear Mr. Wickfield,
+in bidding her good morning, address her as ‘Mrs. Strong’; and I was
+wondering could she be Doctor Strong’s son’s wife, or could she be Mrs.
+Doctor Strong, when Doctor Strong himself unconsciously enlightened me.
+
+‘By the by, Wickfield,’ he said, stopping in a passage with his hand on
+my shoulder; ‘you have not found any suitable provision for my wife’s
+cousin yet?’
+
+‘No,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘No. Not yet.’
+
+‘I could wish it done as soon as it can be done, Wickfield,’ said
+Doctor Strong, ‘for Jack Maldon is needy, and idle; and of those two
+bad things, worse things sometimes come. What does Doctor Watts say,’ he
+added, looking at me, and moving his head to the time of his quotation,
+‘“Satan finds some mischief still, for idle hands to do.”’
+
+‘Egad, Doctor,’ returned Mr. Wickfield, ‘if Doctor Watts knew mankind,
+he might have written, with as much truth, “Satan finds some mischief
+still, for busy hands to do.” The busy people achieve their full share
+of mischief in the world, you may rely upon it. What have the people
+been about, who have been the busiest in getting money, and in getting
+power, this century or two? No mischief?’
+
+‘Jack Maldon will never be very busy in getting either, I expect,’ said
+Doctor Strong, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
+
+‘Perhaps not,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘and you bring me back to the
+question, with an apology for digressing. No, I have not been able
+to dispose of Mr. Jack Maldon yet. I believe,’ he said this with some
+hesitation, ‘I penetrate your motive, and it makes the thing more
+difficult.’
+
+‘My motive,’ returned Doctor Strong, ‘is to make some suitable provision
+for a cousin, and an old playfellow, of Annie’s.’
+
+‘Yes, I know,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘at home or abroad.’
+
+‘Aye!’ replied the Doctor, apparently wondering why he emphasized those
+words so much. ‘At home or abroad.’
+
+‘Your own expression, you know,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Or abroad.’
+
+‘Surely,’ the Doctor answered. ‘Surely. One or other.’
+
+‘One or other? Have you no choice?’ asked Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘No,’ returned the Doctor.
+
+‘No?’ with astonishment.
+
+‘Not the least.’
+
+‘No motive,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘for meaning abroad, and not at home?’
+
+‘No,’ returned the Doctor.
+
+‘I am bound to believe you, and of course I do believe you,’ said Mr.
+Wickfield. ‘It might have simplified my office very much, if I had known
+it before. But I confess I entertained another impression.’
+
+Doctor Strong regarded him with a puzzled and doubting look,
+which almost immediately subsided into a smile that gave me great
+encouragement; for it was full of amiability and sweetness, and there
+was a simplicity in it, and indeed in his whole manner, when the
+studious, pondering frost upon it was got through, very attractive and
+hopeful to a young scholar like me. Repeating ‘no’, and ‘not the least’,
+and other short assurances to the same purport, Doctor Strong jogged
+on before us, at a queer, uneven pace; and we followed: Mr. Wickfield,
+looking grave, I observed, and shaking his head to himself, without
+knowing that I saw him.
+
+The schoolroom was a pretty large hall, on the quietest side of the
+house, confronted by the stately stare of some half-dozen of the great
+urns, and commanding a peep of an old secluded garden belonging to the
+Doctor, where the peaches were ripening on the sunny south wall. There
+were two great aloes, in tubs, on the turf outside the windows; the
+broad hard leaves of which plant (looking as if they were made of
+painted tin) have ever since, by association, been symbolical to me
+of silence and retirement. About five-and-twenty boys were studiously
+engaged at their books when we went in, but they rose to give the Doctor
+good morning, and remained standing when they saw Mr. Wickfield and me.
+
+‘A new boy, young gentlemen,’ said the Doctor; ‘Trotwood Copperfield.’
+
+One Adams, who was the head-boy, then stepped out of his place and
+welcomed me. He looked like a young clergyman, in his white cravat, but
+he was very affable and good-humoured; and he showed me my place, and
+presented me to the masters, in a gentlemanly way that would have put me
+at my ease, if anything could.
+
+It seemed to me so long, however, since I had been among such boys,
+or among any companions of my own age, except Mick Walker and Mealy
+Potatoes, that I felt as strange as ever I have done in my life. I was
+so conscious of having passed through scenes of which they could have
+no knowledge, and of having acquired experiences foreign to my age,
+appearance, and condition as one of them, that I half believed it was an
+imposture to come there as an ordinary little schoolboy. I had become,
+in the Murdstone and Grinby time, however short or long it may have
+been, so unused to the sports and games of boys, that I knew I was
+awkward and inexperienced in the commonest things belonging to them.
+Whatever I had learnt, had so slipped away from me in the sordid cares
+of my life from day to night, that now, when I was examined about what
+I knew, I knew nothing, and was put into the lowest form of the school.
+But, troubled as I was, by my want of boyish skill, and of book-learning
+too, I was made infinitely more uncomfortable by the consideration,
+that, in what I did know, I was much farther removed from my companions
+than in what I did not. My mind ran upon what they would think, if they
+knew of my familiar acquaintance with the King’s Bench Prison? Was there
+anything about me which would reveal my proceedings in connexion with
+the Micawber family--all those pawnings, and sellings, and suppers--in
+spite of myself? Suppose some of the boys had seen me coming through
+Canterbury, wayworn and ragged, and should find me out? What would they
+say, who made so light of money, if they could know how I had scraped my
+halfpence together, for the purchase of my daily saveloy and beer, or
+my slices of pudding? How would it affect them, who were so innocent of
+London life, and London streets, to discover how knowing I was (and was
+ashamed to be) in some of the meanest phases of both? All this ran in
+my head so much, on that first day at Doctor Strong’s, that I felt
+distrustful of my slightest look and gesture; shrunk within myself
+whensoever I was approached by one of my new schoolfellows; and hurried
+off the minute school was over, afraid of committing myself in my
+response to any friendly notice or advance.
+
+But there was such an influence in Mr. Wickfield’s old house, that when
+I knocked at it, with my new school-books under my arm, I began to feel
+my uneasiness softening away. As I went up to my airy old room, the
+grave shadow of the staircase seemed to fall upon my doubts and fears,
+and to make the past more indistinct. I sat there, sturdily conning my
+books, until dinner-time (we were out of school for good at three); and
+went down, hopeful of becoming a passable sort of boy yet.
+
+Agnes was in the drawing-room, waiting for her father, who was detained
+by someone in his office. She met me with her pleasant smile, and asked
+me how I liked the school. I told her I should like it very much, I
+hoped; but I was a little strange to it at first.
+
+‘You have never been to school,’ I said, ‘have you?’ ‘Oh yes! Every
+day.’
+
+‘Ah, but you mean here, at your own home?’
+
+‘Papa couldn’t spare me to go anywhere else,’ she answered, smiling and
+shaking her head. ‘His housekeeper must be in his house, you know.’
+
+‘He is very fond of you, I am sure,’ I said.
+
+She nodded ‘Yes,’ and went to the door to listen for his coming up, that
+she might meet him on the stairs. But, as he was not there, she came
+back again.
+
+‘Mama has been dead ever since I was born,’ she said, in her quiet way.
+‘I only know her picture, downstairs. I saw you looking at it yesterday.
+Did you think whose it was?’
+
+I told her yes, because it was so like herself.
+
+‘Papa says so, too,’ said Agnes, pleased. ‘Hark! That’s papa now!’
+
+Her bright calm face lighted up with pleasure as she went to meet him,
+and as they came in, hand in hand. He greeted me cordially; and told
+me I should certainly be happy under Doctor Strong, who was one of the
+gentlest of men.
+
+‘There may be some, perhaps--I don’t know that there are--who abuse
+his kindness,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Never be one of those, Trotwood, in
+anything. He is the least suspicious of mankind; and whether that’s
+a merit, or whether it’s a blemish, it deserves consideration in all
+dealings with the Doctor, great or small.’
+
+He spoke, I thought, as if he were weary, or dissatisfied with
+something; but I did not pursue the question in my mind, for dinner was
+just then announced, and we went down and took the same seats as before.
+
+We had scarcely done so, when Uriah Heep put in his red head and his
+lank hand at the door, and said:
+
+‘Here’s Mr. Maldon begs the favour of a word, sir.’
+
+‘I am but this moment quit of Mr. Maldon,’ said his master.
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ returned Uriah; ‘but Mr. Maldon has come back, and he begs
+the favour of a word.’
+
+As he held the door open with his hand, Uriah looked at me, and looked
+at Agnes, and looked at the dishes, and looked at the plates, and looked
+at every object in the room, I thought,--yet seemed to look at nothing;
+he made such an appearance all the while of keeping his red eyes
+dutifully on his master. ‘I beg your pardon. It’s only to say, on
+reflection,’ observed a voice behind Uriah, as Uriah’s head was
+pushed away, and the speaker’s substituted--‘pray excuse me for this
+intrusion--that as it seems I have no choice in the matter, the sooner
+I go abroad the better. My cousin Annie did say, when we talked of it,
+that she liked to have her friends within reach rather than to have them
+banished, and the old Doctor--’
+
+‘Doctor Strong, was that?’ Mr. Wickfield interposed, gravely.
+
+‘Doctor Strong, of course,’ returned the other; ‘I call him the old
+Doctor; it’s all the same, you know.’
+
+‘I don’t know,’ returned Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Well, Doctor Strong,’ said the other--‘Doctor Strong was of the same
+mind, I believed. But as it appears from the course you take with me he
+has changed his mind, why there’s no more to be said, except that the
+sooner I am off, the better. Therefore, I thought I’d come back and say,
+that the sooner I am off the better. When a plunge is to be made into
+the water, it’s of no use lingering on the bank.’
+
+‘There shall be as little lingering as possible, in your case, Mr.
+Maldon, you may depend upon it,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Thank’ee,’ said the other. ‘Much obliged. I don’t want to look a
+gift-horse in the mouth, which is not a gracious thing to do; otherwise,
+I dare say, my cousin Annie could easily arrange it in her own way. I
+suppose Annie would only have to say to the old Doctor--’
+
+‘Meaning that Mrs. Strong would only have to say to her husband--do I
+follow you?’ said Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Quite so,’ returned the other, ‘--would only have to say, that she
+wanted such and such a thing to be so and so; and it would be so and so,
+as a matter of course.’
+
+‘And why as a matter of course, Mr. Maldon?’ asked Mr. Wickfield,
+sedately eating his dinner.
+
+‘Why, because Annie’s a charming young girl, and the old Doctor--Doctor
+Strong, I mean--is not quite a charming young boy,’ said Mr. Jack
+Maldon, laughing. ‘No offence to anybody, Mr. Wickfield. I only mean
+that I suppose some compensation is fair and reasonable in that sort of
+marriage.’
+
+‘Compensation to the lady, sir?’ asked Mr. Wickfield gravely.
+
+‘To the lady, sir,’ Mr. Jack Maldon answered, laughing. But appearing
+to remark that Mr. Wickfield went on with his dinner in the same sedate,
+immovable manner, and that there was no hope of making him relax a
+muscle of his face, he added: ‘However, I have said what I came to say,
+and, with another apology for this intrusion, I may take myself off. Of
+course I shall observe your directions, in considering the matter as one
+to be arranged between you and me solely, and not to be referred to, up
+at the Doctor’s.’
+
+‘Have you dined?’ asked Mr. Wickfield, with a motion of his hand towards
+the table.
+
+‘Thank’ee. I am going to dine,’ said Mr. Maldon, ‘with my cousin Annie.
+Good-bye!’
+
+Mr. Wickfield, without rising, looked after him thoughtfully as he went
+out. He was rather a shallow sort of young gentleman, I thought, with
+a handsome face, a rapid utterance, and a confident, bold air. And this
+was the first I ever saw of Mr. Jack Maldon; whom I had not expected to
+see so soon, when I heard the Doctor speak of him that morning.
+
+When we had dined, we went upstairs again, where everything went on
+exactly as on the previous day. Agnes set the glasses and decanters in
+the same corner, and Mr. Wickfield sat down to drink, and drank a good
+deal. Agnes played the piano to him, sat by him, and worked and talked,
+and played some games at dominoes with me. In good time she made tea;
+and afterwards, when I brought down my books, looked into them, and
+showed me what she knew of them (which was no slight matter, though she
+said it was), and what was the best way to learn and understand them.
+I see her, with her modest, orderly, placid manner, and I hear her
+beautiful calm voice, as I write these words. The influence for all
+good, which she came to exercise over me at a later time, begins
+already to descend upon my breast. I love little Em’ly, and I don’t love
+Agnes--no, not at all in that way--but I feel that there are goodness,
+peace, and truth, wherever Agnes is; and that the soft light of the
+coloured window in the church, seen long ago, falls on her always, and
+on me when I am near her, and on everything around.
+
+The time having come for her withdrawal for the night, and she having
+left us, I gave Mr. Wickfield my hand, preparatory to going away myself.
+But he checked me and said: ‘Should you like to stay with us, Trotwood,
+or to go elsewhere?’
+
+‘To stay,’ I answered, quickly.
+
+‘You are sure?’
+
+‘If you please. If I may!’
+
+‘Why, it’s but a dull life that we lead here, boy, I am afraid,’ he
+said.
+
+‘Not more dull for me than Agnes, sir. Not dull at all!’
+
+‘Than Agnes,’ he repeated, walking slowly to the great chimney-piece,
+and leaning against it. ‘Than Agnes!’
+
+He had drank wine that evening (or I fancied it), until his eyes were
+bloodshot. Not that I could see them now, for they were cast down, and
+shaded by his hand; but I had noticed them a little while before.
+
+‘Now I wonder,’ he muttered, ‘whether my Agnes tires of me. When should
+I ever tire of her! But that’s different, that’s quite different.’
+
+He was musing, not speaking to me; so I remained quiet.
+
+‘A dull old house,’ he said, ‘and a monotonous life; but I must have
+her near me. I must keep her near me. If the thought that I may die and
+leave my darling, or that my darling may die and leave me, comes like a
+spectre, to distress my happiest hours, and is only to be drowned in--’
+
+He did not supply the word; but pacing slowly to the place where he had
+sat, and mechanically going through the action of pouring wine from the
+empty decanter, set it down and paced back again.
+
+‘If it is miserable to bear, when she is here,’ he said, ‘what would it
+be, and she away? No, no, no. I cannot try that.’
+
+He leaned against the chimney-piece, brooding so long that I could not
+decide whether to run the risk of disturbing him by going, or to remain
+quietly where I was, until he should come out of his reverie. At length
+he aroused himself, and looked about the room until his eyes encountered
+mine.
+
+‘Stay with us, Trotwood, eh?’ he said in his usual manner, and as if
+he were answering something I had just said. ‘I am glad of it. You are
+company to us both. It is wholesome to have you here. Wholesome for me,
+wholesome for Agnes, wholesome perhaps for all of us.’
+
+‘I am sure it is for me, sir,’ I said. ‘I am so glad to be here.’
+
+‘That’s a fine fellow!’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘As long as you are glad
+to be here, you shall stay here.’ He shook hands with me upon it, and
+clapped me on the back; and told me that when I had anything to do
+at night after Agnes had left us, or when I wished to read for my own
+pleasure, I was free to come down to his room, if he were there and if
+I desired it for company’s sake, and to sit with him. I thanked him for
+his consideration; and, as he went down soon afterwards, and I was
+not tired, went down too, with a book in my hand, to avail myself, for
+half-an-hour, of his permission.
+
+But, seeing a light in the little round office, and immediately feeling
+myself attracted towards Uriah Heep, who had a sort of fascination for
+me, I went in there instead. I found Uriah reading a great fat book,
+with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up
+every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I
+fully believed) like a snail.
+
+‘You are working late tonight, Uriah,’ says I.
+
+‘Yes, Master Copperfield,’ says Uriah.
+
+As I was getting on the stool opposite, to talk to him more
+conveniently, I observed that he had not such a thing as a smile about
+him, and that he could only widen his mouth and make two hard creases
+down his cheeks, one on each side, to stand for one.
+
+‘I am not doing office-work, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah.
+
+‘What work, then?’ I asked.
+
+‘I am improving my legal knowledge, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘I
+am going through Tidd’s Practice. Oh, what a writer Mr. Tidd is, Master
+Copperfield!’
+
+My stool was such a tower of observation, that as I watched him reading
+on again, after this rapturous exclamation, and following up the lines
+with his forefinger, I observed that his nostrils, which were thin and
+pointed, with sharp dints in them, had a singular and most uncomfortable
+way of expanding and contracting themselves--that they seemed to twinkle
+instead of his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all.
+
+‘I suppose you are quite a great lawyer?’ I said, after looking at him
+for some time.
+
+‘Me, Master Copperfield?’ said Uriah. ‘Oh, no! I’m a very umble person.’
+
+It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he frequently
+ground the palms against each other as if to squeeze them dry and
+warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on his
+pocket-handkerchief.
+
+‘I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,’ said Uriah Heep,
+modestly; ‘let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very
+umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have
+much to be thankful for. My father’s former calling was umble. He was a
+sexton.’
+
+‘What is he now?’ I asked.
+
+‘He is a partaker of glory at present, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah
+Heep. ‘But we have much to be thankful for. How much have I to be
+thankful for in living with Mr. Wickfield!’
+
+I asked Uriah if he had been with Mr. Wickfield long?
+
+‘I have been with him, going on four year, Master Copperfield,’ said
+Uriah; shutting up his book, after carefully marking the place where he
+had left off. ‘Since a year after my father’s death. How much have I
+to be thankful for, in that! How much have I to be thankful for, in Mr.
+Wickfield’s kind intention to give me my articles, which would otherwise
+not lay within the umble means of mother and self!’
+
+‘Then, when your articled time is over, you’ll be a regular lawyer, I
+suppose?’ said I.
+
+‘With the blessing of Providence, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah.
+
+‘Perhaps you’ll be a partner in Mr. Wickfield’s business, one of these
+days,’ I said, to make myself agreeable; ‘and it will be Wickfield and
+Heep, or Heep late Wickfield.’
+
+‘Oh no, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, shaking his head, ‘I am
+much too umble for that!’
+
+He certainly did look uncommonly like the carved face on the beam
+outside my window, as he sat, in his humility, eyeing me sideways, with
+his mouth widened, and the creases in his cheeks.
+
+‘Mr. Wickfield is a most excellent man, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah.
+‘If you have known him long, you know it, I am sure, much better than I
+can inform you.’
+
+I replied that I was certain he was; but that I had not known him long
+myself, though he was a friend of my aunt’s.
+
+‘Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘Your aunt is a sweet
+lady, Master Copperfield!’
+
+He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm, which was
+very ugly; and which diverted my attention from the compliment he had
+paid my relation, to the snaky twistings of his throat and body.
+
+‘A sweet lady, Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah Heep. ‘She has a great
+admiration for Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield, I believe?’
+
+I said, ‘Yes,’ boldly; not that I knew anything about it, Heaven forgive
+me!
+
+‘I hope you have, too, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘But I am sure
+you must have.’
+
+‘Everybody must have,’ I returned.
+
+‘Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah Heep, ‘for that remark!
+It is so true! Umble as I am, I know it is so true! Oh, thank you,
+Master Copperfield!’ He writhed himself quite off his stool in the
+excitement of his feelings, and, being off, began to make arrangements
+for going home.
+
+‘Mother will be expecting me,’ he said, referring to a pale,
+inexpressive-faced watch in his pocket, ‘and getting uneasy; for though
+we are very umble, Master Copperfield, we are much attached to one
+another. If you would come and see us, any afternoon, and take a cup of
+tea at our lowly dwelling, mother would be as proud of your company as I
+should be.’
+
+I said I should be glad to come.
+
+‘Thank you, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, putting his book
+away upon the shelf--‘I suppose you stop here, some time, Master
+Copperfield?’
+
+I said I was going to be brought up there, I believed, as long as I
+remained at school.
+
+‘Oh, indeed!’ exclaimed Uriah. ‘I should think YOU would come into the
+business at last, Master Copperfield!’
+
+I protested that I had no views of that sort, and that no such scheme
+was entertained in my behalf by anybody; but Uriah insisted on blandly
+replying to all my assurances, ‘Oh, yes, Master Copperfield, I should
+think you would, indeed!’ and, ‘Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield, I should
+think you would, certainly!’ over and over again. Being, at last, ready
+to leave the office for the night, he asked me if it would suit my
+convenience to have the light put out; and on my answering ‘Yes,’
+instantly extinguished it. After shaking hands with me--his hand felt
+like a fish, in the dark--he opened the door into the street a very
+little, and crept out, and shut it, leaving me to grope my way back into
+the house: which cost me some trouble and a fall over his stool. This
+was the proximate cause, I suppose, of my dreaming about him, for what
+appeared to me to be half the night; and dreaming, among other things,
+that he had launched Mr. Peggotty’s house on a piratical expedition,
+with a black flag at the masthead, bearing the inscription ‘Tidd’s
+Practice’, under which diabolical ensign he was carrying me and little
+Em’ly to the Spanish Main, to be drowned.
+
+I got a little the better of my uneasiness when I went to school
+next day, and a good deal the better next day, and so shook it off by
+degrees, that in less than a fortnight I was quite at home, and happy,
+among my new companions. I was awkward enough in their games, and
+backward enough in their studies; but custom would improve me in the
+first respect, I hoped, and hard work in the second. Accordingly, I
+went to work very hard, both in play and in earnest, and gained great
+commendation. And, in a very little while, the Murdstone and Grinby life
+became so strange to me that I hardly believed in it, while my present
+life grew so familiar, that I seemed to have been leading it a long
+time.
+
+Doctor Strong’s was an excellent school; as different from Mr. Creakle’s
+as good is from evil. It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and
+on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honour and good
+faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to rely on their possession
+of those qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which
+worked wonders. We all felt that we had a part in the management of
+the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity. Hence, we soon
+became warmly attached to it--I am sure I did for one, and I never knew,
+in all my time, of any other boy being otherwise--and learnt with a good
+will, desiring to do it credit. We had noble games out of hours, and
+plenty of liberty; but even then, as I remember, we were well spoken of
+in the town, and rarely did any disgrace, by our appearance or manner,
+to the reputation of Doctor Strong and Doctor Strong’s boys.
+
+Some of the higher scholars boarded in the Doctor’s house, and through
+them I learned, at second hand, some particulars of the Doctor’s
+history--as, how he had not yet been married twelve months to the
+beautiful young lady I had seen in the study, whom he had married for
+love; for she had not a sixpence, and had a world of poor relations (so
+our fellows said) ready to swarm the Doctor out of house and home. Also,
+how the Doctor’s cogitating manner was attributable to his being always
+engaged in looking out for Greek roots; which, in my innocence and
+ignorance, I supposed to be a botanical furor on the Doctor’s part,
+especially as he always looked at the ground when he walked about,
+until I understood that they were roots of words, with a view to a new
+Dictionary which he had in contemplation. Adams, our head-boy, who had
+a turn for mathematics, had made a calculation, I was informed, of the
+time this Dictionary would take in completing, on the Doctor’s plan, and
+at the Doctor’s rate of going. He considered that it might be done
+in one thousand six hundred and forty-nine years, counting from the
+Doctor’s last, or sixty-second, birthday.
+
+But the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school: and it must
+have been a badly composed school if he had been anything else, for
+he was the kindest of men; with a simple faith in him that might have
+touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall. As he walked up
+and down that part of the courtyard which was at the side of the house,
+with the stray rooks and jackdaws looking after him with their heads
+cocked slyly, as if they knew how much more knowing they were in worldly
+affairs than he, if any sort of vagabond could only get near enough to
+his creaking shoes to attract his attention to one sentence of a tale
+of distress, that vagabond was made for the next two days. It was so
+notorious in the house, that the masters and head-boys took pains to cut
+these marauders off at angles, and to get out of windows, and turn them
+out of the courtyard, before they could make the Doctor aware of their
+presence; which was sometimes happily effected within a few yards of
+him, without his knowing anything of the matter, as he jogged to and
+fro. Outside his own domain, and unprotected, he was a very sheep for
+the shearers. He would have taken his gaiters off his legs, to give
+away. In fact, there was a story current among us (I have no idea, and
+never had, on what authority, but I have believed it for so many
+years that I feel quite certain it is true), that on a frosty day, one
+winter-time, he actually did bestow his gaiters on a beggar-woman, who
+occasioned some scandal in the neighbourhood by exhibiting a fine infant
+from door to door, wrapped in those garments, which were universally
+recognized, being as well known in the vicinity as the Cathedral. The
+legend added that the only person who did not identify them was the
+Doctor himself, who, when they were shortly afterwards displayed at the
+door of a little second-hand shop of no very good repute, where such
+things were taken in exchange for gin, was more than once observed to
+handle them approvingly, as if admiring some curious novelty in the
+pattern, and considering them an improvement on his own.
+
+It was very pleasant to see the Doctor with his pretty young wife. He
+had a fatherly, benignant way of showing his fondness for her, which
+seemed in itself to express a good man. I often saw them walking in the
+garden where the peaches were, and I sometimes had a nearer observation
+of them in the study or the parlour. She appeared to me to take great
+care of the Doctor, and to like him very much, though I never thought
+her vitally interested in the Dictionary: some cumbrous fragments of
+which work the Doctor always carried in his pockets, and in the lining
+of his hat, and generally seemed to be expounding to her as they walked
+about.
+
+I saw a good deal of Mrs. Strong, both because she had taken a liking
+for me on the morning of my introduction to the Doctor, and was always
+afterwards kind to me, and interested in me; and because she was very
+fond of Agnes, and was often backwards and forwards at our house. There
+was a curious constraint between her and Mr. Wickfield, I thought (of
+whom she seemed to be afraid), that never wore off. When she came there
+of an evening, she always shrunk from accepting his escort home, and ran
+away with me instead. And sometimes, as we were running gaily across
+the Cathedral yard together, expecting to meet nobody, we would meet Mr.
+Jack Maldon, who was always surprised to see us.
+
+Mrs. Strong’s mama was a lady I took great delight in. Her name was Mrs.
+Markleham; but our boys used to call her the Old Soldier, on account of
+her generalship, and the skill with which she marshalled great forces
+of relations against the Doctor. She was a little, sharp-eyed woman,
+who used to wear, when she was dressed, one unchangeable cap, ornamented
+with some artificial flowers, and two artificial butterflies supposed
+to be hovering above the flowers. There was a superstition among us
+that this cap had come from France, and could only originate in the
+workmanship of that ingenious nation: but all I certainly know about it,
+is, that it always made its appearance of an evening, wheresoever Mrs.
+Markleham made HER appearance; that it was carried about to friendly
+meetings in a Hindoo basket; that the butterflies had the gift of
+trembling constantly; and that they improved the shining hours at Doctor
+Strong’s expense, like busy bees.
+
+I observed the Old Soldier--not to adopt the name disrespectfully--to
+pretty good advantage, on a night which is made memorable to me by
+something else I shall relate. It was the night of a little party at the
+Doctor’s, which was given on the occasion of Mr. Jack Maldon’s departure
+for India, whither he was going as a cadet, or something of that kind:
+Mr. Wickfield having at length arranged the business. It happened to be
+the Doctor’s birthday, too. We had had a holiday, had made presents to
+him in the morning, had made a speech to him through the head-boy, and
+had cheered him until we were hoarse, and until he had shed tears. And
+now, in the evening, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and I, went to have tea with
+him in his private capacity.
+
+Mr. Jack Maldon was there, before us. Mrs. Strong, dressed in white,
+with cherry-coloured ribbons, was playing the piano, when we went in;
+and he was leaning over her to turn the leaves. The clear red and
+white of her complexion was not so blooming and flower-like as usual, I
+thought, when she turned round; but she looked very pretty, Wonderfully
+pretty.
+
+‘I have forgotten, Doctor,’ said Mrs. Strong’s mama, when we were
+seated, ‘to pay you the compliments of the day--though they are, as you
+may suppose, very far from being mere compliments in my case. Allow me
+to wish you many happy returns.’
+
+‘I thank you, ma’am,’ replied the Doctor.
+
+‘Many, many, many, happy returns,’ said the Old Soldier. ‘Not only
+for your own sake, but for Annie’s, and John Maldon’s, and many other
+people’s. It seems but yesterday to me, John, when you were a little
+creature, a head shorter than Master Copperfield, making baby love to
+Annie behind the gooseberry bushes in the back-garden.’
+
+‘My dear mama,’ said Mrs. Strong, ‘never mind that now.’
+
+‘Annie, don’t be absurd,’ returned her mother. ‘If you are to blush to
+hear of such things now you are an old married woman, when are you not
+to blush to hear of them?’
+
+‘Old?’ exclaimed Mr. Jack Maldon. ‘Annie? Come!’
+
+‘Yes, John,’ returned the Soldier. ‘Virtually, an old married woman.
+Although not old by years--for when did you ever hear me say, or who has
+ever heard me say, that a girl of twenty was old by years!--your cousin
+is the wife of the Doctor, and, as such, what I have described her. It
+is well for you, John, that your cousin is the wife of the Doctor. You
+have found in him an influential and kind friend, who will be kinder
+yet, I venture to predict, if you deserve it. I have no false pride.
+I never hesitate to admit, frankly, that there are some members of our
+family who want a friend. You were one yourself, before your cousin’s
+influence raised up one for you.’
+
+The Doctor, in the goodness of his heart, waved his hand as if to make
+light of it, and save Mr. Jack Maldon from any further reminder. But
+Mrs. Markleham changed her chair for one next the Doctor’s, and putting
+her fan on his coat-sleeve, said:
+
+‘No, really, my dear Doctor, you must excuse me if I appear to dwell
+on this rather, because I feel so very strongly. I call it quite my
+monomania, it is such a subject of mine. You are a blessing to us. You
+really are a Boon, you know.’
+
+‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said the Doctor.
+
+‘No, no, I beg your pardon,’ retorted the Old Soldier. ‘With nobody
+present, but our dear and confidential friend Mr. Wickfield, I cannot
+consent to be put down. I shall begin to assert the privileges of a
+mother-in-law, if you go on like that, and scold you. I am perfectly
+honest and outspoken. What I am saying, is what I said when you first
+overpowered me with surprise--you remember how surprised I was?--by
+proposing for Annie. Not that there was anything so very much out of
+the way, in the mere fact of the proposal--it would be ridiculous to say
+that!--but because, you having known her poor father, and having known
+her from a baby six months old, I hadn’t thought of you in such a light
+at all, or indeed as a marrying man in any way,--simply that, you know.’
+
+‘Aye, aye,’ returned the Doctor, good-humouredly. ‘Never mind.’
+
+‘But I DO mind,’ said the Old Soldier, laying her fan upon his lips. ‘I
+mind very much. I recall these things that I may be contradicted if I am
+wrong. Well! Then I spoke to Annie, and I told her what had happened.
+I said, “My dear, here’s Doctor Strong has positively been and made you
+the subject of a handsome declaration and an offer.” Did I press it in
+the least? No. I said, “Now, Annie, tell me the truth this moment; is
+your heart free?” “Mama,” she said crying, “I am extremely young”--which
+was perfectly true--“and I hardly know if I have a heart at all.” “Then,
+my dear,” I said, “you may rely upon it, it’s free. At all events, my
+love,” said I, “Doctor Strong is in an agitated state of mind, and
+must be answered. He cannot be kept in his present state of suspense.”
+ “Mama,” said Annie, still crying, “would he be unhappy without me? If he
+would, I honour and respect him so much, that I think I will have him.”
+ So it was settled. And then, and not till then, I said to Annie, “Annie,
+Doctor Strong will not only be your husband, but he will represent your
+late father: he will represent the head of our family, he will represent
+the wisdom and station, and I may say the means, of our family; and will
+be, in short, a Boon to it.” I used the word at the time, and I have
+used it again, today. If I have any merit it is consistency.’
+
+The daughter had sat quite silent and still during this speech, with her
+eyes fixed on the ground; her cousin standing near her, and looking on
+the ground too. She now said very softly, in a trembling voice:
+
+‘Mama, I hope you have finished?’ ‘No, my dear Annie,’ returned the Old
+Soldier, ‘I have not quite finished. Since you ask me, my love, I reply
+that I have not. I complain that you really are a little unnatural
+towards your own family; and, as it is of no use complaining to you. I
+mean to complain to your husband. Now, my dear Doctor, do look at that
+silly wife of yours.’
+
+As the Doctor turned his kind face, with its smile of simplicity and
+gentleness, towards her, she drooped her head more. I noticed that Mr.
+Wickfield looked at her steadily.
+
+‘When I happened to say to that naughty thing, the other day,’ pursued
+her mother, shaking her head and her fan at her, playfully, ‘that there
+was a family circumstance she might mention to you--indeed, I think, was
+bound to mention--she said, that to mention it was to ask a favour;
+and that, as you were too generous, and as for her to ask was always to
+have, she wouldn’t.’
+
+‘Annie, my dear,’ said the Doctor. ‘That was wrong. It robbed me of a
+pleasure.’
+
+‘Almost the very words I said to her!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘Now
+really, another time, when I know what she would tell you but for this
+reason, and won’t, I have a great mind, my dear Doctor, to tell you
+myself.’
+
+‘I shall be glad if you will,’ returned the Doctor.
+
+‘Shall I?’
+
+‘Certainly.’
+
+‘Well, then, I will!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘That’s a bargain.’ And
+having, I suppose, carried her point, she tapped the Doctor’s hand
+several times with her fan (which she kissed first), and returned
+triumphantly to her former station.
+
+Some more company coming in, among whom were the two masters and Adams,
+the talk became general; and it naturally turned on Mr. Jack Maldon, and
+his voyage, and the country he was going to, and his various plans and
+prospects. He was to leave that night, after supper, in a post-chaise,
+for Gravesend; where the ship, in which he was to make the voyage, lay;
+and was to be gone--unless he came home on leave, or for his health--I
+don’t know how many years. I recollect it was settled by general
+consent that India was quite a misrepresented country, and had nothing
+objectionable in it, but a tiger or two, and a little heat in the warm
+part of the day. For my own part, I looked on Mr. Jack Maldon as a
+modern Sindbad, and pictured him the bosom friend of all the Rajahs in
+the East, sitting under canopies, smoking curly golden pipes--a mile
+long, if they could be straightened out.
+
+Mrs. Strong was a very pretty singer: as I knew, who often heard her
+singing by herself. But, whether she was afraid of singing before
+people, or was out of voice that evening, it was certain that she
+couldn’t sing at all. She tried a duet, once, with her cousin Maldon,
+but could not so much as begin; and afterwards, when she tried to sing
+by herself, although she began sweetly, her voice died away on a sudden,
+and left her quite distressed, with her head hanging down over the keys.
+The good Doctor said she was nervous, and, to relieve her, proposed a
+round game at cards; of which he knew as much as of the art of playing
+the trombone. But I remarked that the Old Soldier took him into custody
+directly, for her partner; and instructed him, as the first preliminary
+of initiation, to give her all the silver he had in his pocket.
+
+We had a merry game, not made the less merry by the Doctor’s mistakes,
+of which he committed an innumerable quantity, in spite of the
+watchfulness of the butterflies, and to their great aggravation. Mrs.
+Strong had declined to play, on the ground of not feeling very well; and
+her cousin Maldon had excused himself because he had some packing to
+do. When he had done it, however, he returned, and they sat together,
+talking, on the sofa. From time to time she came and looked over the
+Doctor’s hand, and told him what to play. She was very pale, as she
+bent over him, and I thought her finger trembled as she pointed out
+the cards; but the Doctor was quite happy in her attention, and took no
+notice of this, if it were so.
+
+At supper, we were hardly so gay. Everyone appeared to feel that a
+parting of that sort was an awkward thing, and that the nearer it
+approached, the more awkward it was. Mr. Jack Maldon tried to be very
+talkative, but was not at his ease, and made matters worse. And they
+were not improved, as it appeared to me, by the Old Soldier: who
+continually recalled passages of Mr. Jack Maldon’s youth.
+
+The Doctor, however, who felt, I am sure, that he was making everybody
+happy, was well pleased, and had no suspicion but that we were all at
+the utmost height of enjoyment.
+
+‘Annie, my dear,’ said he, looking at his watch, and filling his glass,
+‘it is past your cousin Jack’s time, and we must not detain him, since
+time and tide--both concerned in this case--wait for no man. Mr. Jack
+Maldon, you have a long voyage, and a strange country, before you; but
+many men have had both, and many men will have both, to the end of time.
+The winds you are going to tempt, have wafted thousands upon thousands
+to fortune, and brought thousands upon thousands happily back.’
+
+‘It’s an affecting thing,’ said Mrs. Markleham--‘however it’s viewed,
+it’s affecting, to see a fine young man one has known from an infant,
+going away to the other end of the world, leaving all he knows behind,
+and not knowing what’s before him. A young man really well deserves
+constant support and patronage,’ looking at the Doctor, ‘who makes such
+sacrifices.’
+
+‘Time will go fast with you, Mr. Jack Maldon,’ pursued the Doctor,
+‘and fast with all of us. Some of us can hardly expect, perhaps, in the
+natural course of things, to greet you on your return. The next best
+thing is to hope to do it, and that’s my case. I shall not weary you
+with good advice. You have long had a good model before you, in your
+cousin Annie. Imitate her virtues as nearly as you can.’
+
+Mrs. Markleham fanned herself, and shook her head.
+
+‘Farewell, Mr. Jack,’ said the Doctor, standing up; on which we all
+stood up. ‘A prosperous voyage out, a thriving career abroad, and a
+happy return home!’
+
+We all drank the toast, and all shook hands with Mr. Jack Maldon; after
+which he hastily took leave of the ladies who were there, and hurried
+to the door, where he was received, as he got into the chaise, with a
+tremendous broadside of cheers discharged by our boys, who had assembled
+on the lawn for the purpose. Running in among them to swell the ranks,
+I was very near the chaise when it rolled away; and I had a lively
+impression made upon me, in the midst of the noise and dust, of having
+seen Mr. Jack Maldon rattle past with an agitated face, and something
+cherry-coloured in his hand.
+
+After another broadside for the Doctor, and another for the Doctor’s
+wife, the boys dispersed, and I went back into the house, where I found
+the guests all standing in a group about the Doctor, discussing how Mr.
+Jack Maldon had gone away, and how he had borne it, and how he had
+felt it, and all the rest of it. In the midst of these remarks, Mrs.
+Markleham cried: ‘Where’s Annie?’
+
+No Annie was there; and when they called to her, no Annie replied. But
+all pressing out of the room, in a crowd, to see what was the matter, we
+found her lying on the hall floor. There was great alarm at first, until
+it was found that she was in a swoon, and that the swoon was yielding
+to the usual means of recovery; when the Doctor, who had lifted her
+head upon his knee, put her curls aside with his hand, and said, looking
+around:
+
+‘Poor Annie! She’s so faithful and tender-hearted! It’s the parting from
+her old playfellow and friend--her favourite cousin--that has done this.
+Ah! It’s a pity! I am very sorry!’
+
+When she opened her eyes, and saw where she was, and that we were all
+standing about her, she arose with assistance: turning her head, as she
+did so, to lay it on the Doctor’s shoulder--or to hide it, I don’t know
+which. We went into the drawing-room, to leave her with the Doctor and
+her mother; but she said, it seemed, that she was better than she had
+been since morning, and that she would rather be brought among us; so
+they brought her in, looking very white and weak, I thought, and sat her
+on a sofa.
+
+‘Annie, my dear,’ said her mother, doing something to her dress. ‘See
+here! You have lost a bow. Will anybody be so good as find a ribbon; a
+cherry-coloured ribbon?’
+
+It was the one she had worn at her bosom. We all looked for it; I myself
+looked everywhere, I am certain--but nobody could find it.
+
+‘Do you recollect where you had it last, Annie?’ said her mother.
+
+I wondered how I could have thought she looked white, or anything but
+burning red, when she answered that she had had it safe, a little while
+ago, she thought, but it was not worth looking for.
+
+Nevertheless, it was looked for again, and still not found. She
+entreated that there might be no more searching; but it was still sought
+for, in a desultory way, until she was quite well, and the company took
+their departure.
+
+We walked very slowly home, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and I--Agnes and I
+admiring the moonlight, and Mr. Wickfield scarcely raising his eyes from
+the ground. When we, at last, reached our own door, Agnes discovered
+that she had left her little reticule behind. Delighted to be of any
+service to her, I ran back to fetch it.
+
+I went into the supper-room where it had been left, which was deserted
+and dark. But a door of communication between that and the Doctor’s
+study, where there was a light, being open, I passed on there, to say
+what I wanted, and to get a candle.
+
+The Doctor was sitting in his easy-chair by the fireside, and his young
+wife was on a stool at his feet. The Doctor, with a complacent smile,
+was reading aloud some manuscript explanation or statement of a theory
+out of that interminable Dictionary, and she was looking up at him. But
+with such a face as I never saw. It was so beautiful in its form, it was
+so ashy pale, it was so fixed in its abstraction, it was so full of a
+wild, sleep-walking, dreamy horror of I don’t know what. The eyes
+were wide open, and her brown hair fell in two rich clusters on her
+shoulders, and on her white dress, disordered by the want of the lost
+ribbon. Distinctly as I recollect her look, I cannot say of what it was
+expressive, I cannot even say of what it is expressive to me now, rising
+again before my older judgement. Penitence, humiliation, shame, pride,
+love, and trustfulness--I see them all; and in them all, I see that
+horror of I don’t know what.
+
+My entrance, and my saying what I wanted, roused her. It disturbed the
+Doctor too, for when I went back to replace the candle I had taken from
+the table, he was patting her head, in his fatherly way, and saying he
+was a merciless drone to let her tempt him into reading on; and he would
+have her go to bed.
+
+But she asked him, in a rapid, urgent manner, to let her stay--to let
+her feel assured (I heard her murmur some broken words to this effect)
+that she was in his confidence that night. And, as she turned again
+towards him, after glancing at me as I left the room and went out at the
+door, I saw her cross her hands upon his knee, and look up at him with
+the same face, something quieted, as he resumed his reading.
+
+It made a great impression on me, and I remembered it a long time
+afterwards; as I shall have occasion to narrate when the time comes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 17. SOMEBODY TURNS UP
+
+
+It has not occurred to me to mention Peggotty since I ran away; but, of
+course, I wrote her a letter almost as soon as I was housed at Dover,
+and another, and a longer letter, containing all particulars fully
+related, when my aunt took me formally under her protection. On my being
+settled at Doctor Strong’s I wrote to her again, detailing my happy
+condition and prospects. I never could have derived anything like the
+pleasure from spending the money Mr. Dick had given me, that I felt in
+sending a gold half-guinea to Peggotty, per post, enclosed in this last
+letter, to discharge the sum I had borrowed of her: in which epistle,
+not before, I mentioned about the young man with the donkey-cart.
+
+To these communications Peggotty replied as promptly, if not as
+concisely, as a merchant’s clerk. Her utmost powers of expression (which
+were certainly not great in ink) were exhausted in the attempt to write
+what she felt on the subject of my journey. Four sides of incoherent and
+interjectional beginnings of sentences, that had no end, except blots,
+were inadequate to afford her any relief. But the blots were more
+expressive to me than the best composition; for they showed me that
+Peggotty had been crying all over the paper, and what could I have
+desired more?
+
+I made out, without much difficulty, that she could not take quite
+kindly to my aunt yet. The notice was too short after so long a
+prepossession the other way. We never knew a person, she wrote; but to
+think that Miss Betsey should seem to be so different from what she had
+been thought to be, was a Moral!--that was her word. She was evidently
+still afraid of Miss Betsey, for she sent her grateful duty to her but
+timidly; and she was evidently afraid of me, too, and entertained the
+probability of my running away again soon: if I might judge from the
+repeated hints she threw out, that the coach-fare to Yarmouth was always
+to be had of her for the asking.
+
+She gave me one piece of intelligence which affected me very much,
+namely, that there had been a sale of the furniture at our old home, and
+that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were gone away, and the house was shut up,
+to be let or sold. God knows I had no part in it while they remained
+there, but it pained me to think of the dear old place as altogether
+abandoned; of the weeds growing tall in the garden, and the fallen
+leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths. I imagined how the winds
+of winter would howl round it, how the cold rain would beat upon the
+window-glass, how the moon would make ghosts on the walls of the empty
+rooms, watching their solitude all night. I thought afresh of the grave
+in the churchyard, underneath the tree: and it seemed as if the house
+were dead too, now, and all connected with my father and mother were
+faded away.
+
+There was no other news in Peggotty’s letters. Mr. Barkis was an
+excellent husband, she said, though still a little near; but we all had
+our faults, and she had plenty (though I am sure I don’t know what they
+were); and he sent his duty, and my little bedroom was always ready for
+me. Mr. Peggotty was well, and Ham was well, and Mrs. Gummidge was but
+poorly, and little Em’ly wouldn’t send her love, but said that Peggotty
+might send it, if she liked.
+
+All this intelligence I dutifully imparted to my aunt, only reserving
+to myself the mention of little Em’ly, to whom I instinctively felt
+that she would not very tenderly incline. While I was yet new at Doctor
+Strong’s, she made several excursions over to Canterbury to see me, and
+always at unseasonable hours: with the view, I suppose, of taking me by
+surprise. But, finding me well employed, and bearing a good character,
+and hearing on all hands that I rose fast in the school, she soon
+discontinued these visits. I saw her on a Saturday, every third or
+fourth week, when I went over to Dover for a treat; and I saw Mr. Dick
+every alternate Wednesday, when he arrived by stage-coach at noon, to
+stay until next morning.
+
+On these occasions Mr. Dick never travelled without a leathern
+writing-desk, containing a supply of stationery and the Memorial; in
+relation to which document he had a notion that time was beginning to
+press now, and that it really must be got out of hand.
+
+Mr. Dick was very partial to gingerbread. To render his visits the more
+agreeable, my aunt had instructed me to open a credit for him at a cake
+shop, which was hampered with the stipulation that he should not be
+served with more than one shilling’s-worth in the course of any one day.
+This, and the reference of all his little bills at the county inn where
+he slept, to my aunt, before they were paid, induced me to suspect that
+he was only allowed to rattle his money, and not to spend it. I found
+on further investigation that this was so, or at least there was an
+agreement between him and my aunt that he should account to her for
+all his disbursements. As he had no idea of deceiving her, and always
+desired to please her, he was thus made chary of launching into expense.
+On this point, as well as on all other possible points, Mr. Dick was
+convinced that my aunt was the wisest and most wonderful of women; as he
+repeatedly told me with infinite secrecy, and always in a whisper.
+
+‘Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, with an air of mystery, after imparting this
+confidence to me, one Wednesday; ‘who’s the man that hides near our
+house and frightens her?’
+
+‘Frightens my aunt, sir?’
+
+Mr. Dick nodded. ‘I thought nothing would have frightened her,’ he said,
+‘for she’s--’ here he whispered softly, ‘don’t mention it--the wisest
+and most wonderful of women.’ Having said which, he drew back, to
+observe the effect which this description of her made upon me.
+
+‘The first time he came,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘was--let me see--sixteen
+hundred and forty-nine was the date of King Charles’s execution. I think
+you said sixteen hundred and forty-nine?’
+
+‘Yes, sir.’
+
+‘I don’t know how it can be,’ said Mr. Dick, sorely puzzled and shaking
+his head. ‘I don’t think I am as old as that.’
+
+‘Was it in that year that the man appeared, sir?’ I asked.
+
+‘Why, really’ said Mr. Dick, ‘I don’t see how it can have been in that
+year, Trotwood. Did you get that date out of history?’
+
+‘Yes, sir.’
+
+‘I suppose history never lies, does it?’ said Mr. Dick, with a gleam of
+hope.
+
+‘Oh dear, no, sir!’ I replied, most decisively. I was ingenuous and
+young, and I thought so.
+
+‘I can’t make it out,’ said Mr. Dick, shaking his head. ‘There’s
+something wrong, somewhere. However, it was very soon after the mistake
+was made of putting some of the trouble out of King Charles’s head into
+my head, that the man first came. I was walking out with Miss Trotwood
+after tea, just at dark, and there he was, close to our house.’
+
+‘Walking about?’ I inquired.
+
+‘Walking about?’ repeated Mr. Dick. ‘Let me see, I must recollect a bit.
+N-no, no; he was not walking about.’
+
+I asked, as the shortest way to get at it, what he WAS doing.
+
+‘Well, he wasn’t there at all,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘until he came up behind
+her, and whispered. Then she turned round and fainted, and I stood still
+and looked at him, and he walked away; but that he should have
+been hiding ever since (in the ground or somewhere), is the most
+extraordinary thing!’
+
+‘HAS he been hiding ever since?’ I asked.
+
+‘To be sure he has,’ retorted Mr. Dick, nodding his head gravely. ‘Never
+came out, till last night! We were walking last night, and he came up
+behind her again, and I knew him again.’
+
+‘And did he frighten my aunt again?’
+
+‘All of a shiver,’ said Mr. Dick, counterfeiting that affection and
+making his teeth chatter. ‘Held by the palings. Cried. But, Trotwood,
+come here,’ getting me close to him, that he might whisper very softly;
+‘why did she give him money, boy, in the moonlight?’
+
+‘He was a beggar, perhaps.’
+
+Mr. Dick shook his head, as utterly renouncing the suggestion; and
+having replied a great many times, and with great confidence, ‘No
+beggar, no beggar, no beggar, sir!’ went on to say, that from his window
+he had afterwards, and late at night, seen my aunt give this person
+money outside the garden rails in the moonlight, who then slunk
+away--into the ground again, as he thought probable--and was seen no
+more: while my aunt came hurriedly and secretly back into the house, and
+had, even that morning, been quite different from her usual self; which
+preyed on Mr. Dick’s mind.
+
+I had not the least belief, in the outset of this story, that the
+unknown was anything but a delusion of Mr. Dick’s, and one of the line
+of that ill-fated Prince who occasioned him so much difficulty; but
+after some reflection I began to entertain the question whether an
+attempt, or threat of an attempt, might have been twice made to take
+poor Mr. Dick himself from under my aunt’s protection, and whether
+my aunt, the strength of whose kind feeling towards him I knew from
+herself, might have been induced to pay a price for his peace and quiet.
+As I was already much attached to Mr. Dick, and very solicitous for his
+welfare, my fears favoured this supposition; and for a long time his
+Wednesday hardly ever came round, without my entertaining a misgiving
+that he would not be on the coach-box as usual. There he always
+appeared, however, grey-headed, laughing, and happy; and he never had
+anything more to tell of the man who could frighten my aunt.
+
+These Wednesdays were the happiest days of Mr. Dick’s life; they were
+far from being the least happy of mine. He soon became known to every
+boy in the school; and though he never took an active part in any game
+but kite-flying, was as deeply interested in all our sports as anyone
+among us. How often have I seen him, intent upon a match at marbles
+or pegtop, looking on with a face of unutterable interest, and hardly
+breathing at the critical times! How often, at hare and hounds, have
+I seen him mounted on a little knoll, cheering the whole field on
+to action, and waving his hat above his grey head, oblivious of King
+Charles the Martyr’s head, and all belonging to it! How many a
+summer hour have I known to be but blissful minutes to him in
+the cricket-field! How many winter days have I seen him, standing
+blue-nosed, in the snow and east wind, looking at the boys going down
+the long slide, and clapping his worsted gloves in rapture!
+
+He was an universal favourite, and his ingenuity in little things was
+transcendent. He could cut oranges into such devices as none of us had
+an idea of. He could make a boat out of anything, from a skewer upwards.
+He could turn cramp-bones into chessmen; fashion Roman chariots from old
+court cards; make spoked wheels out of cotton reels, and bird-cages of
+old wire. But he was greatest of all, perhaps, in the articles of string
+and straw; with which we were all persuaded he could do anything that
+could be done by hands.
+
+Mr. Dick’s renown was not long confined to us. After a few Wednesdays,
+Doctor Strong himself made some inquiries of me about him, and I told
+him all my aunt had told me; which interested the Doctor so much that
+he requested, on the occasion of his next visit, to be presented to him.
+This ceremony I performed; and the Doctor begging Mr. Dick, whensoever
+he should not find me at the coach office, to come on there, and rest
+himself until our morning’s work was over, it soon passed into a custom
+for Mr. Dick to come on as a matter of course, and, if we were a little
+late, as often happened on a Wednesday, to walk about the courtyard,
+waiting for me. Here he made the acquaintance of the Doctor’s beautiful
+young wife (paler than formerly, all this time; more rarely seen by
+me or anyone, I think; and not so gay, but not less beautiful), and so
+became more and more familiar by degrees, until, at last, he would come
+into the school and wait. He always sat in a particular corner, on a
+particular stool, which was called ‘Dick’, after him; here he would sit,
+with his grey head bent forward, attentively listening to whatever might
+be going on, with a profound veneration for the learning he had never
+been able to acquire.
+
+This veneration Mr. Dick extended to the Doctor, whom he thought the
+most subtle and accomplished philosopher of any age. It was long before
+Mr. Dick ever spoke to him otherwise than bareheaded; and even when he
+and the Doctor had struck up quite a friendship, and would walk together
+by the hour, on that side of the courtyard which was known among us as
+The Doctor’s Walk, Mr. Dick would pull off his hat at intervals to show
+his respect for wisdom and knowledge. How it ever came about that the
+Doctor began to read out scraps of the famous Dictionary, in these
+walks, I never knew; perhaps he felt it all the same, at first, as
+reading to himself. However, it passed into a custom too; and Mr. Dick,
+listening with a face shining with pride and pleasure, in his heart of
+hearts believed the Dictionary to be the most delightful book in the
+world.
+
+As I think of them going up and down before those schoolroom
+windows--the Doctor reading with his complacent smile, an occasional
+flourish of the manuscript, or grave motion of his head; and Mr. Dick
+listening, enchained by interest, with his poor wits calmly wandering
+God knows where, upon the wings of hard words--I think of it as one of
+the pleasantest things, in a quiet way, that I have ever seen. I feel
+as if they might go walking to and fro for ever, and the world might
+somehow be the better for it--as if a thousand things it makes a noise
+about, were not one half so good for it, or me.
+
+Agnes was one of Mr. Dick’s friends, very soon; and in often coming
+to the house, he made acquaintance with Uriah. The friendship between
+himself and me increased continually, and it was maintained on this odd
+footing: that, while Mr. Dick came professedly to look after me as my
+guardian, he always consulted me in any little matter of doubt that
+arose, and invariably guided himself by my advice; not only having a
+high respect for my native sagacity, but considering that I inherited a
+good deal from my aunt.
+
+One Thursday morning, when I was about to walk with Mr. Dick from the
+hotel to the coach office before going back to school (for we had an
+hour’s school before breakfast), I met Uriah in the street, who reminded
+me of the promise I had made to take tea with himself and his mother:
+adding, with a writhe, ‘But I didn’t expect you to keep it, Master
+Copperfield, we’re so very umble.’
+
+I really had not yet been able to make up my mind whether I liked Uriah
+or detested him; and I was very doubtful about it still, as I stood
+looking him in the face in the street. But I felt it quite an affront to
+be supposed proud, and said I only wanted to be asked.
+
+‘Oh, if that’s all, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘and it really
+isn’t our umbleness that prevents you, will you come this evening?
+But if it is our umbleness, I hope you won’t mind owning to it, Master
+Copperfield; for we are well aware of our condition.’
+
+I said I would mention it to Mr. Wickfield, and if he approved, as I had
+no doubt he would, I would come with pleasure. So, at six o’clock that
+evening, which was one of the early office evenings, I announced myself
+as ready, to Uriah.
+
+‘Mother will be proud, indeed,’ he said, as we walked away together. ‘Or
+she would be proud, if it wasn’t sinful, Master Copperfield.’
+
+‘Yet you didn’t mind supposing I was proud this morning,’ I returned.
+
+‘Oh dear, no, Master Copperfield!’ returned Uriah. ‘Oh, believe me, no!
+Such a thought never came into my head! I shouldn’t have deemed it at
+all proud if you had thought US too umble for you. Because we are so
+very umble.’
+
+‘Have you been studying much law lately?’ I asked, to change the
+subject.
+
+‘Oh, Master Copperfield,’ he said, with an air of self-denial, ‘my
+reading is hardly to be called study. I have passed an hour or two in
+the evening, sometimes, with Mr. Tidd.’
+
+‘Rather hard, I suppose?’ said I. ‘He is hard to me sometimes,’ returned
+Uriah. ‘But I don’t know what he might be to a gifted person.’
+
+After beating a little tune on his chin as he walked on, with the two
+forefingers of his skeleton right hand, he added:
+
+‘There are expressions, you see, Master Copperfield--Latin words
+and terms--in Mr. Tidd, that are trying to a reader of my umble
+attainments.’
+
+‘Would you like to be taught Latin?’ I said briskly. ‘I will teach it
+you with pleasure, as I learn it.’
+
+‘Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,’ he answered, shaking his head. ‘I
+am sure it’s very kind of you to make the offer, but I am much too umble
+to accept it.’
+
+‘What nonsense, Uriah!’
+
+‘Oh, indeed you must excuse me, Master Copperfield! I am greatly
+obliged, and I should like it of all things, I assure you; but I am far
+too umble. There are people enough to tread upon me in my lowly state,
+without my doing outrage to their feelings by possessing learning.
+Learning ain’t for me. A person like myself had better not aspire. If he
+is to get on in life, he must get on umbly, Master Copperfield!’
+
+I never saw his mouth so wide, or the creases in his cheeks so deep, as
+when he delivered himself of these sentiments: shaking his head all the
+time, and writhing modestly.
+
+‘I think you are wrong, Uriah,’ I said. ‘I dare say there are several
+things that I could teach you, if you would like to learn them.’
+
+‘Oh, I don’t doubt that, Master Copperfield,’ he answered; ‘not in the
+least. But not being umble yourself, you don’t judge well, perhaps, for
+them that are. I won’t provoke my betters with knowledge, thank you. I’m
+much too umble. Here is my umble dwelling, Master Copperfield!’
+
+We entered a low, old-fashioned room, walked straight into from the
+street, and found there Mrs. Heep, who was the dead image of Uriah, only
+short. She received me with the utmost humility, and apologized to me
+for giving her son a kiss, observing that, lowly as they were, they
+had their natural affections, which they hoped would give no offence to
+anyone. It was a perfectly decent room, half parlour and half kitchen,
+but not at all a snug room. The tea-things were set upon the table, and
+the kettle was boiling on the hob. There was a chest of drawers with an
+escritoire top, for Uriah to read or write at of an evening; there was
+Uriah’s blue bag lying down and vomiting papers; there was a company of
+Uriah’s books commanded by Mr. Tidd; there was a corner cupboard: and
+there were the usual articles of furniture. I don’t remember that any
+individual object had a bare, pinched, spare look; but I do remember
+that the whole place had.
+
+It was perhaps a part of Mrs. Heep’s humility, that she still wore
+weeds. Notwithstanding the lapse of time that had occurred since Mr.
+Heep’s decease, she still wore weeds. I think there was some compromise
+in the cap; but otherwise she was as weedy as in the early days of her
+mourning.
+
+‘This is a day to be remembered, my Uriah, I am sure,’ said Mrs. Heep,
+making the tea, ‘when Master Copperfield pays us a visit.’
+
+‘I said you’d think so, mother,’ said Uriah.
+
+‘If I could have wished father to remain among us for any reason,’ said
+Mrs. Heep, ‘it would have been, that he might have known his company
+this afternoon.’
+
+I felt embarrassed by these compliments; but I was sensible, too, of
+being entertained as an honoured guest, and I thought Mrs. Heep an
+agreeable woman.
+
+‘My Uriah,’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘has looked forward to this, sir, a long
+while. He had his fears that our umbleness stood in the way, and I
+joined in them myself. Umble we are, umble we have been, umble we shall
+ever be,’ said Mrs. Heep.
+
+‘I am sure you have no occasion to be so, ma’am,’ I said, ‘unless you
+like.’
+
+‘Thank you, sir,’ retorted Mrs. Heep. ‘We know our station and are
+thankful in it.’
+
+I found that Mrs. Heep gradually got nearer to me, and that Uriah
+gradually got opposite to me, and that they respectfully plied me
+with the choicest of the eatables on the table. There was nothing
+particularly choice there, to be sure; but I took the will for the deed,
+and felt that they were very attentive. Presently they began to talk
+about aunts, and then I told them about mine; and about fathers and
+mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then Mrs. Heep began to
+talk about fathers-in-law, and then I began to tell her about mine--but
+stopped, because my aunt had advised me to observe a silence on that
+subject. A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance
+against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of
+dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had
+against Uriah and Mrs. Heep. They did just what they liked with me; and
+wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty
+I blush to think of, the more especially, as in my juvenile frankness, I
+took some credit to myself for being so confidential and felt that I was
+quite the patron of my two respectful entertainers.
+
+They were very fond of one another: that was certain. I take it, that
+had its effect upon me, as a touch of nature; but the skill with which
+the one followed up whatever the other said, was a touch of art which I
+was still less proof against. When there was nothing more to be got
+out of me about myself (for on the Murdstone and Grinby life, and on my
+journey, I was dumb), they began about Mr. Wickfield and Agnes. Uriah
+threw the ball to Mrs. Heep, Mrs. Heep caught it and threw it back to
+Uriah, Uriah kept it up a little while, then sent it back to Mrs. Heep,
+and so they went on tossing it about until I had no idea who had got it,
+and was quite bewildered. The ball itself was always changing too. Now
+it was Mr. Wickfield, now Agnes, now the excellence of Mr. Wickfield,
+now my admiration of Agnes; now the extent of Mr. Wickfield’s business
+and resources, now our domestic life after dinner; now, the wine that
+Mr. Wickfield took, the reason why he took it, and the pity that it was
+he took so much; now one thing, now another, then everything at once;
+and all the time, without appearing to speak very often, or to do
+anything but sometimes encourage them a little, for fear they should be
+overcome by their humility and the honour of my company, I found myself
+perpetually letting out something or other that I had no business to
+let out and seeing the effect of it in the twinkling of Uriah’s dinted
+nostrils.
+
+I had begun to be a little uncomfortable, and to wish myself well out
+of the visit, when a figure coming down the street passed the door--it
+stood open to air the room, which was warm, the weather being close for
+the time of year--came back again, looked in, and walked in, exclaiming
+loudly, ‘Copperfield! Is it possible?’
+
+It was Mr. Micawber! It was Mr. Micawber, with his eye-glass, and
+his walking-stick, and his shirt-collar, and his genteel air, and the
+condescending roll in his voice, all complete!
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, putting out his hand, ‘this is
+indeed a meeting which is calculated to impress the mind with a sense
+of the instability and uncertainty of all human--in short, it is a most
+extraordinary meeting. Walking along the street, reflecting upon the
+probability of something turning up (of which I am at present rather
+sanguine), I find a young but valued friend turn up, who is connected
+with the most eventful period of my life; I may say, with the
+turning-point of my existence. Copperfield, my dear fellow, how do you
+do?’
+
+I cannot say--I really cannot say--that I was glad to see Mr. Micawber
+there; but I was glad to see him too, and shook hands with him,
+heartily, inquiring how Mrs. Micawber was.
+
+‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Micawber, waving his hand as of old, and settling
+his chin in his shirt-collar. ‘She is tolerably convalescent. The twins
+no longer derive their sustenance from Nature’s founts--in short,’ said
+Mr. Micawber, in one of his bursts of confidence, ‘they are weaned--and
+Mrs. Micawber is, at present, my travelling companion. She will be
+rejoiced, Copperfield, to renew her acquaintance with one who has
+proved himself in all respects a worthy minister at the sacred altar of
+friendship.’
+
+I said I should be delighted to see her.
+
+‘You are very good,’ said Mr. Micawber.
+
+Mr. Micawber then smiled, settled his chin again, and looked about him.
+
+‘I have discovered my friend Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber genteelly,
+and without addressing himself particularly to anyone, ‘not in solitude,
+but partaking of a social meal in company with a widow lady, and one who
+is apparently her offspring--in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, in another
+of his bursts of confidence, ‘her son. I shall esteem it an honour to be
+presented.’
+
+I could do no less, under these circumstances, than make Mr. Micawber
+known to Uriah Heep and his mother; which I accordingly did. As they
+abased themselves before him, Mr. Micawber took a seat, and waved his
+hand in his most courtly manner.
+
+‘Any friend of my friend Copperfield’s,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘has a
+personal claim upon myself.’
+
+‘We are too umble, sir,’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘my son and me, to be the
+friends of Master Copperfield. He has been so good as take his tea with
+us, and we are thankful to him for his company, also to you, sir, for
+your notice.’
+
+‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Micawber, with a bow, ‘you are very obliging: and
+what are you doing, Copperfield? Still in the wine trade?’
+
+I was excessively anxious to get Mr. Micawber away; and replied, with my
+hat in my hand, and a very red face, I have no doubt, that I was a pupil
+at Doctor Strong’s.
+
+‘A pupil?’ said Mr. Micawber, raising his eyebrows. ‘I am extremely
+happy to hear it. Although a mind like my friend Copperfield’s’--to
+Uriah and Mrs. Heep--‘does not require that cultivation which, without
+his knowledge of men and things, it would require, still it is a rich
+soil teeming with latent vegetation--in short,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+smiling, in another burst of confidence, ‘it is an intellect capable of
+getting up the classics to any extent.’
+
+Uriah, with his long hands slowly twining over one another, made a
+ghastly writhe from the waist upwards, to express his concurrence in
+this estimation of me.
+
+‘Shall we go and see Mrs. Micawber, sir?’ I said, to get Mr. Micawber
+away.
+
+‘If you will do her that favour, Copperfield,’ replied Mr. Micawber,
+rising. ‘I have no scruple in saying, in the presence of our friends
+here, that I am a man who has, for some years, contended against the
+pressure of pecuniary difficulties.’ I knew he was certain to say
+something of this kind; he always would be so boastful about his
+difficulties. ‘Sometimes I have risen superior to my difficulties.
+Sometimes my difficulties have--in short, have floored me. There have
+been times when I have administered a succession of facers to them;
+there have been times when they have been too many for me, and I have
+given in, and said to Mrs. Micawber, in the words of Cato, “Plato, thou
+reasonest well. It’s all up now. I can show fight no more.” But at no
+time of my life,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘have I enjoyed a higher degree of
+satisfaction than in pouring my griefs (if I may describe difficulties,
+chiefly arising out of warrants of attorney and promissory notes at two
+and four months, by that word) into the bosom of my friend Copperfield.’
+
+Mr. Micawber closed this handsome tribute by saying, ‘Mr. Heep! Good
+evening. Mrs. Heep! Your servant,’ and then walking out with me in his
+most fashionable manner, making a good deal of noise on the pavement
+with his shoes, and humming a tune as we went.
+
+It was a little inn where Mr. Micawber put up, and he occupied a little
+room in it, partitioned off from the commercial room, and strongly
+flavoured with tobacco-smoke. I think it was over the kitchen, because
+a warm greasy smell appeared to come up through the chinks in the floor,
+and there was a flabby perspiration on the walls. I know it was near the
+bar, on account of the smell of spirits and jingling of glasses. Here,
+recumbent on a small sofa, underneath a picture of a race-horse, with
+her head close to the fire, and her feet pushing the mustard off the
+dumb-waiter at the other end of the room, was Mrs. Micawber, to whom Mr.
+Micawber entered first, saying, ‘My dear, allow me to introduce to you a
+pupil of Doctor Strong’s.’
+
+I noticed, by the by, that although Mr. Micawber was just as much
+confused as ever about my age and standing, he always remembered, as a
+genteel thing, that I was a pupil of Doctor Strong’s.
+
+Mrs. Micawber was amazed, but very glad to see me. I was very glad to
+see her too, and, after an affectionate greeting on both sides, sat down
+on the small sofa near her.
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if you will mention to Copperfield what
+our present position is, which I have no doubt he will like to know, I
+will go and look at the paper the while, and see whether anything turns
+up among the advertisements.’
+
+‘I thought you were at Plymouth, ma’am,’ I said to Mrs. Micawber, as he
+went out.
+
+‘My dear Master Copperfield,’ she replied, ‘we went to Plymouth.’
+
+‘To be on the spot,’ I hinted.
+
+‘Just so,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘To be on the spot. But, the truth is,
+talent is not wanted in the Custom House. The local influence of my
+family was quite unavailing to obtain any employment in that department,
+for a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities. They would rather NOT have a man
+of Mr. Micawber’s abilities. He would only show the deficiency of the
+others. Apart from which,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I will not disguise
+from you, my dear Master Copperfield, that when that branch of my
+family which is settled in Plymouth, became aware that Mr. Micawber was
+accompanied by myself, and by little Wilkins and his sister, and by the
+twins, they did not receive him with that ardour which he might have
+expected, being so newly released from captivity. In fact,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, lowering her voice,--‘this is between ourselves--our reception
+was cool.’
+
+‘Dear me!’ I said.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘It is truly painful to contemplate mankind
+in such an aspect, Master Copperfield, but our reception was, decidedly,
+cool. There is no doubt about it. In fact, that branch of my family
+which is settled in Plymouth became quite personal to Mr. Micawber,
+before we had been there a week.’
+
+I said, and thought, that they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
+
+‘Still, so it was,’ continued Mrs. Micawber. ‘Under such circumstances,
+what could a man of Mr. Micawber’s spirit do? But one obvious course
+was left. To borrow, of that branch of my family, the money to return to
+London, and to return at any sacrifice.’
+
+‘Then you all came back again, ma’am?’ I said.
+
+‘We all came back again,’ replied Mrs. Micawber. ‘Since then, I have
+consulted other branches of my family on the course which it is most
+expedient for Mr. Micawber to take--for I maintain that he must take
+some course, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, argumentatively.
+‘It is clear that a family of six, not including a domestic, cannot live
+upon air.’
+
+‘Certainly, ma’am,’ said I.
+
+‘The opinion of those other branches of my family,’ pursued Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘is, that Mr. Micawber should immediately turn his attention
+to coals.’
+
+‘To what, ma’am?’
+
+‘To coals,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘To the coal trade. Mr. Micawber was
+induced to think, on inquiry, that there might be an opening for a
+man of his talent in the Medway Coal Trade. Then, as Mr. Micawber very
+properly said, the first step to be taken clearly was, to come and see
+the Medway. Which we came and saw. I say “we”, Master Copperfield; for
+I never will,’ said Mrs. Micawber with emotion, ‘I never will desert Mr.
+Micawber.’
+
+I murmured my admiration and approbation.
+
+‘We came,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber, ‘and saw the Medway. My opinion of
+the coal trade on that river is, that it may require talent, but that
+it certainly requires capital. Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital, Mr.
+Micawber has not. We saw, I think, the greater part of the Medway; and
+that is my individual conclusion. Being so near here, Mr. Micawber was
+of opinion that it would be rash not to come on, and see the Cathedral.
+Firstly, on account of its being so well worth seeing, and our never
+having seen it; and secondly, on account of the great probability of
+something turning up in a cathedral town. We have been here,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘three days. Nothing has, as yet, turned up; and it may
+not surprise you, my dear Master Copperfield, so much as it would a
+stranger, to know that we are at present waiting for a remittance from
+London, to discharge our pecuniary obligations at this hotel. Until the
+arrival of that remittance,’ said Mrs. Micawber with much feeling, ‘I am
+cut off from my home (I allude to lodgings in Pentonville), from my boy
+and girl, and from my twins.’
+
+I felt the utmost sympathy for Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in this anxious
+extremity, and said as much to Mr. Micawber, who now returned: adding
+that I only wished I had money enough, to lend them the amount they
+needed. Mr. Micawber’s answer expressed the disturbance of his mind. He
+said, shaking hands with me, ‘Copperfield, you are a true friend; but
+when the worst comes to the worst, no man is without a friend who is
+possessed of shaving materials.’ At this dreadful hint Mrs. Micawber
+threw her arms round Mr. Micawber’s neck and entreated him to be calm.
+He wept; but so far recovered, almost immediately, as to ring the bell
+for the waiter, and bespeak a hot kidney pudding and a plate of shrimps
+for breakfast in the morning.
+
+When I took my leave of them, they both pressed me so much to come and
+dine before they went away, that I could not refuse. But, as I knew I
+could not come next day, when I should have a good deal to prepare in
+the evening, Mr. Micawber arranged that he would call at Doctor Strong’s
+in the course of the morning (having a presentiment that the remittance
+would arrive by that post), and propose the day after, if it would suit
+me better. Accordingly I was called out of school next forenoon, and
+found Mr. Micawber in the parlour; who had called to say that the dinner
+would take place as proposed. When I asked him if the remittance had
+come, he pressed my hand and departed.
+
+As I was looking out of window that same evening, it surprised me, and
+made me rather uneasy, to see Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep walk past, arm
+in arm: Uriah humbly sensible of the honour that was done him, and Mr.
+Micawber taking a bland delight in extending his patronage to Uriah. But
+I was still more surprised, when I went to the little hotel next day at
+the appointed dinner-hour, which was four o’clock, to find, from what
+Mr. Micawber said, that he had gone home with Uriah, and had drunk
+brandy-and-water at Mrs. Heep’s.
+
+‘And I’ll tell you what, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘your
+friend Heep is a young fellow who might be attorney-general. If I had
+known that young man, at the period when my difficulties came to a
+crisis, all I can say is, that I believe my creditors would have been a
+great deal better managed than they were.’
+
+I hardly understood how this could have been, seeing that Mr. Micawber
+had paid them nothing at all as it was; but I did not like to
+ask. Neither did I like to say, that I hoped he had not been too
+communicative to Uriah; or to inquire if they had talked much about me.
+I was afraid of hurting Mr. Micawber’s feelings, or, at all events, Mrs.
+Micawber’s, she being very sensitive; but I was uncomfortable about it,
+too, and often thought about it afterwards.
+
+We had a beautiful little dinner. Quite an elegant dish of fish; the
+kidney-end of a loin of veal, roasted; fried sausage-meat; a partridge,
+and a pudding. There was wine, and there was strong ale; and after
+dinner Mrs. Micawber made us a bowl of hot punch with her own hands.
+
+Mr. Micawber was uncommonly convivial. I never saw him such good
+company. He made his face shine with the punch, so that it looked as if
+it had been varnished all over. He got cheerfully sentimental about
+the town, and proposed success to it; observing that Mrs. Micawber and
+himself had been made extremely snug and comfortable there and that he
+never should forget the agreeable hours they had passed in Canterbury.
+He proposed me afterwards; and he, and Mrs. Micawber, and I, took a
+review of our past acquaintance, in the course of which we sold the
+property all over again. Then I proposed Mrs. Micawber: or, at least,
+said, modestly, ‘If you’ll allow me, Mrs. Micawber, I shall now have
+the pleasure of drinking your health, ma’am.’ On which Mr. Micawber
+delivered an eulogium on Mrs. Micawber’s character, and said she
+had ever been his guide, philosopher, and friend, and that he would
+recommend me, when I came to a marrying time of life, to marry such
+another woman, if such another woman could be found.
+
+As the punch disappeared, Mr. Micawber became still more friendly and
+convivial. Mrs. Micawber’s spirits becoming elevated, too, we sang ‘Auld
+Lang Syne’. When we came to ‘Here’s a hand, my trusty frere’, we all
+joined hands round the table; and when we declared we would ‘take a
+right gude Willie Waught’, and hadn’t the least idea what it meant, we
+were really affected.
+
+In a word, I never saw anybody so thoroughly jovial as Mr. Micawber
+was, down to the very last moment of the evening, when I took a hearty
+farewell of himself and his amiable wife. Consequently, I was not
+prepared, at seven o’clock next morning, to receive the following
+communication, dated half past nine in the evening; a quarter of an hour
+after I had left him:--
+
+‘My DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,
+
+‘The die is cast--all is over. Hiding the ravages of care with a sickly
+mask of mirth, I have not informed you, this evening, that there is no
+hope of the remittance! Under these circumstances, alike humiliating to
+endure, humiliating to contemplate, and humiliating to relate, I have
+discharged the pecuniary liability contracted at this establishment,
+by giving a note of hand, made payable fourteen days after date, at
+my residence, Pentonville, London. When it becomes due, it will not be
+taken up. The result is destruction. The bolt is impending, and the tree
+must fall.
+
+‘Let the wretched man who now addresses you, my dear Copperfield, be a
+beacon to you through life. He writes with that intention, and in that
+hope. If he could think himself of so much use, one gleam of day might,
+by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining
+existence--though his longevity is, at present (to say the least of it),
+extremely problematical.
+
+‘This is the last communication, my dear Copperfield, you will ever
+receive
+
+ ‘From
+
+ ‘The
+
+ ‘Beggared Outcast,
+
+ ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
+
+
+I was so shocked by the contents of this heart-rending letter, that I
+ran off directly towards the little hotel with the intention of taking
+it on my way to Doctor Strong’s, and trying to soothe Mr. Micawber with
+a word of comfort. But, half-way there, I met the London coach with Mr.
+and Mrs. Micawber up behind; Mr. Micawber, the very picture of tranquil
+enjoyment, smiling at Mrs. Micawber’s conversation, eating walnuts out
+of a paper bag, with a bottle sticking out of his breast pocket. As they
+did not see me, I thought it best, all things considered, not to
+see them. So, with a great weight taken off my mind, I turned into a
+by-street that was the nearest way to school, and felt, upon the whole,
+relieved that they were gone; though I still liked them very much,
+nevertheless.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 18. A RETROSPECT
+
+
+My school-days! The silent gliding on of my existence--the unseen,
+unfelt progress of my life--from childhood up to youth! Let me think,
+as I look back upon that flowing water, now a dry channel overgrown with
+leaves, whether there are any marks along its course, by which I can
+remember how it ran.
+
+A moment, and I occupy my place in the Cathedral, where we all went
+together, every Sunday morning, assembling first at school for that
+purpose. The earthy smell, the sunless air, the sensation of the world
+being shut out, the resounding of the organ through the black and white
+arched galleries and aisles, are wings that take me back, and hold me
+hovering above those days, in a half-sleeping and half-waking dream.
+
+I am not the last boy in the school. I have risen in a few months, over
+several heads. But the first boy seems to me a mighty creature, dwelling
+afar off, whose giddy height is unattainable. Agnes says ‘No,’ but I say
+‘Yes,’ and tell her that she little thinks what stores of knowledge have
+been mastered by the wonderful Being, at whose place she thinks I, even
+I, weak aspirant, may arrive in time. He is not my private friend
+and public patron, as Steerforth was, but I hold him in a reverential
+respect. I chiefly wonder what he’ll be, when he leaves Doctor Strong’s,
+and what mankind will do to maintain any place against him.
+
+But who is this that breaks upon me? This is Miss Shepherd, whom I love.
+
+Miss Shepherd is a boarder at the Misses Nettingalls’ establishment. I
+adore Miss Shepherd. She is a little girl, in a spencer, with a round
+face and curly flaxen hair. The Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies come to
+the Cathedral too. I cannot look upon my book, for I must look upon
+Miss Shepherd. When the choristers chaunt, I hear Miss Shepherd. In the
+service I mentally insert Miss Shepherd’s name--I put her in among the
+Royal Family. At home, in my own room, I am sometimes moved to cry out,
+‘Oh, Miss Shepherd!’ in a transport of love.
+
+For some time, I am doubtful of Miss Shepherd’s feelings, but, at
+length, Fate being propitious, we meet at the dancing-school. I have
+Miss Shepherd for my partner. I touch Miss Shepherd’s glove, and feel a
+thrill go up the right arm of my jacket, and come out at my hair. I say
+nothing to Miss Shepherd, but we understand each other. Miss Shepherd
+and myself live but to be united.
+
+Why do I secretly give Miss Shepherd twelve Brazil nuts for a present, I
+wonder? They are not expressive of affection, they are difficult to pack
+into a parcel of any regular shape, they are hard to crack, even in
+room doors, and they are oily when cracked; yet I feel that they are
+appropriate to Miss Shepherd. Soft, seedy biscuits, also, I bestow upon
+Miss Shepherd; and oranges innumerable. Once, I kiss Miss Shepherd in
+the cloak-room. Ecstasy! What are my agony and indignation next day,
+when I hear a flying rumour that the Misses Nettingall have stood Miss
+Shepherd in the stocks for turning in her toes!
+
+Miss Shepherd being the one pervading theme and vision of my life, how
+do I ever come to break with her? I can’t conceive. And yet a coolness
+grows between Miss Shepherd and myself. Whispers reach me of Miss
+Shepherd having said she wished I wouldn’t stare so, and having avowed a
+preference for Master Jones--for Jones! a boy of no merit whatever! The
+gulf between me and Miss Shepherd widens. At last, one day, I meet the
+Misses Nettingalls’ establishment out walking. Miss Shepherd makes
+a face as she goes by, and laughs to her companion. All is over. The
+devotion of a life--it seems a life, it is all the same--is at an end;
+Miss Shepherd comes out of the morning service, and the Royal Family
+know her no more.
+
+I am higher in the school, and no one breaks my peace. I am not at all
+polite, now, to the Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies, and shouldn’t
+dote on any of them, if they were twice as many and twenty times as
+beautiful. I think the dancing-school a tiresome affair, and wonder why
+the girls can’t dance by themselves and leave us alone. I am growing
+great in Latin verses, and neglect the laces of my boots. Doctor Strong
+refers to me in public as a promising young scholar. Mr. Dick is wild
+with joy, and my aunt remits me a guinea by the next post.
+
+The shade of a young butcher rises, like the apparition of an armed head
+in Macbeth. Who is this young butcher? He is the terror of the youth
+of Canterbury. There is a vague belief abroad, that the beef suet with
+which he anoints his hair gives him unnatural strength, and that he is
+a match for a man. He is a broad-faced, bull-necked, young butcher, with
+rough red cheeks, an ill-conditioned mind, and an injurious tongue.
+His main use of this tongue, is, to disparage Doctor Strong’s young
+gentlemen. He says, publicly, that if they want anything he’ll give it
+‘em. He names individuals among them (myself included), whom he could
+undertake to settle with one hand, and the other tied behind him. He
+waylays the smaller boys to punch their unprotected heads, and calls
+challenges after me in the open streets. For these sufficient reasons I
+resolve to fight the butcher.
+
+It is a summer evening, down in a green hollow, at the corner of a wall.
+I meet the butcher by appointment. I am attended by a select body of our
+boys; the butcher, by two other butchers, a young publican, and a sweep.
+The preliminaries are adjusted, and the butcher and myself stand face to
+face. In a moment the butcher lights ten thousand candles out of my left
+eyebrow. In another moment, I don’t know where the wall is, or where
+I am, or where anybody is. I hardly know which is myself and which the
+butcher, we are always in such a tangle and tussle, knocking about upon
+the trodden grass. Sometimes I see the butcher, bloody but confident;
+sometimes I see nothing, and sit gasping on my second’s knee; sometimes
+I go in at the butcher madly, and cut my knuckles open against his face,
+without appearing to discompose him at all. At last I awake, very queer
+about the head, as from a giddy sleep, and see the butcher walking off,
+congratulated by the two other butchers and the sweep and publican, and
+putting on his coat as he goes; from which I augur, justly, that the
+victory is his.
+
+I am taken home in a sad plight, and I have beef-steaks put to my eyes,
+and am rubbed with vinegar and brandy, and find a great puffy place
+bursting out on my upper lip, which swells immoderately. For three or
+four days I remain at home, a very ill-looking subject, with a green
+shade over my eyes; and I should be very dull, but that Agnes is a
+sister to me, and condoles with me, and reads to me, and makes the time
+light and happy. Agnes has my confidence completely, always; I tell her
+all about the butcher, and the wrongs he has heaped upon me; she thinks
+I couldn’t have done otherwise than fight the butcher, while she shrinks
+and trembles at my having fought him.
+
+Time has stolen on unobserved, for Adams is not the head-boy in the days
+that are come now, nor has he been this many and many a day. Adams has
+left the school so long, that when he comes back, on a visit to Doctor
+Strong, there are not many there, besides myself, who know him. Adams is
+going to be called to the bar almost directly, and is to be an advocate,
+and to wear a wig. I am surprised to find him a meeker man than I had
+thought, and less imposing in appearance. He has not staggered the world
+yet, either; for it goes on (as well as I can make out) pretty much the
+same as if he had never joined it.
+
+A blank, through which the warriors of poetry and history march on in
+stately hosts that seem to have no end--and what comes next! I am
+the head-boy, now! I look down on the line of boys below me, with a
+condescending interest in such of them as bring to my mind the boy I was
+myself, when I first came there. That little fellow seems to be no part
+of me; I remember him as something left behind upon the road of life--as
+something I have passed, rather than have actually been--and almost
+think of him as of someone else.
+
+And the little girl I saw on that first day at Mr. Wickfield’s, where
+is she? Gone also. In her stead, the perfect likeness of the picture,
+a child likeness no more, moves about the house; and Agnes--my sweet
+sister, as I call her in my thoughts, my counsellor and friend, the
+better angel of the lives of all who come within her calm, good,
+self-denying influence--is quite a woman.
+
+What other changes have come upon me, besides the changes in my growth
+and looks, and in the knowledge I have garnered all this while? I wear
+a gold watch and chain, a ring upon my little finger, and a long-tailed
+coat; and I use a great deal of bear’s grease--which, taken in
+conjunction with the ring, looks bad. Am I in love again? I am. I
+worship the eldest Miss Larkins.
+
+The eldest Miss Larkins is not a little girl. She is a tall, dark,
+black-eyed, fine figure of a woman. The eldest Miss Larkins is not a
+chicken; for the youngest Miss Larkins is not that, and the eldest must
+be three or four years older. Perhaps the eldest Miss Larkins may be
+about thirty. My passion for her is beyond all bounds.
+
+The eldest Miss Larkins knows officers. It is an awful thing to bear. I
+see them speaking to her in the street. I see them cross the way to meet
+her, when her bonnet (she has a bright taste in bonnets) is seen coming
+down the pavement, accompanied by her sister’s bonnet. She laughs and
+talks, and seems to like it. I spend a good deal of my own spare time in
+walking up and down to meet her. If I can bow to her once in the day (I
+know her to bow to, knowing Mr. Larkins), I am happier. I deserve a bow
+now and then. The raging agonies I suffer on the night of the Race Ball,
+where I know the eldest Miss Larkins will be dancing with the military,
+ought to have some compensation, if there be even-handed justice in the
+world.
+
+My passion takes away my appetite, and makes me wear my newest silk
+neckerchief continually. I have no relief but in putting on my best
+clothes, and having my boots cleaned over and over again. I seem, then,
+to be worthier of the eldest Miss Larkins. Everything that belongs to
+her, or is connected with her, is precious to me. Mr. Larkins (a gruff
+old gentleman with a double chin, and one of his eyes immovable in his
+head) is fraught with interest to me. When I can’t meet his daughter,
+I go where I am likely to meet him. To say ‘How do you do, Mr. Larkins?
+Are the young ladies and all the family quite well?’ seems so pointed,
+that I blush.
+
+I think continually about my age. Say I am seventeen, and say that
+seventeen is young for the eldest Miss Larkins, what of that? Besides,
+I shall be one-and-twenty in no time almost. I regularly take walks
+outside Mr. Larkins’s house in the evening, though it cuts me to the
+heart to see the officers go in, or to hear them up in the drawing-room,
+where the eldest Miss Larkins plays the harp. I even walk, on two or
+three occasions, in a sickly, spoony manner, round and round the house
+after the family are gone to bed, wondering which is the eldest Miss
+Larkins’s chamber (and pitching, I dare say now, on Mr. Larkins’s
+instead); wishing that a fire would burst out; that the assembled crowd
+would stand appalled; that I, dashing through them with a ladder, might
+rear it against her window, save her in my arms, go back for something
+she had left behind, and perish in the flames. For I am generally
+disinterested in my love, and think I could be content to make a figure
+before Miss Larkins, and expire.
+
+Generally, but not always. Sometimes brighter visions rise before me.
+When I dress (the occupation of two hours), for a great ball given at
+the Larkins’s (the anticipation of three weeks), I indulge my fancy with
+pleasing images. I picture myself taking courage to make a declaration
+to Miss Larkins. I picture Miss Larkins sinking her head upon my
+shoulder, and saying, ‘Oh, Mr. Copperfield, can I believe my ears!’ I
+picture Mr. Larkins waiting on me next morning, and saying, ‘My dear
+Copperfield, my daughter has told me all. Youth is no objection. Here
+are twenty thousand pounds. Be happy!’ I picture my aunt relenting,
+and blessing us; and Mr. Dick and Doctor Strong being present at the
+marriage ceremony. I am a sensible fellow, I believe--I believe,
+on looking back, I mean--and modest I am sure; but all this goes on
+notwithstanding. I repair to the enchanted house, where there are
+lights, chattering, music, flowers, officers (I am sorry to see), and
+the eldest Miss Larkins, a blaze of beauty. She is dressed in blue, with
+blue flowers in her hair--forget-me-nots--as if SHE had any need to wear
+forget-me-nots. It is the first really grown-up party that I have ever
+been invited to, and I am a little uncomfortable; for I appear not to
+belong to anybody, and nobody appears to have anything to say to me,
+except Mr. Larkins, who asks me how my schoolfellows are, which he
+needn’t do, as I have not come there to be insulted.
+
+But after I have stood in the doorway for some time, and feasted my eyes
+upon the goddess of my heart, she approaches me--she, the eldest Miss
+Larkins!--and asks me pleasantly, if I dance?
+
+I stammer, with a bow, ‘With you, Miss Larkins.’
+
+‘With no one else?’ inquires Miss Larkins.
+
+‘I should have no pleasure in dancing with anyone else.’
+
+Miss Larkins laughs and blushes (or I think she blushes), and says,
+‘Next time but one, I shall be very glad.’
+
+The time arrives. ‘It is a waltz, I think,’ Miss Larkins doubtfully
+observes, when I present myself. ‘Do you waltz? If not, Captain
+Bailey--’
+
+But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss
+Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. He
+is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been
+wretched, too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don’t know where,
+among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a
+blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone
+with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She admires a flower (pink
+camellia japonica, price half-a-crown), in my button-hole. I give it
+her, and say:
+
+‘I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.’
+
+‘Indeed! What is that?’ returns Miss Larkins.
+
+‘A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.’
+
+‘You’re a bold boy,’ says Miss Larkins. ‘There.’
+
+She gives it me, not displeased; and I put it to my lips, and then into
+my breast. Miss Larkins, laughing, draws her hand through my arm, and
+says, ‘Now take me back to Captain Bailey.’
+
+I am lost in the recollection of this delicious interview, and the
+waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain elderly gentleman who
+has been playing whist all night, upon her arm, and says:
+
+‘Oh! here is my bold friend! Mr. Chestle wants to know you, Mr.
+Copperfield.’
+
+I feel at once that he is a friend of the family, and am much gratified.
+
+‘I admire your taste, sir,’ says Mr. Chestle. ‘It does you credit. I
+suppose you don’t take much interest in hops; but I am a pretty
+large grower myself; and if you ever like to come over to our
+neighbourhood--neighbourhood of Ashford--and take a run about our
+place,--we shall be glad for you to stop as long as you like.’
+
+I thank Mr. Chestle warmly, and shake hands. I think I am in a happy
+dream. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins once again. She says I
+waltz so well! I go home in a state of unspeakable bliss, and waltz in
+imagination, all night long, with my arm round the blue waist of my dear
+divinity. For some days afterwards, I am lost in rapturous reflections;
+but I neither see her in the street, nor when I call. I am imperfectly
+consoled for this disappointment by the sacred pledge, the perished
+flower.
+
+‘Trotwood,’ says Agnes, one day after dinner. ‘Who do you think is going
+to be married tomorrow? Someone you admire.’
+
+‘Not you, I suppose, Agnes?’
+
+‘Not me!’ raising her cheerful face from the music she is copying. ‘Do
+you hear him, Papa?--The eldest Miss Larkins.’
+
+‘To--to Captain Bailey?’ I have just enough power to ask.
+
+‘No; to no Captain. To Mr. Chestle, a hop-grower.’
+
+I am terribly dejected for about a week or two. I take off my ring, I
+wear my worst clothes, I use no bear’s grease, and I frequently lament
+over the late Miss Larkins’s faded flower. Being, by that time, rather
+tired of this kind of life, and having received new provocation from
+the butcher, I throw the flower away, go out with the butcher, and
+gloriously defeat him.
+
+This, and the resumption of my ring, as well as of the bear’s grease
+in moderation, are the last marks I can discern, now, in my progress to
+seventeen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 19. I LOOK ABOUT ME, AND MAKE A DISCOVERY
+
+
+I am doubtful whether I was at heart glad or sorry, when my school-days
+drew to an end, and the time came for my leaving Doctor Strong’s. I had
+been very happy there, I had a great attachment for the Doctor, and I
+was eminent and distinguished in that little world. For these reasons
+I was sorry to go; but for other reasons, unsubstantial enough, I
+was glad. Misty ideas of being a young man at my own disposal, of
+the importance attaching to a young man at his own disposal, of the
+wonderful things to be seen and done by that magnificent animal, and the
+wonderful effects he could not fail to make upon society, lured me away.
+So powerful were these visionary considerations in my boyish mind, that
+I seem, according to my present way of thinking, to have left school
+without natural regret. The separation has not made the impression on
+me, that other separations have. I try in vain to recall how I felt
+about it, and what its circumstances were; but it is not momentous in my
+recollection. I suppose the opening prospect confused me. I know that my
+juvenile experiences went for little or nothing then; and that life was
+more like a great fairy story, which I was just about to begin to read,
+than anything else.
+
+My aunt and I had held many grave deliberations on the calling to which
+I should be devoted. For a year or more I had endeavoured to find a
+satisfactory answer to her often-repeated question, ‘What I would like
+to be?’ But I had no particular liking, that I could discover, for
+anything. If I could have been inspired with a knowledge of the science
+of navigation, taken the command of a fast-sailing expedition, and gone
+round the world on a triumphant voyage of discovery, I think I might
+have considered myself completely suited. But, in the absence of any
+such miraculous provision, my desire was to apply myself to some pursuit
+that would not lie too heavily upon her purse; and to do my duty in it,
+whatever it might be.
+
+Mr. Dick had regularly assisted at our councils, with a meditative
+and sage demeanour. He never made a suggestion but once; and on that
+occasion (I don’t know what put it in his head), he suddenly proposed
+that I should be ‘a Brazier’. My aunt received this proposal so very
+ungraciously, that he never ventured on a second; but ever afterwards
+confined himself to looking watchfully at her for her suggestions, and
+rattling his money.
+
+‘Trot, I tell you what, my dear,’ said my aunt, one morning in the
+Christmas season when I left school: ‘as this knotty point is still
+unsettled, and as we must not make a mistake in our decision if we can
+help it, I think we had better take a little breathing-time. In the
+meanwhile, you must try to look at it from a new point of view, and not
+as a schoolboy.’
+
+‘I will, aunt.’
+
+‘It has occurred to me,’ pursued my aunt, ‘that a little change, and a
+glimpse of life out of doors, may be useful in helping you to know your
+own mind, and form a cooler judgement. Suppose you were to go down into
+the old part of the country again, for instance, and see that--that
+out-of-the-way woman with the savagest of names,’ said my aunt, rubbing
+her nose, for she could never thoroughly forgive Peggotty for being so
+called.
+
+‘Of all things in the world, aunt, I should like it best!’
+
+‘Well,’ said my aunt, ‘that’s lucky, for I should like it too. But
+it’s natural and rational that you should like it. And I am very
+well persuaded that whatever you do, Trot, will always be natural and
+rational.’
+
+‘I hope so, aunt.’
+
+‘Your sister, Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt, ‘would have been as
+natural and rational a girl as ever breathed. You’ll be worthy of her,
+won’t you?’
+
+‘I hope I shall be worthy of YOU, aunt. That will be enough for me.’
+
+‘It’s a mercy that poor dear baby of a mother of yours didn’t live,’
+said my aunt, looking at me approvingly, ‘or she’d have been so vain
+of her boy by this time, that her soft little head would have been
+completely turned, if there was anything of it left to turn.’ (My aunt
+always excused any weakness of her own in my behalf, by transferring it
+in this way to my poor mother.) ‘Bless me, Trotwood, how you do remind
+me of her!’
+
+‘Pleasantly, I hope, aunt?’ said I.
+
+‘He’s as like her, Dick,’ said my aunt, emphatically, ‘he’s as like her,
+as she was that afternoon before she began to fret--bless my heart, he’s
+as like her, as he can look at me out of his two eyes!’
+
+‘Is he indeed?’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘And he’s like David, too,’ said my aunt, decisively.
+
+‘He is very like David!’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘But what I want you to be, Trot,’ resumed my aunt, ‘--I don’t mean
+physically, but morally; you are very well physically--is, a firm
+fellow. A fine firm fellow, with a will of your own. With resolution,’
+said my aunt, shaking her cap at me, and clenching her hand. ‘With
+determination. With character, Trot--with strength of character that is
+not to be influenced, except on good reason, by anybody, or by anything.
+That’s what I want you to be. That’s what your father and mother might
+both have been, Heaven knows, and been the better for it.’
+
+I intimated that I hoped I should be what she described.
+
+‘That you may begin, in a small way, to have a reliance upon yourself,
+and to act for yourself,’ said my aunt, ‘I shall send you upon your
+trip, alone. I did think, once, of Mr. Dick’s going with you; but, on
+second thoughts, I shall keep him to take care of me.’
+
+Mr. Dick, for a moment, looked a little disappointed; until the honour
+and dignity of having to take care of the most wonderful woman in the
+world, restored the sunshine to his face.
+
+‘Besides,’ said my aunt, ‘there’s the Memorial--’
+
+‘Oh, certainly,’ said Mr. Dick, in a hurry, ‘I intend, Trotwood, to get
+that done immediately--it really must be done immediately! And then it
+will go in, you know--and then--’ said Mr. Dick, after checking himself,
+and pausing a long time, ‘there’ll be a pretty kettle of fish!’
+
+In pursuance of my aunt’s kind scheme, I was shortly afterwards fitted
+out with a handsome purse of money, and a portmanteau, and tenderly
+dismissed upon my expedition. At parting, my aunt gave me some good
+advice, and a good many kisses; and said that as her object was that I
+should look about me, and should think a little, she would recommend me
+to stay a few days in London, if I liked it, either on my way down into
+Suffolk, or in coming back. In a word, I was at liberty to do what I
+would, for three weeks or a month; and no other conditions were imposed
+upon my freedom than the before-mentioned thinking and looking about me,
+and a pledge to write three times a week and faithfully report myself.
+
+I went to Canterbury first, that I might take leave of Agnes and Mr.
+Wickfield (my old room in whose house I had not yet relinquished), and
+also of the good Doctor. Agnes was very glad to see me, and told me that
+the house had not been like itself since I had left it.
+
+‘I am sure I am not like myself when I am away,’ said I. ‘I seem to
+want my right hand, when I miss you. Though that’s not saying much; for
+there’s no head in my right hand, and no heart. Everyone who knows you,
+consults with you, and is guided by you, Agnes.’
+
+‘Everyone who knows me, spoils me, I believe,’ she answered, smiling.
+
+‘No. It’s because you are like no one else. You are so good, and so
+sweet-tempered. You have such a gentle nature, and you are always
+right.’
+
+‘You talk,’ said Agnes, breaking into a pleasant laugh, as she sat at
+work, ‘as if I were the late Miss Larkins.’
+
+‘Come! It’s not fair to abuse my confidence,’ I answered, reddening at
+the recollection of my blue enslaver. ‘But I shall confide in you, just
+the same, Agnes. I can never grow out of that. Whenever I fall into
+trouble, or fall in love, I shall always tell you, if you’ll let
+me--even when I come to fall in love in earnest.’
+
+‘Why, you have always been in earnest!’ said Agnes, laughing again.
+
+‘Oh! that was as a child, or a schoolboy,’ said I, laughing in my turn,
+not without being a little shame-faced. ‘Times are altering now, and I
+suppose I shall be in a terrible state of earnestness one day or other.
+My wonder is, that you are not in earnest yourself, by this time,
+Agnes.’
+
+Agnes laughed again, and shook her head.
+
+‘Oh, I know you are not!’ said I, ‘because if you had been you would
+have told me. Or at least’--for I saw a faint blush in her face, ‘you
+would have let me find it out for myself. But there is no one that I
+know of, who deserves to love you, Agnes. Someone of a nobler character,
+and more worthy altogether than anyone I have ever seen here, must rise
+up, before I give my consent. In the time to come, I shall have a wary
+eye on all admirers; and shall exact a great deal from the successful
+one, I assure you.’
+
+We had gone on, so far, in a mixture of confidential jest and earnest,
+that had long grown naturally out of our familiar relations, begun as
+mere children. But Agnes, now suddenly lifting up her eyes to mine, and
+speaking in a different manner, said:
+
+‘Trotwood, there is something that I want to ask you, and that I may not
+have another opportunity of asking for a long time, perhaps--something
+I would ask, I think, of no one else. Have you observed any gradual
+alteration in Papa?’
+
+I had observed it, and had often wondered whether she had too. I must
+have shown as much, now, in my face; for her eyes were in a moment cast
+down, and I saw tears in them.
+
+‘Tell me what it is,’ she said, in a low voice.
+
+‘I think--shall I be quite plain, Agnes, liking him so much?’
+
+‘Yes,’ she said.
+
+‘I think he does himself no good by the habit that has increased upon
+him since I first came here. He is often very nervous--or I fancy so.’
+
+‘It is not fancy,’ said Agnes, shaking her head.
+
+‘His hand trembles, his speech is not plain, and his eyes look wild. I
+have remarked that at those times, and when he is least like himself, he
+is most certain to be wanted on some business.’
+
+‘By Uriah,’ said Agnes.
+
+‘Yes; and the sense of being unfit for it, or of not having understood
+it, or of having shown his condition in spite of himself, seems to make
+him so uneasy, that next day he is worse, and next day worse, and so he
+becomes jaded and haggard. Do not be alarmed by what I say, Agnes, but
+in this state I saw him, only the other evening, lay down his head upon
+his desk, and shed tears like a child.’
+
+Her hand passed softly before my lips while I was yet speaking, and in
+a moment she had met her father at the door of the room, and was hanging
+on his shoulder. The expression of her face, as they both looked towards
+me, I felt to be very touching. There was such deep fondness for him,
+and gratitude to him for all his love and care, in her beautiful look;
+and there was such a fervent appeal to me to deal tenderly by him, even
+in my inmost thoughts, and to let no harsh construction find any place
+against him; she was, at once, so proud of him and devoted to him, yet
+so compassionate and sorry, and so reliant upon me to be so, too; that
+nothing she could have said would have expressed more to me, or moved me
+more.
+
+We were to drink tea at the Doctor’s. We went there at the usual hour;
+and round the study fireside found the Doctor, and his young wife, and
+her mother. The Doctor, who made as much of my going away as if I were
+going to China, received me as an honoured guest; and called for a log
+of wood to be thrown on the fire, that he might see the face of his old
+pupil reddening in the blaze.
+
+‘I shall not see many more new faces in Trotwood’s stead, Wickfield,’
+said the Doctor, warming his hands; ‘I am getting lazy, and want ease.
+I shall relinquish all my young people in another six months, and lead a
+quieter life.’
+
+‘You have said so, any time these ten years, Doctor,’ Mr. Wickfield
+answered.
+
+‘But now I mean to do it,’ returned the Doctor. ‘My first master will
+succeed me--I am in earnest at last--so you’ll soon have to arrange our
+contracts, and to bind us firmly to them, like a couple of knaves.’
+
+‘And to take care,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘that you’re not imposed on, eh?
+As you certainly would be, in any contract you should make for yourself.
+Well! I am ready. There are worse tasks than that, in my calling.’
+
+‘I shall have nothing to think of then,’ said the Doctor, with a smile,
+‘but my Dictionary; and this other contract-bargain--Annie.’
+
+As Mr. Wickfield glanced towards her, sitting at the tea table by Agnes,
+she seemed to me to avoid his look with such unwonted hesitation and
+timidity, that his attention became fixed upon her, as if something were
+suggested to his thoughts.
+
+‘There is a post come in from India, I observe,’ he said, after a short
+silence.
+
+‘By the by! and letters from Mr. Jack Maldon!’ said the Doctor.
+
+‘Indeed!’ ‘Poor dear Jack!’ said Mrs. Markleham, shaking her head. ‘That
+trying climate!--like living, they tell me, on a sand-heap, underneath
+a burning-glass! He looked strong, but he wasn’t. My dear Doctor, it was
+his spirit, not his constitution, that he ventured on so boldly. Annie,
+my dear, I am sure you must perfectly recollect that your cousin
+never was strong--not what can be called ROBUST, you know,’ said Mrs.
+Markleham, with emphasis, and looking round upon us generally, ‘--from
+the time when my daughter and himself were children together, and
+walking about, arm-in-arm, the livelong day.’
+
+Annie, thus addressed, made no reply.
+
+‘Do I gather from what you say, ma’am, that Mr. Maldon is ill?’ asked
+Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Ill!’ replied the Old Soldier. ‘My dear sir, he’s all sorts of things.’
+
+‘Except well?’ said Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Except well, indeed!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘He has had dreadful
+strokes of the sun, no doubt, and jungle fevers and agues, and every
+kind of thing you can mention. As to his liver,’ said the Old Soldier
+resignedly, ‘that, of course, he gave up altogether, when he first went
+out!’
+
+‘Does he say all this?’ asked Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Say? My dear sir,’ returned Mrs. Markleham, shaking her head and her
+fan, ‘you little know my poor Jack Maldon when you ask that question.
+Say? Not he. You might drag him at the heels of four wild horses first.’
+
+‘Mama!’ said Mrs. Strong.
+
+‘Annie, my dear,’ returned her mother, ‘once for all, I must really beg
+that you will not interfere with me, unless it is to confirm what I say.
+You know as well as I do that your cousin Maldon would be dragged at the
+heels of any number of wild horses--why should I confine myself to four!
+I WON’T confine myself to four--eight, sixteen, two-and-thirty, rather
+than say anything calculated to overturn the Doctor’s plans.’
+
+‘Wickfield’s plans,’ said the Doctor, stroking his face, and looking
+penitently at his adviser. ‘That is to say, our joint plans for him. I
+said myself, abroad or at home.’
+
+‘And I said’ added Mr. Wickfield gravely, ‘abroad. I was the means of
+sending him abroad. It’s my responsibility.’
+
+‘Oh! Responsibility!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘Everything was done for
+the best, my dear Mr. Wickfield; everything was done for the kindest and
+best, we know. But if the dear fellow can’t live there, he can’t live
+there. And if he can’t live there, he’ll die there, sooner than he’ll
+overturn the Doctor’s plans. I know him,’ said the Old Soldier, fanning
+herself, in a sort of calm prophetic agony, ‘and I know he’ll die there,
+sooner than he’ll overturn the Doctor’s plans.’
+
+‘Well, well, ma’am,’ said the Doctor cheerfully, ‘I am not bigoted to
+my plans, and I can overturn them myself. I can substitute some other
+plans. If Mr. Jack Maldon comes home on account of ill health, he must
+not be allowed to go back, and we must endeavour to make some more
+suitable and fortunate provision for him in this country.’
+
+Mrs. Markleham was so overcome by this generous speech--which, I need
+not say, she had not at all expected or led up to--that she could only
+tell the Doctor it was like himself, and go several times through that
+operation of kissing the sticks of her fan, and then tapping his hand
+with it. After which she gently chid her daughter Annie, for not being
+more demonstrative when such kindnesses were showered, for her sake, on
+her old playfellow; and entertained us with some particulars concerning
+other deserving members of her family, whom it was desirable to set on
+their deserving legs.
+
+All this time, her daughter Annie never once spoke, or lifted up her
+eyes. All this time, Mr. Wickfield had his glance upon her as she sat
+by his own daughter’s side. It appeared to me that he never thought of
+being observed by anyone; but was so intent upon her, and upon his own
+thoughts in connexion with her, as to be quite absorbed. He now asked
+what Mr. Jack Maldon had actually written in reference to himself, and
+to whom he had written?
+
+‘Why, here,’ said Mrs. Markleham, taking a letter from the chimney-piece
+above the Doctor’s head, ‘the dear fellow says to the Doctor
+himself--where is it? Oh!--“I am sorry to inform you that my health is
+suffering severely, and that I fear I may be reduced to the necessity
+of returning home for a time, as the only hope of restoration.” That’s
+pretty plain, poor fellow! His only hope of restoration! But Annie’s
+letter is plainer still. Annie, show me that letter again.’
+
+‘Not now, mama,’ she pleaded in a low tone.
+
+‘My dear, you absolutely are, on some subjects, one of the most
+ridiculous persons in the world,’ returned her mother, ‘and perhaps the
+most unnatural to the claims of your own family. We never should have
+heard of the letter at all, I believe, unless I had asked for it myself.
+Do you call that confidence, my love, towards Doctor Strong? I am
+surprised. You ought to know better.’
+
+The letter was reluctantly produced; and as I handed it to the old lady,
+I saw how the unwilling hand from which I took it, trembled.
+
+‘Now let us see,’ said Mrs. Markleham, putting her glass to her eye,
+‘where the passage is. “The remembrance of old times, my dearest
+Annie”--and so forth--it’s not there. “The amiable old Proctor”--who’s
+he? Dear me, Annie, how illegibly your cousin Maldon writes, and how
+stupid I am! “Doctor,” of course. Ah! amiable indeed!’ Here she left
+off, to kiss her fan again, and shake it at the Doctor, who was looking
+at us in a state of placid satisfaction. ‘Now I have found it. “You may
+not be surprised to hear, Annie,”--no, to be sure, knowing that he never
+was really strong; what did I say just now?--“that I have undergone
+so much in this distant place, as to have decided to leave it at all
+hazards; on sick leave, if I can; on total resignation, if that is
+not to be obtained. What I have endured, and do endure here, is
+insupportable.” And but for the promptitude of that best of creatures,’
+said Mrs. Markleham, telegraphing the Doctor as before, and refolding
+the letter, ‘it would be insupportable to me to think of.’
+
+Mr. Wickfield said not one word, though the old lady looked to him as if
+for his commentary on this intelligence; but sat severely silent, with
+his eyes fixed on the ground. Long after the subject was dismissed,
+and other topics occupied us, he remained so; seldom raising his eyes,
+unless to rest them for a moment, with a thoughtful frown, upon the
+Doctor, or his wife, or both.
+
+The Doctor was very fond of music. Agnes sang with great sweetness and
+expression, and so did Mrs. Strong. They sang together, and played duets
+together, and we had quite a little concert. But I remarked two things:
+first, that though Annie soon recovered her composure, and was quite
+herself, there was a blank between her and Mr. Wickfield which separated
+them wholly from each other; secondly, that Mr. Wickfield seemed
+to dislike the intimacy between her and Agnes, and to watch it with
+uneasiness. And now, I must confess, the recollection of what I had seen
+on that night when Mr. Maldon went away, first began to return upon me
+with a meaning it had never had, and to trouble me. The innocent beauty
+of her face was not as innocent to me as it had been; I mistrusted the
+natural grace and charm of her manner; and when I looked at Agnes by her
+side, and thought how good and true Agnes was, suspicions arose within
+me that it was an ill-assorted friendship.
+
+She was so happy in it herself, however, and the other was so happy too,
+that they made the evening fly away as if it were but an hour. It closed
+in an incident which I well remember. They were taking leave of each
+other, and Agnes was going to embrace her and kiss her, when Mr.
+Wickfield stepped between them, as if by accident, and drew Agnes
+quickly away. Then I saw, as though all the intervening time had been
+cancelled, and I were still standing in the doorway on the night of the
+departure, the expression of that night in the face of Mrs. Strong, as
+it confronted his.
+
+I cannot say what an impression this made upon me, or how impossible I
+found it, when I thought of her afterwards, to separate her from this
+look, and remember her face in its innocent loveliness again. It haunted
+me when I got home. I seemed to have left the Doctor’s roof with a dark
+cloud lowering on it. The reverence that I had for his grey head, was
+mingled with commiseration for his faith in those who were treacherous
+to him, and with resentment against those who injured him. The impending
+shadow of a great affliction, and a great disgrace that had no distinct
+form in it yet, fell like a stain upon the quiet place where I had
+worked and played as a boy, and did it a cruel wrong. I had no pleasure
+in thinking, any more, of the grave old broad-leaved aloe-trees, which
+remained shut up in themselves a hundred years together, and of the trim
+smooth grass-plot, and the stone urns, and the Doctor’s walk, and the
+congenial sound of the Cathedral bell hovering above them all. It was as
+if the tranquil sanctuary of my boyhood had been sacked before my face,
+and its peace and honour given to the winds.
+
+But morning brought with it my parting from the old house, which Agnes
+had filled with her influence; and that occupied my mind sufficiently.
+I should be there again soon, no doubt; I might sleep again--perhaps
+often--in my old room; but the days of my inhabiting there were gone,
+and the old time was past. I was heavier at heart when I packed up such
+of my books and clothes as still remained there to be sent to Dover,
+than I cared to show to Uriah Heep; who was so officious to help me,
+that I uncharitably thought him mighty glad that I was going.
+
+I got away from Agnes and her father, somehow, with an indifferent show
+of being very manly, and took my seat upon the box of the London coach.
+I was so softened and forgiving, going through the town, that I had half
+a mind to nod to my old enemy the butcher, and throw him five shillings
+to drink. But he looked such a very obdurate butcher as he stood
+scraping the great block in the shop, and moreover, his appearance was
+so little improved by the loss of a front tooth which I had knocked out,
+that I thought it best to make no advances.
+
+The main object on my mind, I remember, when we got fairly on the road,
+was to appear as old as possible to the coachman, and to speak extremely
+gruff. The latter point I achieved at great personal inconvenience; but
+I stuck to it, because I felt it was a grown-up sort of thing.
+
+‘You are going through, sir?’ said the coachman.
+
+‘Yes, William,’ I said, condescendingly (I knew him); ‘I am going to
+London. I shall go down into Suffolk afterwards.’
+
+‘Shooting, sir?’ said the coachman.
+
+He knew as well as I did that it was just as likely, at that time of
+year, I was going down there whaling; but I felt complimented, too.
+
+‘I don’t know,’ I said, pretending to be undecided, ‘whether I shall
+take a shot or not.’ ‘Birds is got wery shy, I’m told,’ said William.
+
+‘So I understand,’ said I.
+
+‘Is Suffolk your county, sir?’ asked William.
+
+‘Yes,’ I said, with some importance. ‘Suffolk’s my county.’
+
+‘I’m told the dumplings is uncommon fine down there,’ said William.
+
+I was not aware of it myself, but I felt it necessary to uphold the
+institutions of my county, and to evince a familiarity with them; so I
+shook my head, as much as to say, ‘I believe you!’
+
+‘And the Punches,’ said William. ‘There’s cattle! A Suffolk Punch, when
+he’s a good un, is worth his weight in gold. Did you ever breed any
+Suffolk Punches yourself, sir?’
+
+‘N-no,’ I said, ‘not exactly.’
+
+‘Here’s a gen’lm’n behind me, I’ll pound it,’ said William, ‘as has bred
+‘em by wholesale.’
+
+The gentleman spoken of was a gentleman with a very unpromising squint,
+and a prominent chin, who had a tall white hat on with a narrow flat
+brim, and whose close-fitting drab trousers seemed to button all the way
+up outside his legs from his boots to his hips. His chin was cocked over
+the coachman’s shoulder, so near to me, that his breath quite tickled
+the back of my head; and as I looked at him, he leered at the leaders
+with the eye with which he didn’t squint, in a very knowing manner.
+
+‘Ain’t you?’ asked William.
+
+‘Ain’t I what?’ said the gentleman behind.
+
+‘Bred them Suffolk Punches by wholesale?’
+
+‘I should think so,’ said the gentleman. ‘There ain’t no sort of orse
+that I ain’t bred, and no sort of dorg. Orses and dorgs is some
+men’s fancy. They’re wittles and drink to me--lodging, wife, and
+children--reading, writing, and Arithmetic--snuff, tobacker, and sleep.’
+
+‘That ain’t a sort of man to see sitting behind a coach-box, is it
+though?’ said William in my ear, as he handled the reins.
+
+I construed this remark into an indication of a wish that he should have
+my place, so I blushingly offered to resign it.
+
+‘Well, if you don’t mind, sir,’ said William, ‘I think it would be more
+correct.’
+
+I have always considered this as the first fall I had in life. When I
+booked my place at the coach office I had had ‘Box Seat’ written against
+the entry, and had given the book-keeper half-a-crown. I was got up in
+a special great-coat and shawl, expressly to do honour to that
+distinguished eminence; had glorified myself upon it a good deal; and
+had felt that I was a credit to the coach. And here, in the very first
+stage, I was supplanted by a shabby man with a squint, who had no other
+merit than smelling like a livery-stables, and being able to walk across
+me, more like a fly than a human being, while the horses were at a
+canter!
+
+A distrust of myself, which has often beset me in life on small
+occasions, when it would have been better away, was assuredly not
+stopped in its growth by this little incident outside the Canterbury
+coach. It was in vain to take refuge in gruffness of speech. I spoke
+from the pit of my stomach for the rest of the journey, but I felt
+completely extinguished, and dreadfully young.
+
+It was curious and interesting, nevertheless, to be sitting up there
+behind four horses: well educated, well dressed, and with plenty of
+money in my pocket; and to look out for the places where I had slept on
+my weary journey. I had abundant occupation for my thoughts, in every
+conspicuous landmark on the road. When I looked down at the trampers
+whom we passed, and saw that well-remembered style of face turned up,
+I felt as if the tinker’s blackened hand were in the bosom of my shirt
+again. When we clattered through the narrow street of Chatham, and I
+caught a glimpse, in passing, of the lane where the old monster lived
+who had bought my jacket, I stretched my neck eagerly to look for the
+place where I had sat, in the sun and in the shade, waiting for my
+money. When we came, at last, within a stage of London, and passed the
+veritable Salem House where Mr. Creakle had laid about him with a heavy
+hand, I would have given all I had, for lawful permission to get down
+and thrash him, and let all the boys out like so many caged sparrows.
+
+We went to the Golden Cross at Charing Cross, then a mouldy sort of
+establishment in a close neighbourhood. A waiter showed me into the
+coffee-room; and a chambermaid introduced me to my small bedchamber,
+which smelt like a hackney-coach, and was shut up like a family vault.
+I was still painfully conscious of my youth, for nobody stood in any awe
+of me at all: the chambermaid being utterly indifferent to my opinions
+on any subject, and the waiter being familiar with me, and offering
+advice to my inexperience.
+
+‘Well now,’ said the waiter, in a tone of confidence, ‘what would you
+like for dinner? Young gentlemen likes poultry in general: have a fowl!’
+
+I told him, as majestically as I could, that I wasn’t in the humour for
+a fowl.
+
+‘Ain’t you?’ said the waiter. ‘Young gentlemen is generally tired of
+beef and mutton: have a weal cutlet!’
+
+I assented to this proposal, in default of being able to suggest
+anything else.
+
+‘Do you care for taters?’ said the waiter, with an insinuating smile,
+and his head on one side. ‘Young gentlemen generally has been overdosed
+with taters.’
+
+I commanded him, in my deepest voice, to order a veal cutlet and
+potatoes, and all things fitting; and to inquire at the bar if there
+were any letters for Trotwood Copperfield, Esquire--which I knew there
+were not, and couldn’t be, but thought it manly to appear to expect.
+
+He soon came back to say that there were none (at which I was much
+surprised) and began to lay the cloth for my dinner in a box by the
+fire. While he was so engaged, he asked me what I would take with it;
+and on my replying ‘Half a pint of sherry,’ thought it a favourable
+opportunity, I am afraid, to extract that measure of wine from the
+stale leavings at the bottoms of several small decanters. I am of this
+opinion, because, while I was reading the newspaper, I observed him
+behind a low wooden partition, which was his private apartment, very
+busy pouring out of a number of those vessels into one, like a chemist
+and druggist making up a prescription. When the wine came, too, I
+thought it flat; and it certainly had more English crumbs in it, than
+were to be expected in a foreign wine in anything like a pure state, but
+I was bashful enough to drink it, and say nothing.
+
+Being then in a pleasant frame of mind (from which I infer that
+poisoning is not always disagreeable in some stages of the process), I
+resolved to go to the play. It was Covent Garden Theatre that I chose;
+and there, from the back of a centre box, I saw Julius Caesar and the
+new Pantomime. To have all those noble Romans alive before me, and
+walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern
+taskmasters they had been at school, was a most novel and delightful
+effect. But the mingled reality and mystery of the whole show, the
+influence upon me of the poetry, the lights, the music, the company, the
+smooth stupendous changes of glittering and brilliant scenery, were so
+dazzling, and opened up such illimitable regions of delight, that when I
+came out into the rainy street, at twelve o’clock at night, I felt as if
+I had come from the clouds, where I had been leading a romantic life
+for ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, umbrella-struggling,
+hackney-coach-jostling, patten-clinking, muddy, miserable world.
+
+I had emerged by another door, and stood in the street for a little
+while, as if I really were a stranger upon earth: but the unceremonious
+pushing and hustling that I received, soon recalled me to myself, and
+put me in the road back to the hotel; whither I went, revolving the
+glorious vision all the way; and where, after some porter and oysters,
+I sat revolving it still, at past one o’clock, with my eyes on the
+coffee-room fire.
+
+I was so filled with the play, and with the past--for it was, in a
+manner, like a shining transparency, through which I saw my earlier
+life moving along--that I don’t know when the figure of a handsome
+well-formed young man dressed with a tasteful easy negligence which I
+have reason to remember very well, became a real presence to me. But
+I recollect being conscious of his company without having noticed his
+coming in--and my still sitting, musing, over the coffee-room fire.
+
+At last I rose to go to bed, much to the relief of the sleepy waiter,
+who had got the fidgets in his legs, and was twisting them, and hitting
+them, and putting them through all kinds of contortions in his small
+pantry. In going towards the door, I passed the person who had come in,
+and saw him plainly. I turned directly, came back, and looked again. He
+did not know me, but I knew him in a moment.
+
+At another time I might have wanted the confidence or the decision to
+speak to him, and might have put it off until next day, and might have
+lost him. But, in the then condition of my mind, where the play was
+still running high, his former protection of me appeared so deserving
+of my gratitude, and my old love for him overflowed my breast so freshly
+and spontaneously, that I went up to him at once, with a fast-beating
+heart, and said:
+
+‘Steerforth! won’t you speak to me?’
+
+He looked at me--just as he used to look, sometimes--but I saw no
+recognition in his face.
+
+‘You don’t remember me, I am afraid,’ said I.
+
+‘My God!’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘It’s little Copperfield!’
+
+I grasped him by both hands, and could not let them go. But for very
+shame, and the fear that it might displease him, I could have held him
+round the neck and cried.
+
+‘I never, never, never was so glad! My dear Steerforth, I am so
+overjoyed to see you!’
+
+‘And I am rejoiced to see you, too!’ he said, shaking my hands heartily.
+‘Why, Copperfield, old boy, don’t be overpowered!’ And yet he was glad,
+too, I thought, to see how the delight I had in meeting him affected me.
+
+I brushed away the tears that my utmost resolution had not been able to
+keep back, and I made a clumsy laugh of it, and we sat down together,
+side by side.
+
+‘Why, how do you come to be here?’ said Steerforth, clapping me on the
+shoulder.
+
+‘I came here by the Canterbury coach, today. I have been adopted by
+an aunt down in that part of the country, and have just finished my
+education there. How do YOU come to be here, Steerforth?’
+
+‘Well, I am what they call an Oxford man,’ he returned; ‘that is to say,
+I get bored to death down there, periodically--and I am on my way now to
+my mother’s. You’re a devilish amiable-looking fellow, Copperfield. Just
+what you used to be, now I look at you! Not altered in the least!’
+
+‘I knew you immediately,’ I said; ‘but you are more easily remembered.’
+
+He laughed as he ran his hand through the clustering curls of his hair,
+and said gaily:
+
+‘Yes, I am on an expedition of duty. My mother lives a little way out of
+town; and the roads being in a beastly condition, and our house tedious
+enough, I remained here tonight instead of going on. I have not been in
+town half-a-dozen hours, and those I have been dozing and grumbling away
+at the play.’
+
+‘I have been at the play, too,’ said I. ‘At Covent Garden. What a
+delightful and magnificent entertainment, Steerforth!’
+
+Steerforth laughed heartily.
+
+‘My dear young Davy,’ he said, clapping me on the shoulder again, ‘you
+are a very Daisy. The daisy of the field, at sunrise, is not fresher
+than you are. I have been at Covent Garden, too, and there never was a
+more miserable business. Holloa, you sir!’
+
+This was addressed to the waiter, who had been very attentive to our
+recognition, at a distance, and now came forward deferentially.
+
+‘Where have you put my friend, Mr. Copperfield?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Beg your pardon, sir?’
+
+‘Where does he sleep? What’s his number? You know what I mean,’ said
+Steerforth.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ said the waiter, with an apologetic air. ‘Mr. Copperfield
+is at present in forty-four, sir.’
+
+‘And what the devil do you mean,’ retorted Steerforth, ‘by putting Mr.
+Copperfield into a little loft over a stable?’
+
+‘Why, you see we wasn’t aware, sir,’ returned the waiter, still
+apologetically, ‘as Mr. Copperfield was anyways particular. We can give
+Mr. Copperfield seventy-two, sir, if it would be preferred. Next you,
+sir.’
+
+‘Of course it would be preferred,’ said Steerforth. ‘And do it at once.’
+The waiter immediately withdrew to make the exchange. Steerforth, very
+much amused at my having been put into forty-four, laughed again, and
+clapped me on the shoulder again, and invited me to breakfast with him
+next morning at ten o’clock--an invitation I was only too proud and
+happy to accept. It being now pretty late, we took our candles and went
+upstairs, where we parted with friendly heartiness at his door, and
+where I found my new room a great improvement on my old one, it not
+being at all musty, and having an immense four-post bedstead in it,
+which was quite a little landed estate. Here, among pillows enough for
+six, I soon fell asleep in a blissful condition, and dreamed of ancient
+Rome, Steerforth, and friendship, until the early morning coaches,
+rumbling out of the archway underneath, made me dream of thunder and the
+gods.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 20. STEERFORTH’S HOME
+
+
+When the chambermaid tapped at my door at eight o’clock, and informed
+me that my shaving-water was outside, I felt severely the having no
+occasion for it, and blushed in my bed. The suspicion that she laughed
+too, when she said it, preyed upon my mind all the time I was dressing;
+and gave me, I was conscious, a sneaking and guilty air when I passed
+her on the staircase, as I was going down to breakfast. I was so
+sensitively aware, indeed, of being younger than I could have wished,
+that for some time I could not make up my mind to pass her at all, under
+the ignoble circumstances of the case; but, hearing her there with
+a broom, stood peeping out of window at King Charles on horseback,
+surrounded by a maze of hackney-coaches, and looking anything but regal
+in a drizzling rain and a dark-brown fog, until I was admonished by the
+waiter that the gentleman was waiting for me.
+
+It was not in the coffee-room that I found Steerforth expecting me, but
+in a snug private apartment, red-curtained and Turkey-carpeted, where
+the fire burnt bright, and a fine hot breakfast was set forth on a table
+covered with a clean cloth; and a cheerful miniature of the room, the
+fire, the breakfast, Steerforth, and all, was shining in the little
+round mirror over the sideboard. I was rather bashful at first,
+Steerforth being so self-possessed, and elegant, and superior to me in
+all respects (age included); but his easy patronage soon put that to
+rights, and made me quite at home. I could not enough admire the change
+he had wrought in the Golden Cross; or compare the dull forlorn state
+I had held yesterday, with this morning’s comfort and this morning’s
+entertainment. As to the waiter’s familiarity, it was quenched as if it
+had never been. He attended on us, as I may say, in sackcloth and ashes.
+
+‘Now, Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, when we were alone, ‘I should like
+to hear what you are doing, and where you are going, and all about you.
+I feel as if you were my property.’ Glowing with pleasure to find that
+he had still this interest in me, I told him how my aunt had proposed
+the little expedition that I had before me, and whither it tended.
+
+‘As you are in no hurry, then,’ said Steerforth, ‘come home with me to
+Highgate, and stay a day or two. You will be pleased with my mother--she
+is a little vain and prosy about me, but that you can forgive her--and
+she will be pleased with you.’
+
+‘I should like to be as sure of that, as you are kind enough to say you
+are,’ I answered, smiling.
+
+‘Oh!’ said Steerforth, ‘everyone who likes me, has a claim on her that
+is sure to be acknowledged.’
+
+‘Then I think I shall be a favourite,’ said I.
+
+‘Good!’ said Steerforth. ‘Come and prove it. We will go and see the
+lions for an hour or two--it’s something to have a fresh fellow like you
+to show them to, Copperfield--and then we’ll journey out to Highgate by
+the coach.’
+
+I could hardly believe but that I was in a dream, and that I should wake
+presently in number forty-four, to the solitary box in the coffee-room
+and the familiar waiter again. After I had written to my aunt and told
+her of my fortunate meeting with my admired old schoolfellow, and my
+acceptance of his invitation, we went out in a hackney-chariot, and saw
+a Panorama and some other sights, and took a walk through the Museum,
+where I could not help observing how much Steerforth knew, on an
+infinite variety of subjects, and of how little account he seemed to
+make his knowledge.
+
+‘You’ll take a high degree at college, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘if you have
+not done so already; and they will have good reason to be proud of you.’
+
+‘I take a degree!’ cried Steerforth. ‘Not I! my dear Daisy--will you
+mind my calling you Daisy?’
+
+‘Not at all!’ said I.
+
+‘That’s a good fellow! My dear Daisy,’ said Steerforth, laughing. ‘I
+have not the least desire or intention to distinguish myself in that
+way. I have done quite sufficient for my purpose. I find that I am heavy
+company enough for myself as I am.’
+
+‘But the fame--’ I was beginning.
+
+‘You romantic Daisy!’ said Steerforth, laughing still more heartily:
+‘why should I trouble myself, that a parcel of heavy-headed fellows may
+gape and hold up their hands? Let them do it at some other man. There’s
+fame for him, and he’s welcome to it.’
+
+I was abashed at having made so great a mistake, and was glad to change
+the subject. Fortunately it was not difficult to do, for Steerforth
+could always pass from one subject to another with a carelessness and
+lightness that were his own.
+
+Lunch succeeded to our sight-seeing, and the short winter day wore away
+so fast, that it was dusk when the stage-coach stopped with us at an
+old brick house at Highgate on the summit of the hill. An elderly lady,
+though not very far advanced in years, with a proud carriage and
+a handsome face, was in the doorway as we alighted; and greeting
+Steerforth as ‘My dearest James,’ folded him in her arms. To this lady
+he presented me as his mother, and she gave me a stately welcome.
+
+It was a genteel old-fashioned house, very quiet and orderly. From the
+windows of my room I saw all London lying in the distance like a great
+vapour, with here and there some lights twinkling through it. I had only
+time, in dressing, to glance at the solid furniture, the framed pieces
+of work (done, I supposed, by Steerforth’s mother when she was a girl),
+and some pictures in crayons of ladies with powdered hair and bodices,
+coming and going on the walls, as the newly-kindled fire crackled and
+sputtered, when I was called to dinner.
+
+There was a second lady in the dining-room, of a slight short figure,
+dark, and not agreeable to look at, but with some appearance of good
+looks too, who attracted my attention: perhaps because I had not
+expected to see her; perhaps because I found myself sitting opposite
+to her; perhaps because of something really remarkable in her. She had
+black hair and eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar upon her
+lip. It was an old scar--I should rather call it seam, for it was not
+discoloured, and had healed years ago--which had once cut through her
+mouth, downward towards the chin, but was now barely visible across
+the table, except above and on her upper lip, the shape of which it had
+altered. I concluded in my own mind that she was about thirty years
+of age, and that she wished to be married. She was a little
+dilapidated--like a house--with having been so long to let; yet had, as
+I have said, an appearance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be the
+effect of some wasting fire within her, which found a vent in her gaunt
+eyes.
+
+She was introduced as Miss Dartle, and both Steerforth and his mother
+called her Rosa. I found that she lived there, and had been for a long
+time Mrs. Steerforth’s companion. It appeared to me that she never said
+anything she wanted to say, outright; but hinted it, and made a great
+deal more of it by this practice. For example, when Mrs. Steerforth
+observed, more in jest than earnest, that she feared her son led but a
+wild life at college, Miss Dartle put in thus:
+
+‘Oh, really? You know how ignorant I am, and that I only ask for
+information, but isn’t it always so? I thought that kind of life was
+on all hands understood to be--eh?’ ‘It is education for a very grave
+profession, if you mean that, Rosa,’ Mrs. Steerforth answered with some
+coldness.
+
+‘Oh! Yes! That’s very true,’ returned Miss Dartle. ‘But isn’t it,
+though?--I want to be put right, if I am wrong--isn’t it, really?’
+
+‘Really what?’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
+
+‘Oh! You mean it’s not!’ returned Miss Dartle. ‘Well, I’m very glad to
+hear it! Now, I know what to do! That’s the advantage of asking. I shall
+never allow people to talk before me about wastefulness and profligacy,
+and so forth, in connexion with that life, any more.’
+
+‘And you will be right,’ said Mrs. Steerforth. ‘My son’s tutor is a
+conscientious gentleman; and if I had not implicit reliance on my son, I
+should have reliance on him.’
+
+‘Should you?’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Dear me! Conscientious, is he? Really
+conscientious, now?’
+
+‘Yes, I am convinced of it,’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
+
+‘How very nice!’ exclaimed Miss Dartle. ‘What a comfort! Really
+conscientious? Then he’s not--but of course he can’t be, if he’s really
+conscientious. Well, I shall be quite happy in my opinion of him, from
+this time. You can’t think how it elevates him in my opinion, to know
+for certain that he’s really conscientious!’
+
+Her own views of every question, and her correction of everything that
+was said to which she was opposed, Miss Dartle insinuated in the same
+way: sometimes, I could not conceal from myself, with great power,
+though in contradiction even of Steerforth. An instance happened before
+dinner was done. Mrs. Steerforth speaking to me about my intention
+of going down into Suffolk, I said at hazard how glad I should be, if
+Steerforth would only go there with me; and explaining to him that I was
+going to see my old nurse, and Mr. Peggotty’s family, I reminded him of
+the boatman whom he had seen at school.
+
+‘Oh! That bluff fellow!’ said Steerforth. ‘He had a son with him, hadn’t
+he?’
+
+‘No. That was his nephew,’ I replied; ‘whom he adopted, though, as
+a son. He has a very pretty little niece too, whom he adopted as a
+daughter. In short, his house--or rather his boat, for he lives in one,
+on dry land--is full of people who are objects of his generosity and
+kindness. You would be delighted to see that household.’
+
+‘Should I?’ said Steerforth. ‘Well, I think I should. I must see what
+can be done. It would be worth a journey (not to mention the pleasure of
+a journey with you, Daisy), to see that sort of people together, and to
+make one of ‘em.’
+
+My heart leaped with a new hope of pleasure. But it was in reference
+to the tone in which he had spoken of ‘that sort of people’, that Miss
+Dartle, whose sparkling eyes had been watchful of us, now broke in
+again.
+
+‘Oh, but, really? Do tell me. Are they, though?’ she said.
+
+‘Are they what? And are who what?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘That sort of people.---Are they really animals and clods, and beings of
+another order? I want to know SO much.’
+
+‘Why, there’s a pretty wide separation between them and us,’ said
+Steerforth, with indifference. ‘They are not to be expected to be
+as sensitive as we are. Their delicacy is not to be shocked, or hurt
+easily. They are wonderfully virtuous, I dare say--some people contend
+for that, at least; and I am sure I don’t want to contradict them--but
+they have not very fine natures, and they may be thankful that, like
+their coarse rough skins, they are not easily wounded.’
+
+‘Really!’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Well, I don’t know, now, when I have been
+better pleased than to hear that. It’s so consoling! It’s such a delight
+to know that, when they suffer, they don’t feel! Sometimes I have been
+quite uneasy for that sort of people; but now I shall just dismiss the
+idea of them, altogether. Live and learn. I had my doubts, I confess,
+but now they’re cleared up. I didn’t know, and now I do know, and that
+shows the advantage of asking--don’t it?’
+
+I believed that Steerforth had said what he had, in jest, or to draw
+Miss Dartle out; and I expected him to say as much when she was gone,
+and we two were sitting before the fire. But he merely asked me what I
+thought of her.
+
+‘She is very clever, is she not?’ I asked.
+
+‘Clever! She brings everything to a grindstone,’ said Steerforth, and
+sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own face and figure these years
+past. She has worn herself away by constant sharpening. She is all
+edge.’
+
+‘What a remarkable scar that is upon her lip!’ I said.
+
+Steerforth’s face fell, and he paused a moment.
+
+‘Why, the fact is,’ he returned, ‘I did that.’
+
+‘By an unfortunate accident!’
+
+‘No. I was a young boy, and she exasperated me, and I threw a hammer at
+her. A promising young angel I must have been!’ I was deeply sorry to
+have touched on such a painful theme, but that was useless now.
+
+‘She has borne the mark ever since, as you see,’ said Steerforth; ‘and
+she’ll bear it to her grave, if she ever rests in one--though I can
+hardly believe she will ever rest anywhere. She was the motherless child
+of a sort of cousin of my father’s. He died one day. My mother, who was
+then a widow, brought her here to be company to her. She has a couple of
+thousand pounds of her own, and saves the interest of it every year, to
+add to the principal. There’s the history of Miss Rosa Dartle for you.’
+
+‘And I have no doubt she loves you like a brother?’ said I.
+
+‘Humph!’ retorted Steerforth, looking at the fire. ‘Some brothers are
+not loved over much; and some love--but help yourself, Copperfield!
+We’ll drink the daisies of the field, in compliment to you; and the
+lilies of the valley that toil not, neither do they spin, in compliment
+to me--the more shame for me!’ A moody smile that had overspread his
+features cleared off as he said this merrily, and he was his own frank,
+winning self again.
+
+I could not help glancing at the scar with a painful interest when we
+went in to tea. It was not long before I observed that it was the most
+susceptible part of her face, and that, when she turned pale, that mark
+altered first, and became a dull, lead-coloured streak, lengthening out
+to its full extent, like a mark in invisible ink brought to the fire.
+There was a little altercation between her and Steerforth about a cast
+of the dice at back gammon--when I thought her, for one moment, in a
+storm of rage; and then I saw it start forth like the old writing on the
+wall.
+
+It was no matter of wonder to me to find Mrs. Steerforth devoted to her
+son. She seemed to be able to speak or think about nothing else. She
+showed me his picture as an infant, in a locket, with some of his
+baby-hair in it; she showed me his picture as he had been when I first
+knew him; and she wore at her breast his picture as he was now. All the
+letters he had ever written to her, she kept in a cabinet near her own
+chair by the fire; and she would have read me some of them, and I should
+have been very glad to hear them too, if he had not interposed, and
+coaxed her out of the design.
+
+‘It was at Mr. Creakle’s, my son tells me, that you first became
+acquainted,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, as she and I were talking at one
+table, while they played backgammon at another. ‘Indeed, I recollect his
+speaking, at that time, of a pupil younger than himself who had taken
+his fancy there; but your name, as you may suppose, has not lived in my
+memory.’
+
+‘He was very generous and noble to me in those days, I assure you,
+ma’am,’ said I, ‘and I stood in need of such a friend. I should have
+been quite crushed without him.’
+
+‘He is always generous and noble,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, proudly.
+
+I subscribed to this with all my heart, God knows. She knew I did; for
+the stateliness of her manner already abated towards me, except when she
+spoke in praise of him, and then her air was always lofty.
+
+‘It was not a fit school generally for my son,’ said she; ‘far from it;
+but there were particular circumstances to be considered at the time, of
+more importance even than that selection. My son’s high spirit made
+it desirable that he should be placed with some man who felt its
+superiority, and would be content to bow himself before it; and we found
+such a man there.’
+
+I knew that, knowing the fellow. And yet I did not despise him the more
+for it, but thought it a redeeming quality in him if he could be allowed
+any grace for not resisting one so irresistible as Steerforth.
+
+‘My son’s great capacity was tempted on, there, by a feeling of
+voluntary emulation and conscious pride,’ the fond lady went on to say.
+‘He would have risen against all constraint; but he found himself the
+monarch of the place, and he haughtily determined to be worthy of his
+station. It was like himself.’
+
+I echoed, with all my heart and soul, that it was like himself.
+
+‘So my son took, of his own will, and on no compulsion, to the course
+in which he can always, when it is his pleasure, outstrip every
+competitor,’ she pursued. ‘My son informs me, Mr. Copperfield, that
+you were quite devoted to him, and that when you met yesterday you made
+yourself known to him with tears of joy. I should be an affected woman
+if I made any pretence of being surprised by my son’s inspiring such
+emotions; but I cannot be indifferent to anyone who is so sensible of
+his merit, and I am very glad to see you here, and can assure you that
+he feels an unusual friendship for you, and that you may rely on his
+protection.’
+
+Miss Dartle played backgammon as eagerly as she did everything else.
+If I had seen her, first, at the board, I should have fancied that her
+figure had got thin, and her eyes had got large, over that pursuit, and
+no other in the world. But I am very much mistaken if she missed a
+word of this, or lost a look of mine as I received it with the utmost
+pleasure, and honoured by Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, felt older than
+I had done since I left Canterbury.
+
+When the evening was pretty far spent, and a tray of glasses and
+decanters came in, Steerforth promised, over the fire, that he would
+seriously think of going down into the country with me. There was no
+hurry, he said; a week hence would do; and his mother hospitably said
+the same. While we were talking, he more than once called me Daisy;
+which brought Miss Dartle out again.
+
+‘But really, Mr. Copperfield,’ she asked, ‘is it a nickname? And
+why does he give it you? Is it--eh?--because he thinks you young and
+innocent? I am so stupid in these things.’
+
+I coloured in replying that I believed it was.
+
+‘Oh!’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Now I am glad to know that! I ask for
+information, and I am glad to know it. He thinks you young and innocent;
+and so you are his friend. Well, that’s quite delightful!’
+
+She went to bed soon after this, and Mrs. Steerforth retired too.
+Steerforth and I, after lingering for half-an-hour over the fire,
+talking about Traddles and all the rest of them at old Salem House, went
+upstairs together. Steerforth’s room was next to mine, and I went in to
+look at it. It was a picture of comfort, full of easy-chairs, cushions
+and footstools, worked by his mother’s hand, and with no sort of thing
+omitted that could help to render it complete. Finally, her handsome
+features looked down on her darling from a portrait on the wall, as if
+it were even something to her that her likeness should watch him while
+he slept.
+
+I found the fire burning clear enough in my room by this time, and the
+curtains drawn before the windows and round the bed, giving it a very
+snug appearance. I sat down in a great chair upon the hearth to meditate
+on my happiness; and had enjoyed the contemplation of it for some time,
+when I found a likeness of Miss Dartle looking eagerly at me from above
+the chimney-piece.
+
+It was a startling likeness, and necessarily had a startling look. The
+painter hadn’t made the scar, but I made it; and there it was, coming
+and going; now confined to the upper lip as I had seen it at dinner, and
+now showing the whole extent of the wound inflicted by the hammer, as I
+had seen it when she was passionate.
+
+I wondered peevishly why they couldn’t put her anywhere else instead
+of quartering her on me. To get rid of her, I undressed quickly,
+extinguished my light, and went to bed. But, as I fell asleep, I could
+not forget that she was still there looking, ‘Is it really, though?
+I want to know’; and when I awoke in the night, I found that I was
+uneasily asking all sorts of people in my dreams whether it really was
+or not--without knowing what I meant.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 21. LITTLE EM’LY
+
+
+There was a servant in that house, a man who, I understood, was usually
+with Steerforth, and had come into his service at the University, who
+was in appearance a pattern of respectability. I believe there never
+existed in his station a more respectable-looking man. He was taciturn,
+soft-footed, very quiet in his manner, deferential, observant, always at
+hand when wanted, and never near when not wanted; but his great claim to
+consideration was his respectability. He had not a pliant face, he had
+rather a stiff neck, rather a tight smooth head with short hair clinging
+to it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, with a peculiar habit of
+whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use it
+oftener than any other man; but every peculiarity that he had he made
+respectable. If his nose had been upside-down, he would have made that
+respectable. He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability,
+and walked secure in it. It would have been next to impossible to
+suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable.
+Nobody could have thought of putting him in a livery, he was so highly
+respectable. To have imposed any derogatory work upon him, would have
+been to inflict a wanton insult on the feelings of a most respectable
+man. And of this, I noticed--the women-servants in the household were
+so intuitively conscious, that they always did such work themselves, and
+generally while he read the paper by the pantry fire.
+
+Such a self-contained man I never saw. But in that quality, as in every
+other he possessed, he only seemed to be the more respectable. Even the
+fact that no one knew his Christian name, seemed to form a part of his
+respectability. Nothing could be objected against his surname, Littimer,
+by which he was known. Peter might have been hanged, or Tom transported;
+but Littimer was perfectly respectable.
+
+It was occasioned, I suppose, by the reverend nature of respectability
+in the abstract, but I felt particularly young in this man’s presence.
+How old he was himself, I could not guess--and that again went to his
+credit on the same score; for in the calmness of respectability he might
+have numbered fifty years as well as thirty.
+
+Littimer was in my room in the morning before I was up, to bring me that
+reproachful shaving-water, and to put out my clothes. When I undrew the
+curtains and looked out of bed, I saw him, in an equable temperature
+of respectability, unaffected by the east wind of January, and not
+even breathing frostily, standing my boots right and left in the first
+dancing position, and blowing specks of dust off my coat as he laid it
+down like a baby.
+
+I gave him good morning, and asked him what o’clock it was. He took
+out of his pocket the most respectable hunting-watch I ever saw, and
+preventing the spring with his thumb from opening far, looked in at the
+face as if he were consulting an oracular oyster, shut it up again, and
+said, if I pleased, it was half past eight.
+
+‘Mr. Steerforth will be glad to hear how you have rested, sir.’
+
+‘Thank you,’ said I, ‘very well indeed. Is Mr. Steerforth quite well?’
+
+‘Thank you, sir, Mr. Steerforth is tolerably well.’ Another of his
+characteristics--no use of superlatives. A cool calm medium always.
+
+‘Is there anything more I can have the honour of doing for you, sir? The
+warning-bell will ring at nine; the family take breakfast at half past
+nine.’
+
+‘Nothing, I thank you.’
+
+‘I thank YOU, sir, if you please’; and with that, and with a little
+inclination of his head when he passed the bed-side, as an apology for
+correcting me, he went out, shutting the door as delicately as if I had
+just fallen into a sweet sleep on which my life depended.
+
+Every morning we held exactly this conversation: never any more, and
+never any less: and yet, invariably, however far I might have been
+lifted out of myself over-night, and advanced towards maturer years,
+by Steerforth’s companionship, or Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, or Miss
+Dartle’s conversation, in the presence of this most respectable man I
+became, as our smaller poets sing, ‘a boy again’.
+
+He got horses for us; and Steerforth, who knew everything, gave me
+lessons in riding. He provided foils for us, and Steerforth gave me
+lessons in fencing--gloves, and I began, of the same master, to improve
+in boxing. It gave me no manner of concern that Steerforth should find
+me a novice in these sciences, but I never could bear to show my want of
+skill before the respectable Littimer. I had no reason to believe
+that Littimer understood such arts himself; he never led me to suppose
+anything of the kind, by so much as the vibration of one of his
+respectable eyelashes; yet whenever he was by, while we were practising,
+I felt myself the greenest and most inexperienced of mortals.
+
+I am particular about this man, because he made a particular effect on
+me at that time, and because of what took place thereafter.
+
+The week passed away in a most delightful manner. It passed rapidly, as
+may be supposed, to one entranced as I was; and yet it gave me so many
+occasions for knowing Steerforth better, and admiring him more in a
+thousand respects, that at its close I seemed to have been with him
+for a much longer time. A dashing way he had of treating me like a
+plaything, was more agreeable to me than any behaviour he could have
+adopted. It reminded me of our old acquaintance; it seemed the natural
+sequel of it; it showed me that he was unchanged; it relieved me of
+any uneasiness I might have felt, in comparing my merits with his, and
+measuring my claims upon his friendship by any equal standard; above
+all, it was a familiar, unrestrained, affectionate demeanour that he
+used towards no one else. As he had treated me at school differently
+from all the rest, I joyfully believed that he treated me in life unlike
+any other friend he had. I believed that I was nearer to his heart than
+any other friend, and my own heart warmed with attachment to him. He
+made up his mind to go with me into the country, and the day arrived for
+our departure. He had been doubtful at first whether to take Littimer
+or not, but decided to leave him at home. The respectable creature,
+satisfied with his lot whatever it was, arranged our portmanteaux on
+the little carriage that was to take us into London, as if they were
+intended to defy the shocks of ages, and received my modestly proffered
+donation with perfect tranquillity.
+
+We bade adieu to Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle, with many thanks on
+my part, and much kindness on the devoted mother’s. The last thing I
+saw was Littimer’s unruffled eye; fraught, as I fancied, with the silent
+conviction that I was very young indeed.
+
+What I felt, in returning so auspiciously to the old familiar places,
+I shall not endeavour to describe. We went down by the Mail. I was
+so concerned, I recollect, even for the honour of Yarmouth, that when
+Steerforth said, as we drove through its dark streets to the inn, that,
+as well as he could make out, it was a good, queer, out-of-the-way kind
+of hole, I was highly pleased. We went to bed on our arrival (I observed
+a pair of dirty shoes and gaiters in connexion with my old friend the
+Dolphin as we passed that door), and breakfasted late in the morning.
+Steerforth, who was in great spirits, had been strolling about the
+beach before I was up, and had made acquaintance, he said, with half the
+boatmen in the place. Moreover, he had seen, in the distance, what he
+was sure must be the identical house of Mr. Peggotty, with smoke coming
+out of the chimney; and had had a great mind, he told me, to walk in and
+swear he was myself grown out of knowledge.
+
+‘When do you propose to introduce me there, Daisy?’ he said. ‘I am at
+your disposal. Make your own arrangements.’
+
+‘Why, I was thinking that this evening would be a good time, Steerforth,
+when they are all sitting round the fire. I should like you to see it
+when it’s snug, it’s such a curious place.’
+
+‘So be it!’ returned Steerforth. ‘This evening.’
+
+‘I shall not give them any notice that we are here, you know,’ said I,
+delighted. ‘We must take them by surprise.’
+
+‘Oh, of course! It’s no fun,’ said Steerforth, ‘unless we take them by
+surprise. Let us see the natives in their aboriginal condition.’
+
+‘Though they ARE that sort of people that you mentioned,’ I returned.
+
+‘Aha! What! you recollect my skirmishes with Rosa, do you?’ he exclaimed
+with a quick look. ‘Confound the girl, I am half afraid of her. She’s
+like a goblin to me. But never mind her. Now what are you going to do?
+You are going to see your nurse, I suppose?’
+
+‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘I must see Peggotty first of all.’
+
+‘Well,’ replied Steerforth, looking at his watch. ‘Suppose I deliver you
+up to be cried over for a couple of hours. Is that long enough?’
+
+I answered, laughing, that I thought we might get through it in that
+time, but that he must come also; for he would find that his renown had
+preceded him, and that he was almost as great a personage as I was.
+
+‘I’ll come anywhere you like,’ said Steerforth, ‘or do anything you
+like. Tell me where to come to; and in two hours I’ll produce myself in
+any state you please, sentimental or comical.’
+
+I gave him minute directions for finding the residence of Mr. Barkis,
+carrier to Blunderstone and elsewhere; and, on this understanding, went
+out alone. There was a sharp bracing air; the ground was dry; the sea
+was crisp and clear; the sun was diffusing abundance of light, if not
+much warmth; and everything was fresh and lively. I was so fresh and
+lively myself, in the pleasure of being there, that I could have stopped
+the people in the streets and shaken hands with them.
+
+The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen
+as children always do, I believe, when we go back to them. But I had
+forgotten nothing in them, and found nothing changed, until I came to
+Mr. Omer’s shop. OMER AND Joram was now written up, where OMER used to
+be; but the inscription, DRAPER, TAILOR, HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER,
+&c., remained as it was.
+
+My footsteps seemed to tend so naturally to the shop door, after I had
+read these words from over the way, that I went across the road and
+looked in. There was a pretty woman at the back of the shop, dancing
+a little child in her arms, while another little fellow clung to her
+apron. I had no difficulty in recognizing either Minnie or Minnie’s
+children. The glass door of the parlour was not open; but in the
+workshop across the yard I could faintly hear the old tune playing, as
+if it had never left off.
+
+‘Is Mr. Omer at home?’ said I, entering. ‘I should like to see him, for
+a moment, if he is.’
+
+‘Oh yes, sir, he is at home,’ said Minnie; ‘the weather don’t suit his
+asthma out of doors. Joe, call your grandfather!’
+
+The little fellow, who was holding her apron, gave such a lusty shout,
+that the sound of it made him bashful, and he buried his face in her
+skirts, to her great admiration. I heard a heavy puffing and blowing
+coming towards us, and soon Mr. Omer, shorter-winded than of yore, but
+not much older-looking, stood before me.
+
+‘Servant, sir,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’ ‘You can
+shake hands with me, Mr. Omer, if you please,’ said I, putting out my
+own. ‘You were very good-natured to me once, when I am afraid I didn’t
+show that I thought so.’
+
+‘Was I though?’ returned the old man. ‘I’m glad to hear it, but I don’t
+remember when. Are you sure it was me?’
+
+‘Quite.’
+
+‘I think my memory has got as short as my breath,’ said Mr. Omer,
+looking at me and shaking his head; ‘for I don’t remember you.’
+
+‘Don’t you remember your coming to the coach to meet me, and my having
+breakfast here, and our riding out to Blunderstone together: you, and I,
+and Mrs. Joram, and Mr. Joram too--who wasn’t her husband then?’
+
+‘Why, Lord bless my soul!’ exclaimed Mr. Omer, after being thrown by his
+surprise into a fit of coughing, ‘you don’t say so! Minnie, my dear, you
+recollect? Dear me, yes; the party was a lady, I think?’
+
+‘My mother,’ I rejoined.
+
+‘To--be--sure,’ said Mr. Omer, touching my waistcoat with his
+forefinger, ‘and there was a little child too! There was two parties.
+The little party was laid along with the other party. Over at
+Blunderstone it was, of course. Dear me! And how have you been since?’
+
+Very well, I thanked him, as I hoped he had been too.
+
+‘Oh! nothing to grumble at, you know,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘I find my breath
+gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as
+it comes, and make the most of it. That’s the best way, ain’t it?’
+
+Mr. Omer coughed again, in consequence of laughing, and was assisted out
+of his fit by his daughter, who now stood close beside us, dancing her
+smallest child on the counter.
+
+‘Dear me!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Yes, to be sure. Two parties! Why, in that
+very ride, if you’ll believe me, the day was named for my Minnie to
+marry Joram. “Do name it, sir,” says Joram. “Yes, do, father,” says
+Minnie. And now he’s come into the business. And look here! The
+youngest!’
+
+Minnie laughed, and stroked her banded hair upon her temples, as her
+father put one of his fat fingers into the hand of the child she was
+dancing on the counter.
+
+‘Two parties, of course!’ said Mr. Omer, nodding his head
+retrospectively. ‘Ex-actly so! And Joram’s at work, at this minute, on
+a grey one with silver nails, not this measurement’--the measurement of
+the dancing child upon the counter--‘by a good two inches.---Will you
+take something?’
+
+I thanked him, but declined.
+
+‘Let me see,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Barkis’s the carrier’s wife--Peggotty’s
+the boatman’s sister--she had something to do with your family? She was
+in service there, sure?’
+
+My answering in the affirmative gave him great satisfaction.
+
+‘I believe my breath will get long next, my memory’s getting so much
+so,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir, we’ve got a young relation of hers here,
+under articles to us, that has as elegant a taste in the dress-making
+business--I assure you I don’t believe there’s a Duchess in England can
+touch her.’
+
+‘Not little Em’ly?’ said I, involuntarily.
+
+‘Em’ly’s her name,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘and she’s little too. But if you’ll
+believe me, she has such a face of her own that half the women in this
+town are mad against her.’
+
+‘Nonsense, father!’ cried Minnie.
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘I don’t say it’s the case with you,’ winking
+at me, ‘but I say that half the women in Yarmouth--ah! and in five mile
+round--are mad against that girl.’
+
+‘Then she should have kept to her own station in life, father,’ said
+Minnie, ‘and not have given them any hold to talk about her, and then
+they couldn’t have done it.’
+
+‘Couldn’t have done it, my dear!’ retorted Mr. Omer. ‘Couldn’t have
+done it! Is that YOUR knowledge of life? What is there that any woman
+couldn’t do, that she shouldn’t do--especially on the subject of another
+woman’s good looks?’
+
+I really thought it was all over with Mr. Omer, after he had uttered
+this libellous pleasantry. He coughed to that extent, and his breath
+eluded all his attempts to recover it with that obstinacy, that I fully
+expected to see his head go down behind the counter, and his little
+black breeches, with the rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees,
+come quivering up in a last ineffectual struggle. At length, however,
+he got better, though he still panted hard, and was so exhausted that he
+was obliged to sit on the stool of the shop-desk.
+
+‘You see,’ he said, wiping his head, and breathing with difficulty, ‘she
+hasn’t taken much to any companions here; she hasn’t taken kindly to
+any particular acquaintances and friends, not to mention sweethearts. In
+consequence, an ill-natured story got about, that Em’ly wanted to be a
+lady. Now my opinion is, that it came into circulation principally on
+account of her sometimes saying, at the school, that if she was a lady
+she would like to do so-and-so for her uncle--don’t you see?--and buy
+him such-and-such fine things.’
+
+‘I assure you, Mr. Omer, she has said so to me,’ I returned eagerly,
+‘when we were both children.’
+
+Mr. Omer nodded his head and rubbed his chin. ‘Just so. Then out of a
+very little, she could dress herself, you see, better than most others
+could out of a deal, and that made things unpleasant. Moreover, she was
+rather what might be called wayward--I’ll go so far as to say what I
+should call wayward myself,’ said Mr. Omer; ‘--didn’t know her own mind
+quite--a little spoiled--and couldn’t, at first, exactly bind herself
+down. No more than that was ever said against her, Minnie?’
+
+‘No, father,’ said Mrs. Joram. ‘That’s the worst, I believe.’
+
+‘So when she got a situation,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘to keep a fractious old
+lady company, they didn’t very well agree, and she didn’t stop. At last
+she came here, apprenticed for three years. Nearly two of ‘em are over,
+and she has been as good a girl as ever was. Worth any six! Minnie, is
+she worth any six, now?’
+
+‘Yes, father,’ replied Minnie. ‘Never say I detracted from her!’
+
+‘Very good,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘That’s right. And so, young gentleman,’ he
+added, after a few moments’ further rubbing of his chin, ‘that you may
+not consider me long-winded as well as short-breathed, I believe that’s
+all about it.’
+
+As they had spoken in a subdued tone, while speaking of Em’ly, I had no
+doubt that she was near. On my asking now, if that were not so, Mr.
+Omer nodded yes, and nodded towards the door of the parlour. My hurried
+inquiry if I might peep in, was answered with a free permission; and,
+looking through the glass, I saw her sitting at her work. I saw her, a
+most beautiful little creature, with the cloudless blue eyes, that had
+looked into my childish heart, turned laughingly upon another child
+of Minnie’s who was playing near her; with enough of wilfulness in her
+bright face to justify what I had heard; with much of the old capricious
+coyness lurking in it; but with nothing in her pretty looks, I am sure,
+but what was meant for goodness and for happiness, and what was on a
+good and happy course.
+
+The tune across the yard that seemed as if it never had left off--alas!
+it was the tune that never DOES leave off--was beating, softly, all the
+while.
+
+‘Wouldn’t you like to step in,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘and speak to her? Walk
+in and speak to her, sir! Make yourself at home!’
+
+I was too bashful to do so then--I was afraid of confusing her, and I
+was no less afraid of confusing myself.--but I informed myself of the
+hour at which she left of an evening, in order that our visit might
+be timed accordingly; and taking leave of Mr. Omer, and his pretty
+daughter, and her little children, went away to my dear old Peggotty’s.
+
+Here she was, in the tiled kitchen, cooking dinner! The moment I knocked
+at the door she opened it, and asked me what I pleased to want. I looked
+at her with a smile, but she gave me no smile in return. I had never
+ceased to write to her, but it must have been seven years since we had
+met.
+
+‘Is Mr. Barkis at home, ma’am?’ I said, feigning to speak roughly to
+her.
+
+‘He’s at home, sir,’ returned Peggotty, ‘but he’s bad abed with the
+rheumatics.’
+
+‘Don’t he go over to Blunderstone now?’ I asked.
+
+‘When he’s well he do,’ she answered.
+
+‘Do YOU ever go there, Mrs. Barkis?’
+
+She looked at me more attentively, and I noticed a quick movement of her
+hands towards each other.
+
+‘Because I want to ask a question about a house there, that they call
+the--what is it?--the Rookery,’ said I.
+
+She took a step backward, and put out her hands in an undecided
+frightened way, as if to keep me off.
+
+‘Peggotty!’ I cried to her.
+
+She cried, ‘My darling boy!’ and we both burst into tears, and were
+locked in one another’s arms.
+
+What extravagances she committed; what laughing and crying over me; what
+pride she showed, what joy, what sorrow that she whose pride and joy I
+might have been, could never hold me in a fond embrace; I have not the
+heart to tell. I was troubled with no misgiving that it was young in
+me to respond to her emotions. I had never laughed and cried in all my
+life, I dare say--not even to her--more freely than I did that morning.
+
+‘Barkis will be so glad,’ said Peggotty, wiping her eyes with her apron,
+‘that it’ll do him more good than pints of liniment. May I go and tell
+him you are here? Will you come up and see him, my dear?’
+
+Of course I would. But Peggotty could not get out of the room as easily
+as she meant to, for as often as she got to the door and looked round
+at me, she came back again to have another laugh and another cry upon my
+shoulder. At last, to make the matter easier, I went upstairs with
+her; and having waited outside for a minute, while she said a word of
+preparation to Mr. Barkis, presented myself before that invalid.
+
+He received me with absolute enthusiasm. He was too rheumatic to be
+shaken hands with, but he begged me to shake the tassel on the top of
+his nightcap, which I did most cordially. When I sat down by the side
+of the bed, he said that it did him a world of good to feel as if he
+was driving me on the Blunderstone road again. As he lay in bed, face
+upward, and so covered, with that exception, that he seemed to be
+nothing but a face--like a conventional cherubim--he looked the queerest
+object I ever beheld.
+
+‘What name was it, as I wrote up in the cart, sir?’ said Mr. Barkis,
+with a slow rheumatic smile.
+
+‘Ah! Mr. Barkis, we had some grave talks about that matter, hadn’t we?’
+
+‘I was willin’ a long time, sir?’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+‘A long time,’ said I.
+
+‘And I don’t regret it,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Do you remember what you
+told me once, about her making all the apple parsties and doing all the
+cooking?’
+
+‘Yes, very well,’ I returned.
+
+‘It was as true,’ said Mr. Barkis, ‘as turnips is. It was as true,’ said
+Mr. Barkis, nodding his nightcap, which was his only means of emphasis,
+‘as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.’
+
+Mr. Barkis turned his eyes upon me, as if for my assent to this result
+of his reflections in bed; and I gave it.
+
+‘Nothing’s truer than them,’ repeated Mr. Barkis; ‘a man as poor as I
+am, finds that out in his mind when he’s laid up. I’m a very poor man,
+sir!’
+
+‘I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Barkis.’
+
+‘A very poor man, indeed I am,’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+Here his right hand came slowly and feebly from under the bedclothes,
+and with a purposeless uncertain grasp took hold of a stick which was
+loosely tied to the side of the bed. After some poking about with
+this instrument, in the course of which his face assumed a variety of
+distracted expressions, Mr. Barkis poked it against a box, an end
+of which had been visible to me all the time. Then his face became
+composed.
+
+‘Old clothes,’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+‘Oh!’ said I.
+
+‘I wish it was Money, sir,’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+‘I wish it was, indeed,’ said I.
+
+‘But it AIN’T,’ said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes as wide as he
+possibly could.
+
+I expressed myself quite sure of that, and Mr. Barkis, turning his eyes
+more gently to his wife, said:
+
+‘She’s the usefullest and best of women, C. P. Barkis. All the praise
+that anyone can give to C. P. Barkis, she deserves, and more! My dear,
+you’ll get a dinner today, for company; something good to eat and drink,
+will you?’
+
+I should have protested against this unnecessary demonstration in
+my honour, but that I saw Peggotty, on the opposite side of the bed,
+extremely anxious I should not. So I held my peace.
+
+‘I have got a trifle of money somewhere about me, my dear,’ said Mr.
+Barkis, ‘but I’m a little tired. If you and Mr. David will leave me for
+a short nap, I’ll try and find it when I wake.’
+
+We left the room, in compliance with this request. When we got outside
+the door, Peggotty informed me that Mr. Barkis, being now ‘a little
+nearer’ than he used to be, always resorted to this same device before
+producing a single coin from his store; and that he endured unheard-of
+agonies in crawling out of bed alone, and taking it from that unlucky
+box. In effect, we presently heard him uttering suppressed groans of the
+most dismal nature, as this magpie proceeding racked him in every joint;
+but while Peggotty’s eyes were full of compassion for him, she said his
+generous impulse would do him good, and it was better not to check it.
+So he groaned on, until he had got into bed again, suffering, I have no
+doubt, a martyrdom; and then called us in, pretending to have just
+woke up from a refreshing sleep, and to produce a guinea from under his
+pillow. His satisfaction in which happy imposition on us, and in
+having preserved the impenetrable secret of the box, appeared to be a
+sufficient compensation to him for all his tortures.
+
+I prepared Peggotty for Steerforth’s arrival and it was not long before
+he came. I am persuaded she knew no difference between his having been a
+personal benefactor of hers, and a kind friend to me, and that she would
+have received him with the utmost gratitude and devotion in any case.
+But his easy, spirited good humour; his genial manner, his handsome
+looks, his natural gift of adapting himself to whomsoever he pleased,
+and making direct, when he cared to do it, to the main point of interest
+in anybody’s heart; bound her to him wholly in five minutes. His
+manner to me, alone, would have won her. But, through all these causes
+combined, I sincerely believe she had a kind of adoration for him before
+he left the house that night.
+
+He stayed there with me to dinner--if I were to say willingly, I should
+not half express how readily and gaily. He went into Mr. Barkis’s room
+like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he were healthy
+weather. There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything
+he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming
+impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which
+was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even
+now, in the remembrance.
+
+We made merry in the little parlour, where the Book of Martyrs,
+unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the desk as of old, and where
+I now turned over its terrific pictures, remembering the old sensations
+they had awakened, but not feeling them. When Peggotty spoke of what
+she called my room, and of its being ready for me at night, and of her
+hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much as look at Steerforth,
+hesitating, he was possessed of the whole case.
+
+‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You’ll sleep here, while we stay, and I shall
+sleep at the hotel.’
+
+‘But to bring you so far,’ I returned, ‘and to separate, seems bad
+companionship, Steerforth.’
+
+‘Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally belong?’ he said.
+‘What is “seems”, compared to that?’ It was settled at once.
+
+He maintained all his delightful qualities to the last, until we started
+forth, at eight o’clock, for Mr. Peggotty’s boat. Indeed, they were more
+and more brightly exhibited as the hours went on; for I thought even
+then, and I have no doubt now, that the consciousness of success in his
+determination to please, inspired him with a new delicacy of perception,
+and made it, subtle as it was, more easy to him. If anyone had told me,
+then, that all this was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of
+the moment, for the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love
+of superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was
+worthless to him, and next minute thrown away--I say, if anyone had told
+me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of receiving it my
+indignation would have found a vent! Probably only in an increase, had
+that been possible, of the romantic feelings of fidelity and friendship
+with which I walked beside him, over the dark wintry sands towards the
+old boat; the wind sighing around us even more mournfully, than it had
+sighed and moaned upon the night when I first darkened Mr. Peggotty’s
+door.
+
+‘This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?’
+
+‘Dismal enough in the dark,’ he said: ‘and the sea roars as if it were
+hungry for us. Is that the boat, where I see a light yonder?’ ‘That’s
+the boat,’ said I.
+
+‘And it’s the same I saw this morning,’ he returned. ‘I came straight to
+it, by instinct, I suppose.’
+
+We said no more as we approached the light, but made softly for the
+door. I laid my hand upon the latch; and whispering Steerforth to keep
+close to me, went in.
+
+A murmur of voices had been audible on the outside, and, at the
+moment of our entrance, a clapping of hands: which latter noise, I
+was surprised to see, proceeded from the generally disconsolate Mrs.
+Gummidge. But Mrs. Gummidge was not the only person there who was
+unusually excited. Mr. Peggotty, his face lighted up with uncommon
+satisfaction, and laughing with all his might, held his rough arms
+wide open, as if for little Em’ly to run into them; Ham, with a mixed
+expression in his face of admiration, exultation, and a lumbering sort
+of bashfulness that sat upon him very well, held little Em’ly by
+the hand, as if he were presenting her to Mr. Peggotty; little Em’ly
+herself, blushing and shy, but delighted with Mr. Peggotty’s delight, as
+her joyous eyes expressed, was stopped by our entrance (for she saw us
+first) in the very act of springing from Ham to nestle in Mr. Peggotty’s
+embrace. In the first glimpse we had of them all, and at the moment of
+our passing from the dark cold night into the warm light room, this
+was the way in which they were all employed: Mrs. Gummidge in the
+background, clapping her hands like a madwoman.
+
+The little picture was so instantaneously dissolved by our going in,
+that one might have doubted whether it had ever been. I was in the midst
+of the astonished family, face to face with Mr. Peggotty, and holding
+out my hand to him, when Ham shouted:
+
+‘Mas’r Davy! It’s Mas’r Davy!’
+
+In a moment we were all shaking hands with one another, and asking one
+another how we did, and telling one another how glad we were to meet,
+and all talking at once. Mr. Peggotty was so proud and overjoyed to see
+us, that he did not know what to say or do, but kept over and over again
+shaking hands with me, and then with Steerforth, and then with me, and
+then ruffling his shaggy hair all over his head, and laughing with such
+glee and triumph, that it was a treat to see him.
+
+‘Why, that you two gent’lmen--gent’lmen growed--should come to this here
+roof tonight, of all nights in my life,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘is such a
+thing as never happened afore, I do rightly believe! Em’ly, my darling,
+come here! Come here, my little witch! There’s Mas’r Davy’s friend, my
+dear! There’s the gent’lman as you’ve heerd on, Em’ly. He comes to see
+you, along with Mas’r Davy, on the brightest night of your uncle’s life
+as ever was or will be, Gorm the t’other one, and horroar for it!’
+
+After delivering this speech all in a breath, and with extraordinary
+animation and pleasure, Mr. Peggotty put one of his large hands
+rapturously on each side of his niece’s face, and kissing it a dozen
+times, laid it with a gentle pride and love upon his broad chest, and
+patted it as if his hand had been a lady’s. Then he let her go; and as
+she ran into the little chamber where I used to sleep, looked round upon
+us, quite hot and out of breath with his uncommon satisfaction.
+
+‘If you two gent’lmen--gent’lmen growed now, and such gent’lmen--’ said
+Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘So th’ are, so th’ are!’ cried Ham. ‘Well said! So th’ are. Mas’r Davy
+bor’--gent’lmen growed--so th’ are!’
+
+‘If you two gent’lmen, gent’lmen growed,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘don’t
+ex-cuse me for being in a state of mind, when you understand matters,
+I’ll arks your pardon. Em’ly, my dear!--She knows I’m a going to tell,’
+here his delight broke out again, ‘and has made off. Would you be so
+good as look arter her, Mawther, for a minute?’
+
+Mrs. Gummidge nodded and disappeared.
+
+‘If this ain’t,’ said Mr. Peggotty, sitting down among us by the fire,
+‘the brightest night o’ my life, I’m a shellfish--biled too--and more I
+can’t say. This here little Em’ly, sir,’ in a low voice to Steerforth,
+‘--her as you see a blushing here just now--’
+
+Steerforth only nodded; but with such a pleased expression of interest,
+and of participation in Mr. Peggotty’s feelings, that the latter
+answered him as if he had spoken.
+
+‘To be sure,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘That’s her, and so she is. Thankee,
+sir.’
+
+Ham nodded to me several times, as if he would have said so too.
+
+‘This here little Em’ly of ours,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘has been, in our
+house, what I suppose (I’m a ignorant man, but that’s my belief) no one
+but a little bright-eyed creetur can be in a house. She ain’t my
+child; I never had one; but I couldn’t love her more. You understand! I
+couldn’t do it!’
+
+‘I quite understand,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘I know you do, sir,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘and thankee again. Mas’r
+Davy, he can remember what she was; you may judge for your own self what
+she is; but neither of you can’t fully know what she has been, is, and
+will be, to my loving art. I am rough, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I am as
+rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one, unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can
+know, I think, what our little Em’ly is to me. And betwixt ourselves,’
+sinking his voice lower yet, ‘that woman’s name ain’t Missis Gummidge
+neither, though she has a world of merits.’ Mr. Peggotty ruffled his
+hair again, with both hands, as a further preparation for what he was
+going to say, and went on, with a hand upon each of his knees:
+
+‘There was a certain person as had know’d our Em’ly, from the time when
+her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a babby, when
+a young gal, when a woman. Not much of a person to look at, he warn’t,’
+said Mr. Peggotty, ‘something o’ my own build--rough--a good deal o’
+the sou’-wester in him--wery salt--but, on the whole, a honest sort of a
+chap, with his art in the right place.’
+
+I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to which
+he sat grinning at us now.
+
+‘What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,’ said Mr. Peggotty,
+with his face one high noon of enjoyment, ‘but he loses that there art
+of his to our little Em’ly. He follers her about, he makes hisself a
+sort o’ servant to her, he loses in a great measure his relish for his
+wittles, and in the long-run he makes it clear to me wot’s amiss. Now I
+could wish myself, you see, that our little Em’ly was in a fair way of
+being married. I could wish to see her, at all ewents, under articles to
+a honest man as had a right to defend her. I don’t know how long I may
+live, or how soon I may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any
+night, in a gale of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the
+town-lights shining for the last time over the rollers as I couldn’t
+make no head against, I could go down quieter for thinking “There’s a
+man ashore there, iron-true to my little Em’ly, God bless her, and no
+wrong can touch my Em’ly while so be as that man lives.”’
+
+Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right arm, as if he were
+waving it at the town-lights for the last time, and then, exchanging a
+nod with Ham, whose eye he caught, proceeded as before.
+
+‘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 expression 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 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 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
+joy, my boy. My hand upon that, too! Daisy, stir the fire, and make it a
+brisk one! and Mr. Peggotty, unless you can induce your gentle niece to
+come back (for whom I vacate this seat in the corner), I shall go.
+Any gap at your fireside on such a night--such a gap least of all--I
+wouldn’t make, for the wealth of the Indies!’
+
+So Mr. Peggotty went into my old room to fetch little Em’ly. At first
+little Em’ly didn’t like to come, and then Ham went. Presently they
+brought her to the fireside, very much confused, and very shy,--but
+she soon became more assured when she found how gently and respectfully
+Steerforth spoke to her; how skilfully he avoided anything that would
+embarrass her; how he talked to Mr. Peggotty of boats, and ships, and
+tides, and fish; how he referred to me about the time when he had seen
+Mr. Peggotty at Salem House; how delighted he was with the boat and all
+belonging to it; how lightly and easily he carried on, until he brought
+us, by degrees, into a charmed circle, and we were all talking away
+without any reserve.
+
+Em’ly, indeed, said little all the evening; but she looked, and
+listened, and her face got animated, and she was charming. Steerforth
+told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which arose out of his talk with Mr.
+Peggotty), as if he saw it all before him--and little Em’ly’s eyes were
+fastened on him all the time, as if she saw it too. He told us a merry
+adventure of his own, as a relief to that, with as much gaiety as if the
+narrative were as fresh to him as it was to us--and little Em’ly
+laughed until the boat rang with the musical sounds, and we all laughed
+(Steerforth too), in irresistible sympathy with what was so pleasant and
+light-hearted. He got Mr. Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, ‘When
+the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow’; and he sang a sailor’s
+song himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have almost
+fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round the house, and
+murmuring low through our unbroken silence, was there to listen.
+
+As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success
+never attained by anyone else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me), since
+the decease of the old one. He left her so little leisure for being
+miserable, that she said next day she thought she must have been
+bewitched.
+
+But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the conversation.
+When little Em’ly grew more courageous, and talked (but still bashfully)
+across the fire to me, of our old wanderings upon the beach, to pick up
+shells and pebbles; and when I asked her if she recollected how I used
+to be devoted to her; and when we both laughed and reddened, casting
+these looks back on the pleasant old times, so unreal to look at now; he
+was silent and attentive, and observed us thoughtfully. She sat, at this
+time, and all the evening, on the old locker in her old little corner
+by the fire--Ham beside her, where I used to sit. I could not satisfy
+myself whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or in a maidenly
+reserve before us, that she kept quite close to the wall, and away from
+him; but I observed that she did so, all the evening.
+
+As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took our leave. We had had
+some biscuit and dried fish for supper, and Steerforth had produced from
+his pocket a full flask of Hollands, which we men (I may say we men,
+now, without a blush) had emptied. We parted merrily; and as they all
+stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they could upon our
+road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em’ly peeping after us, from
+behind Ham, and heard her soft voice calling to us to be careful how we
+went.
+
+‘A most engaging little Beauty!’ said Steerforth, taking my arm. ‘Well!
+It’s a quaint place, and they are quaint company, and it’s quite a new
+sensation to mix with them.’
+
+‘How fortunate we are, too,’ I returned, ‘to have arrived to witness
+their happiness in that intended marriage! I never saw people so happy.
+How delightful to see it, and to be made the sharers in their honest
+joy, as we have been!’
+
+‘That’s rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn’t he?’ said
+Steerforth.
+
+He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that I felt a shock
+in this unexpected and cold reply. But turning quickly upon him, and
+seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved:
+
+‘Ah, Steerforth! It’s well for you to joke about the poor! You may
+skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from
+me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how
+exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman’s,
+or humour a love like my old nurse’s, I know that there is not a joy or
+sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you.
+And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!’
+
+He stopped, and, looking in my face, said, ‘Daisy, I believe you are
+in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!’ Next moment he was
+gaily singing Mr. Peggotty’s song, as we walked at a round pace back to
+Yarmouth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 22. SOME OLD SCENES, AND SOME NEW PEOPLE
+
+
+Steerforth and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of the
+country. We were very much together, I need not say; but occasionally we
+were asunder for some hours at a time. He was a good sailor, and I was
+but an indifferent one; and when he went out boating with Mr. Peggotty,
+which was a favourite amusement of his, I generally remained ashore. My
+occupation of Peggotty’s spare-room put a constraint upon me, from which
+he was free: for, knowing how assiduously she attended on Mr. Barkis
+all day, I did not like to remain out late at night; whereas Steerforth,
+lying at the Inn, had nothing to consult but his own humour. Thus it
+came about, that I heard of his making little treats for the fishermen
+at Mr. Peggotty’s house of call, ‘The Willing Mind’, after I was in bed,
+and of his being afloat, wrapped in fishermen’s clothes, whole moonlight
+nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at flood. By this
+time, however, I knew that his restless nature and bold spirits
+delighted to find a vent in rough toil and hard weather, as in any other
+means of excitement that presented itself freshly to him; so none of his
+proceedings surprised me.
+
+Another cause of our being sometimes apart, was, that I had naturally an
+interest in going over to Blunderstone, and revisiting the old familiar
+scenes of my childhood; while Steerforth, after being there once, had
+naturally no great interest in going there again. Hence, on three or
+four days that I can at once recall, we went our several ways after an
+early breakfast, and met again at a late dinner. I had no idea how he
+employed his time in the interval, beyond a general knowledge that
+he was very popular in the place, and had twenty means of actively
+diverting himself where another man might not have found one.
+
+For my own part, my occupation in my solitary pilgrimages was to recall
+every yard of the old road as I went along it, and to haunt the old
+spots, of which I never tired. I haunted them, as my memory had often
+done, and lingered among them as my younger thoughts had lingered when I
+was far away. The grave beneath the tree, where both my parents lay--on
+which I had looked out, when it was my father’s only, with such curious
+feelings of compassion, and by which I had stood, so desolate, when it
+was opened to receive my pretty mother and her baby--the grave which
+Peggotty’s own faithful care had ever since kept neat, and made a garden
+of, I walked near, by the hour. It lay a little off the churchyard path,
+in a quiet corner, not so far removed but I could read the names
+upon the stone as I walked to and fro, startled by the sound of the
+church-bell when it struck the hour, for it was like a departed voice to
+me. My reflections at these times were always associated with the figure
+I was to make in life, and the distinguished things I was to do. My
+echoing footsteps went to no other tune, but were as constant to that as
+if I had come home to build my castles in the air at a living mother’s
+side.
+
+There were great changes in my old home. The ragged nests, so long
+deserted by the rooks, were gone; and the trees were lopped and topped
+out of their remembered shapes. The garden had run wild, and half the
+windows of the house were shut up. It was occupied, but only by a poor
+lunatic gentleman, and the people who took care of him. He was always
+sitting at my little window, looking out into the churchyard; and I
+wondered whether his rambling thoughts ever went upon any of the fancies
+that used to occupy mine, on the rosy mornings when I peeped out of
+that same little window in my night-clothes, and saw the sheep quietly
+feeding in the light of the rising sun.
+
+Our old neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Grayper, were gone to South America,
+and the rain had made its way through the roof of their empty house,
+and stained the outer walls. Mr. Chillip was married again to a tall,
+raw-boned, high-nosed wife; and they had a weazen little baby, with a
+heavy head that it couldn’t hold up, and two weak staring eyes, with
+which it seemed to be always wondering why it had ever been born.
+
+It was with a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure that I used to
+linger about my native place, until the reddening winter sun admonished
+me that it was time to start on my returning walk. But, when the place
+was left behind, and especially when Steerforth and I were happily
+seated over our dinner by a blazing fire, it was delicious to think of
+having been there. So it was, though in a softened degree, when I
+went to my neat room at night; and, turning over the leaves of the
+crocodile-book (which was always there, upon a little table), remembered
+with a grateful heart how blest I was in having such a friend as
+Steerforth, such a friend as Peggotty, and such a substitute for what I
+had lost as my excellent and generous aunt.
+
+MY nearest way to Yarmouth, in coming back from these long walks, was by
+a ferry. It landed me on the flat between the town and the sea, which I
+could make straight across, and so save myself a considerable circuit by
+the high road. Mr. Peggotty’s house being on that waste-place, and not
+a hundred yards out of my track, I always looked in as I went by.
+Steerforth was pretty sure to be there expecting me, and we went on
+together through the frosty air and gathering fog towards the twinkling
+lights of the town.
+
+One dark evening, when I was later than usual--for I had, that day, been
+making my parting visit to Blunderstone, as we were now about to return
+home--I found him alone in Mr. Peggotty’s house, sitting thoughtfully
+before the fire. He was so intent upon his own reflections that he was
+quite unconscious of my approach. This, indeed, he might easily have
+been if he had been less absorbed, for footsteps fell noiselessly on the
+sandy ground outside; but even my entrance failed to rouse him. I was
+standing close to him, looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he
+was lost in his meditations.
+
+He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoulder, that he made
+me start too.
+
+‘You come upon me,’ he said, almost angrily, ‘like a reproachful ghost!’
+
+‘I was obliged to announce myself, somehow,’ I replied. ‘Have I called
+you down from the stars?’
+
+‘No,’ he answered. ‘No.’
+
+‘Up from anywhere, then?’ said I, taking my seat near him.
+
+‘I was looking at the pictures in the fire,’ he returned.
+
+‘But you are spoiling them for me,’ said I, as he stirred it quickly
+with a piece of burning wood, striking out of it a train of red-hot
+sparks that went careering up the little chimney, and roaring out into
+the air.
+
+‘You would not have seen them,’ he returned. ‘I detest this mongrel
+time, neither day nor night. How late you are! Where have you been?’
+
+‘I have been taking leave of my usual walk,’ said I.
+
+‘And I have been sitting here,’ said Steerforth, glancing round the
+room, ‘thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of
+our coming down, might--to judge from the present wasted air of the
+place--be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don’t know what harm. David,
+I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!’
+
+‘My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?’
+
+‘I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!’ he exclaimed. ‘I
+wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!’
+
+There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me. He
+was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.
+
+‘It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew,’
+he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with
+his face towards the fire, ‘than to be myself, twenty times richer and
+twenty times wiser, and be the torment to myself that I have been, in
+this Devil’s bark of a boat, within the last half-hour!’
+
+I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at first I could only
+observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his head upon his hand, and
+looking gloomily down at the fire. At length I begged him, with all
+the earnestness I felt, to tell me what had occurred to cross him so
+unusually, and to let me sympathize with him, if I could not hope to
+advise him. Before I had well concluded, he began to laugh--fretfully at
+first, but soon with returning gaiety.
+
+‘Tut, it’s nothing, Daisy! nothing!’ he replied. ‘I told you at the
+inn in London, I am heavy company for myself, sometimes. I have been a
+nightmare to myself, just now--must have had one, I think. At odd dull
+times, nursery tales come up into the memory, unrecognized for what
+they are. I believe I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who
+“didn’t care”, and became food for lions--a grander kind of going to
+the dogs, I suppose. What old women call the horrors, have been creeping
+over me from head to foot. I have been afraid of myself.’
+
+‘You are afraid of nothing else, I think,’ said I.
+
+‘Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of too,’ he answered.
+‘Well! So it goes by! I am not about to be hipped again, David; but I
+tell you, my good fellow, once more, that it would have been well for me
+(and for more than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious father!’
+
+His face was always full of expression, but I never saw it express such
+a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words, with his glance
+bent on the fire.
+
+‘So much for that!’ he said, making as if he tossed something light
+into the air, with his hand. “‘Why, being gone, I am a man again,” like
+Macbeth. And now for dinner! If I have not (Macbeth-like) broken up the
+feast with most admired disorder, Daisy.’
+
+‘But where are they all, I wonder!’ said I.
+
+‘God knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘After strolling to the ferry looking
+for you, I strolled in here and found the place deserted. That set me
+thinking, and you found me thinking.’
+
+The advent of Mrs. Gummidge with a basket, explained how the house had
+happened to be empty. She had hurried out to buy something that was
+needed, against Mr. Peggotty’s return with the tide; and had left the
+door open in the meanwhile, lest Ham and little Em’ly, with whom it was
+an early night, should come home while she was gone. Steerforth, after
+very much improving Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits by a cheerful salutation and
+a jocose embrace, took my arm, and hurried me away.
+
+He had improved his own spirits, no less than Mrs. Gummidge’s, for
+they were again at their usual flow, and he was full of vivacious
+conversation as we went along.
+
+‘And so,’ he said, gaily, ‘we abandon this buccaneer life tomorrow, do
+we?’
+
+‘So we agreed,’ I returned. ‘And our places by the coach are taken, you
+know.’
+
+‘Ay! there’s no help for it, I suppose,’ said Steerforth. ‘I have
+almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world but to go out
+tossing on the sea here. I wish there was not.’
+
+‘As long as the novelty should last,’ said I, laughing.
+
+‘Like enough,’ he returned; ‘though there’s a sarcastic meaning in that
+observation for an amiable piece of innocence like my young friend.
+Well! I dare say I am a capricious fellow, David. I know I am; but
+while the iron is hot, I can strike it vigorously too. I could pass
+a reasonably good examination already, as a pilot in these waters, I
+think.’
+
+‘Mr. Peggotty says you are a wonder,’ I returned.
+
+‘A nautical phenomenon, eh?’ laughed Steerforth.
+
+‘Indeed he does, and you know how truly; I know how ardent you are
+in any pursuit you follow, and how easily you can master it. And that
+amazes me most in you, Steerforth--that you should be contented with
+such fitful uses of your powers.’
+
+‘Contented?’ he answered, merrily. ‘I am never contented, except with
+your freshness, my gentle Daisy. As to fitfulness, I have never learnt
+the art of binding myself to any of the wheels on which the Ixions of
+these days are turning round and round. I missed it somehow in a bad
+apprenticeship, and now don’t care about it.---You know I have bought a
+boat down here?’
+
+‘What an extraordinary fellow you are, Steerforth!’ I exclaimed,
+stopping--for this was the first I had heard of it. ‘When you may never
+care to come near the place again!’
+
+‘I don’t know that,’ he returned. ‘I have taken a fancy to the place. At
+all events,’ walking me briskly on, ‘I have bought a boat that was for
+sale--a clipper, Mr. Peggotty says; and so she is--and Mr. Peggotty will
+be master of her in my absence.’
+
+‘Now I understand you, Steerforth!’ said I, exultingly. ‘You pretend
+to have bought it for yourself, but you have really done so to confer
+a benefit on him. I might have known as much at first, knowing you.
+My dear kind Steerforth, how can I tell you what I think of your
+generosity?’
+
+‘Tush!’ he answered, turning red. ‘The less said, the better.’
+
+‘Didn’t I know?’ cried I, ‘didn’t I say that there was not a joy, or
+sorrow, or any emotion of such honest hearts that was indifferent to
+you?’
+
+‘Aye, aye,’ he answered, ‘you told me all that. There let it rest. We
+have said enough!’
+
+Afraid of offending him by pursuing the subject when he made so light
+of it, I only pursued it in my thoughts as we went on at even a quicker
+pace than before.
+
+‘She must be newly rigged,’ said Steerforth, ‘and I shall leave Littimer
+behind to see it done, that I may know she is quite complete. Did I tell
+you Littimer had come down?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Oh yes! came down this morning, with a letter from my mother.’
+
+As our looks met, I observed that he was pale even to his lips, though
+he looked very steadily at me. I feared that some difference between him
+and his mother might have led to his being in the frame of mind in which
+I had found him at the solitary fireside. I hinted so.
+
+‘Oh no!’ he said, shaking his head, and giving a slight laugh. ‘Nothing
+of the sort! Yes. He is come down, that man of mine.’
+
+‘The same as ever?’ said I.
+
+‘The same as ever,’ said Steerforth. ‘Distant and quiet as the North
+Pole. He shall see to the boat being fresh named. She’s the “Stormy
+Petrel” now. What does Mr. Peggotty care for Stormy Petrels! I’ll have
+her christened again.’
+
+‘By what name?’ I asked.
+
+‘The “Little Em’ly”.’
+
+As he had continued to look steadily at me, I took it as a reminder that
+he objected to being extolled for his consideration. I could not help
+showing in my face how much it pleased me, but I said little, and he
+resumed his usual smile, and seemed relieved.
+
+‘But see here,’ he said, looking before us, ‘where the original little
+Em’ly comes! And that fellow with her, eh? Upon my soul, he’s a true
+knight. He never leaves her!’
+
+Ham was a boat-builder in these days, having improved a natural
+ingenuity in that handicraft, until he had become a skilled workman. He
+was in his working-dress, and looked rugged enough, but manly withal,
+and a very fit protector for the blooming little creature at his
+side. Indeed, there was a frankness in his face, an honesty, and an
+undisguised show of his pride in her, and his love for her, which were,
+to me, the best of good looks. I thought, as they came towards us, that
+they were well matched even in that particular.
+
+She withdrew her hand timidly from his arm as we stopped to speak to
+them, and blushed as she gave it to Steerforth and to me. When they
+passed on, after we had exchanged a few words, she did not like to
+replace that hand, but, still appearing timid and constrained, walked
+by herself. I thought all this very pretty and engaging, and Steerforth
+seemed to think so too, as we looked after them fading away in the light
+of a young moon.
+
+Suddenly there passed us--evidently following them--a young woman whose
+approach we had not observed, but whose face I saw as she went by, and
+thought I had a faint remembrance of. She was lightly dressed; looked
+bold, and haggard, and flaunting, and poor; but seemed, for the time, to
+have given all that to the wind which was blowing, and to have nothing
+in her mind but going after them. As the dark distant level, absorbing
+their figures into itself, left but itself visible between us and the
+sea and clouds, her figure disappeared in like manner, still no nearer
+to them than before.
+
+‘That is a black shadow to be following the girl,’ said Steerforth,
+standing still; ‘what does it mean?’
+
+He spoke in a low voice that sounded almost strange to Me.
+
+‘She must have it in her mind to beg of them, I think,’ said I.
+
+‘A beggar would be no novelty,’ said Steerforth; ‘but it is a strange
+thing that the beggar should take that shape tonight.’
+
+‘Why?’ I asked.
+
+‘For no better reason, truly, than because I was thinking,’ he said,
+after a pause, ‘of something like it, when it came by. Where the Devil
+did it come from, I wonder!’
+
+‘From the shadow of this wall, I think,’ said I, as we emerged upon a
+road on which a wall abutted.
+
+‘It’s gone!’ he returned, looking over his shoulder. ‘And all ill go
+with it. Now for our dinner!’
+
+But he looked again over his shoulder towards the sea-line glimmering
+afar off, and yet again. And he wondered about it, in some broken
+expressions, several times, in the short remainder of our walk; and only
+seemed to forget it when the light of fire and candle shone upon us,
+seated warm and merry, at table.
+
+Littimer was there, and had his usual effect upon me. When I said to
+him that I hoped Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle were well, he answered
+respectfully (and of course respectably), that they were tolerably well,
+he thanked me, and had sent their compliments. This was all, and yet he
+seemed to me to say as plainly as a man could say: ‘You are very young,
+sir; you are exceedingly young.’
+
+We had almost finished dinner, when taking a step or two towards the
+table, from the corner where he kept watch upon us, or rather upon me,
+as I felt, he said to his master:
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir. Miss Mowcher is down here.’
+
+‘Who?’ cried Steerforth, much astonished.
+
+‘Miss Mowcher, sir.’
+
+‘Why, what on earth does she do here?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘It appears to be her native part of the country, sir. She informs me
+that she makes one of her professional visits here, every year, sir.
+I met her in the street this afternoon, and she wished to know if she
+might have the honour of waiting on you after dinner, sir.’
+
+‘Do you know the Giantess in question, Daisy?’ inquired Steerforth.
+
+I was obliged to confess--I felt ashamed, even of being at this
+disadvantage before Littimer--that Miss Mowcher and I were wholly
+unacquainted.
+
+‘Then you shall know her,’ said Steerforth, ‘for she is one of the seven
+wonders of the world. When Miss Mowcher comes, show her in.’
+
+I felt some curiosity and excitement about this lady, especially as
+Steerforth burst into a fit of laughing when I referred to her, and
+positively refused to answer any question of which I made her the
+subject. I remained, therefore, in a state of considerable expectation
+until the cloth had been removed some half an hour, and we were sitting
+over our decanter of wine before the fire, when the door opened, and
+Littimer, with his habitual serenity quite undisturbed, announced:
+
+‘Miss Mowcher!’
+
+I looked at the doorway and saw nothing. I was still looking at
+the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was a long while making her
+appearance, when, to my infinite astonishment, there came waddling round
+a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty
+or forty-five, with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish grey
+eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, to enable herself to lay a
+finger archly against her snub nose, as she ogled Steerforth, she was
+obliged to meet the finger half-way, and lay her nose against it.
+Her chin, which was what is called a double chin, was so fat that it
+entirely swallowed up the strings of her bonnet, bow and all. Throat she
+had none; waist she had none; legs she had none, worth mentioning; for
+though she was more than full-sized down to where her waist would have
+been, if she had had any, and though she terminated, as human beings
+generally do, in a pair of feet, she was so short that she stood at a
+common-sized chair as at a table, resting a bag she carried on the seat.
+This lady--dressed in an off-hand, easy style; bringing her nose and her
+forefinger together, with the difficulty I have described; standing with
+her head necessarily on one side, and, with one of her sharp eyes shut
+up, making an uncommonly knowing face--after ogling Steerforth for a few
+moments, broke into a torrent of words.
+
+‘What! My flower!’ she pleasantly began, shaking her large head at him.
+‘You’re there, are you! Oh, you naughty boy, fie for shame, what do you
+do so far away from home? Up to mischief, I’ll be bound. Oh, you’re a
+downy fellow, Steerforth, so you are, and I’m another, ain’t I? Ha, ha,
+ha! You’d have betted a hundred pound to five, now, that you wouldn’t
+have seen me here, wouldn’t you? Bless you, man alive, I’m everywhere.
+I’m here and there, and where not, like the conjurer’s half-crown in the
+lady’s handkercher. Talking of handkerchers--and talking of ladies--what
+a comfort you are to your blessed mother, ain’t you, my dear boy, over
+one of my shoulders, and I don’t say which!’
+
+Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse, threw
+back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a footstool in front of
+the fire--making a kind of arbour of the dining table, which spread its
+mahogany shelter above her head.
+
+‘Oh my stars and what’s-their-names!’ she went on, clapping a hand on
+each of her little knees, and glancing shrewdly at me, ‘I’m of too full
+a habit, that’s the fact, Steerforth. After a flight of stairs, it gives
+me as much trouble to draw every breath I want, as if it was a bucket of
+water. If you saw me looking out of an upper window, you’d think I was a
+fine woman, wouldn’t you?’
+
+‘I should think that, wherever I saw you,’ replied Steerforth.
+
+‘Go along, you dog, do!’ cried the little creature, making a whisk at
+him with the handkerchief with which she was wiping her face, ‘and don’t
+be impudent! But I give you my word and honour I was at Lady Mithers’s
+last week--THERE’S a woman! How SHE wears!--and Mithers himself came
+into the room where I was waiting for her--THERE’S a man! How HE wears!
+and his wig too, for he’s had it these ten years--and he went on at
+that rate in the complimentary line, that I began to think I should be
+obliged to ring the bell. Ha! ha! ha! He’s a pleasant wretch, but he
+wants principle.’
+
+‘What were you doing for Lady Mithers?’ asked Steerforth.
+
+‘That’s tellings, my blessed infant,’ she retorted, tapping her nose
+again, screwing up her face, and twinkling her eyes like an imp of
+supernatural intelligence. ‘Never YOU mind! You’d like to know whether
+I stop her hair from falling off, or dye it, or touch up her
+complexion, or improve her eyebrows, wouldn’t you? And so you shall, my
+darling--when I tell you! Do you know what my great grandfather’s name
+was?’
+
+‘No,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘It was Walker, my sweet pet,’ replied Miss Mowcher, ‘and he came of a
+long line of Walkers, that I inherit all the Hookey estates from.’
+
+I never beheld anything approaching to Miss Mowcher’s wink except Miss
+Mowcher’s self-possession. She had a wonderful way too, when listening
+to what was said to her, or when waiting for an answer to what she had
+said herself, of pausing with her head cunningly on one side, and one
+eye turned up like a magpie’s. Altogether I was lost in amazement,
+and sat staring at her, quite oblivious, I am afraid, of the laws of
+politeness.
+
+She had by this time drawn the chair to her side, and was busily engaged
+in producing from the bag (plunging in her short arm to the shoulder, at
+every dive) a number of small bottles, sponges, combs, brushes, bits of
+flannel, little pairs of curling-irons, and other instruments, which
+she tumbled in a heap upon the chair. From this employment she suddenly
+desisted, and said to Steerforth, much to my confusion:
+
+‘Who’s your friend?’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Steerforth; ‘he wants to know you.’
+
+‘Well, then, he shall! I thought he looked as if he did!’ returned Miss
+Mowcher, waddling up to me, bag in hand, and laughing on me as she came.
+‘Face like a peach!’ standing on tiptoe to pinch my cheek as I
+sat. ‘Quite tempting! I’m very fond of peaches. Happy to make your
+acquaintance, Mr. Copperfield, I’m sure.’
+
+I said that I congratulated myself on having the honour to make hers,
+and that the happiness was mutual.
+
+‘Oh, my goodness, how polite we are!’ exclaimed Miss Mowcher, making a
+preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her morsel of a hand.
+‘What a world of gammon and spinnage it is, though, ain’t it!’
+
+This was addressed confidentially to both of us, as the morsel of a
+hand came away from the face, and buried itself, arm and all, in the bag
+again.
+
+‘What do you mean, Miss Mowcher?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Ha! ha! ha! What a refreshing set of humbugs we are, to be sure, ain’t
+we, my sweet child?’ replied that morsel of a woman, feeling in the bag
+with her head on one side and her eye in the air. ‘Look here!’ taking
+something out. ‘Scraps of the Russian Prince’s nails. Prince Alphabet
+turned topsy-turvy, I call him, for his name’s got all the letters in
+it, higgledy-piggledy.’
+
+‘The Russian Prince is a client of yours, is he?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘I believe you, my pet,’ replied Miss Mowcher. ‘I keep his nails in
+order for him. Twice a week! Fingers and toes.’
+
+‘He pays well, I hope?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Pays, as he speaks, my dear child--through the nose,’ replied Miss
+Mowcher. ‘None of your close shavers the Prince ain’t. You’d say so, if
+you saw his moustachios. Red by nature, black by art.’
+
+‘By your art, of course,’ said Steerforth.
+
+Miss Mowcher winked assent. ‘Forced to send for me. Couldn’t help it.
+The climate affected his dye; it did very well in Russia, but it was no
+go here. You never saw such a rusty Prince in all your born days as he
+was. Like old iron!’ ‘Is that why you called him a humbug, just now?’
+inquired Steerforth.
+
+‘Oh, you’re a broth of a boy, ain’t you?’ returned Miss Mowcher, shaking
+her head violently. ‘I said, what a set of humbugs we were in general,
+and I showed you the scraps of the Prince’s nails to prove it. The
+Prince’s nails do more for me in private families of the genteel sort,
+than all my talents put together. I always carry ‘em about. They’re the
+best introduction. If Miss Mowcher cuts the Prince’s nails, she must be
+all right. I give ‘em away to the young ladies. They put ‘em in albums,
+I believe. Ha! ha! ha! Upon my life, “the whole social system” (as
+the men call it when they make speeches in Parliament) is a system of
+Prince’s nails!’ said this least of women, trying to fold her short
+arms, and nodding her large head.
+
+Steerforth laughed heartily, and I laughed too. Miss Mowcher continuing
+all the time to shake her head (which was very much on one side), and to
+look into the air with one eye, and to wink with the other.
+
+‘Well, well!’ she said, smiting her small knees, and rising, ‘this is
+not business. Come, Steerforth, let’s explore the polar regions, and
+have it over.’
+
+She then selected two or three of the little instruments, and a
+little bottle, and asked (to my surprise) if the table would bear. On
+Steerforth’s replying in the affirmative, she pushed a chair against it,
+and begging the assistance of my hand, mounted up, pretty nimbly, to the
+top, as if it were a stage.
+
+‘If either of you saw my ankles,’ she said, when she was safely
+elevated, ‘say so, and I’ll go home and destroy myself!’
+
+‘I did not,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘I did not,’ said I.
+
+‘Well then,’ cried Miss Mowcher, ‘I’ll consent to live. Now, ducky,
+ducky, ducky, come to Mrs. Bond and be killed.’
+
+This was an invocation to Steerforth to place himself under her hands;
+who, accordingly, sat himself down, with his back to the table, and
+his laughing face towards me, and submitted his head to her inspection,
+evidently for no other purpose than our entertainment. To see Miss
+Mowcher standing over him, looking at his rich profusion of brown
+hair through a large round magnifying glass, which she took out of her
+pocket, was a most amazing spectacle.
+
+‘You’re a pretty fellow!’ said Miss Mowcher, after a brief inspection.
+‘You’d be as bald as a friar on the top of your head in twelve months,
+but for me. Just half a minute, my young friend, and we’ll give you a
+polishing that shall keep your curls on for the next ten years!’
+
+With this, she tilted some of the contents of the little bottle on to
+one of the little bits of flannel, and, again imparting some of the
+virtues of that preparation to one of the little brushes, began rubbing
+and scraping away with both on the crown of Steerforth’s head in the
+busiest manner I ever witnessed, talking all the time.
+
+‘There’s Charley Pyegrave, the duke’s son,’ she said. ‘You know
+Charley?’ peeping round into his face.
+
+‘A little,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘What a man HE is! THERE’S a whisker! As to Charley’s legs, if they
+were only a pair (which they ain’t), they’d defy competition. Would you
+believe he tried to do without me--in the Life-Guards, too?’
+
+‘Mad!’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘It looks like it. However, mad or sane, he tried,’ returned Miss
+Mowcher. ‘What does he do, but, lo and behold you, he goes into a
+perfumer’s shop, and wants to buy a bottle of the Madagascar Liquid.’
+
+‘Charley does?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Charley does. But they haven’t got any of the Madagascar Liquid.’
+
+‘What is it? Something to drink?’ asked Steerforth.
+
+‘To drink?’ returned Miss Mowcher, stopping to slap his cheek. ‘To
+doctor his own moustachios with, you know. There was a woman in the
+shop--elderly female--quite a Griffin--who had never even heard of it
+by name. “Begging pardon, sir,” said the Griffin to Charley, “it’s
+not--not--not ROUGE, is it?” “Rouge,” said Charley to the Griffin. “What
+the unmentionable to ears polite, do you think I want with rouge?” “No
+offence, sir,” said the Griffin; “we have it asked for by so many names,
+I thought it might be.” Now that, my child,’ continued Miss Mowcher,
+rubbing all the time as busily as ever, ‘is another instance of
+the refreshing humbug I was speaking of. I do something in that way
+myself--perhaps a good deal--perhaps a little--sharp’s the word, my dear
+boy--never mind!’
+
+‘In what way do you mean? In the rouge way?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Put this and that together, my tender pupil,’ returned the wary
+Mowcher, touching her nose, ‘work it by the rule of Secrets in all
+trades, and the product will give you the desired result. I say I do a
+little in that way myself. One Dowager, SHE calls it lip-salve. Another,
+SHE calls it gloves. Another, SHE calls it tucker-edging. Another, SHE
+calls it a fan. I call it whatever THEY call it. I supply it for ‘em,
+but we keep up the trick so, to one another, and make believe with
+such a face, that they’d as soon think of laying it on, before a whole
+drawing-room, as before me. And when I wait upon ‘em, they’ll say to
+me sometimes--WITH IT ON--thick, and no mistake--“How am I looking,
+Mowcher? Am I pale?” Ha! ha! ha! ha! Isn’t THAT refreshing, my young
+friend!’
+
+I never did in my days behold anything like Mowcher as she stood upon
+the dining table, intensely enjoying this refreshment, rubbing busily at
+Steerforth’s head, and winking at me over it.
+
+‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Such things are not much in demand hereabouts. That
+sets me off again! I haven’t seen a pretty woman since I’ve been here,
+jemmy.’
+
+‘No?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Not the ghost of one,’ replied Miss Mowcher.
+
+‘We could show her the substance of one, I think?’ said Steerforth,
+addressing his eyes to mine. ‘Eh, Daisy?’
+
+‘Yes, indeed,’ said I.
+
+‘Aha?’ cried the little creature, glancing sharply at my face, and then
+peeping round at Steerforth’s. ‘Umph?’
+
+The first exclamation sounded like a question put to both of us, and the
+second like a question put to Steerforth only. She seemed to have found
+no answer to either, but continued to rub, with her head on one side and
+her eye turned up, as if she were looking for an answer in the air and
+were confident of its appearing presently.
+
+‘A sister of yours, Mr. Copperfield?’ she cried, after a pause, and
+still keeping the same look-out. ‘Aye, aye?’
+
+‘No,’ said Steerforth, before I could reply. ‘Nothing of the sort. On
+the contrary, Mr. Copperfield used--or I am much mistaken--to have a
+great admiration for her.’
+
+‘Why, hasn’t he now?’ returned Miss Mowcher. ‘Is he fickle? Oh, for
+shame! Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until Polly his
+passion requited?--Is her name Polly?’
+
+The Elfin suddenness with which she pounced upon me with this question,
+and a searching look, quite disconcerted me for a moment.
+
+‘No, Miss Mowcher,’ I replied. ‘Her name is Emily.’
+
+‘Aha?’ she cried exactly as before. ‘Umph? What a rattle I am! Mr.
+Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’
+
+Her tone and look implied something that was not agreeable to me in
+connexion with the subject. So I said, in a graver manner than any of us
+had yet assumed: ‘She is as virtuous as she is pretty. She is engaged
+to be married to a most worthy and deserving man in her own station of
+life. I esteem her for her good sense, as much as I admire her for her
+good looks.’
+
+‘Well said!’ cried Steerforth. ‘Hear, hear, hear! Now I’ll quench the
+curiosity of this little Fatima, my dear Daisy, by leaving her nothing
+to guess at. She is at present apprenticed, Miss Mowcher, or articled,
+or whatever it may be, to Omer and Joram, Haberdashers, Milliners, and
+so forth, in this town. Do you observe? Omer and Joram. The promise of
+which my friend has spoken, is made and entered into with her cousin;
+Christian name, Ham; surname, Peggotty; occupation, boat-builder;
+also of this town. She lives with a relative; Christian name, unknown;
+surname, Peggotty; occupation, seafaring; also of this town. She is the
+prettiest and most engaging little fairy in the world. I admire her--as
+my friend does--exceedingly. If it were not that I might appear to
+disparage her Intended, which I know my friend would not like, I would
+add, that to me she seems to be throwing herself away; that I am sure
+she might do better; and that I swear she was born to be a lady.’
+
+Miss Mowcher listened to these words, which were very slowly and
+distinctly spoken, with her head on one side, and her eye in the air
+as if she were still looking for that answer. When he ceased she became
+brisk again in an instant, and rattled away with surprising volubility.
+
+‘Oh! And that’s all about it, is it?’ she exclaimed, trimming his
+whiskers with a little restless pair of scissors, that went glancing
+round his head in all directions. ‘Very well: very well! Quite a long
+story. Ought to end “and they lived happy ever afterwards”; oughtn’t
+it? Ah! What’s that game at forfeits? I love my love with an E, because
+she’s enticing; I hate her with an E, because she’s engaged. I took her
+to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with an elopement, her
+name’s Emily, and she lives in the east? Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Copperfield,
+ain’t I volatile?’
+
+Merely looking at me with extravagant slyness, and not waiting for any
+reply, she continued, without drawing breath:
+
+‘There! If ever any scapegrace was trimmed and touched up to perfection,
+you are, Steerforth. If I understand any noddle in the world, I
+understand yours. Do you hear me when I tell you that, my darling? I
+understand yours,’ peeping down into his face. ‘Now you may mizzle,
+jemmy (as we say at Court), and if Mr. Copperfield will take the chair
+I’ll operate on him.’
+
+‘What do you say, Daisy?’ inquired Steerforth, laughing, and resigning
+his seat. ‘Will you be improved?’
+
+‘Thank you, Miss Mowcher, not this evening.’
+
+‘Don’t say no,’ returned the little woman, looking at me with the aspect
+of a connoisseur; ‘a little bit more eyebrow?’
+
+‘Thank you,’ I returned, ‘some other time.’
+
+‘Have it carried half a quarter of an inch towards the temple,’ said
+Miss Mowcher. ‘We can do it in a fortnight.’
+
+‘No, I thank you. Not at present.’
+
+‘Go in for a tip,’ she urged. ‘No? Let’s get the scaffolding up, then,
+for a pair of whiskers. Come!’
+
+I could not help blushing as I declined, for I felt we were on my weak
+point, now. But Miss Mowcher, finding that I was not at present disposed
+for any decoration within the range of her art, and that I was, for the
+time being, proof against the blandishments of the small bottle which
+she held up before one eye to enforce her persuasions, said we would
+make a beginning on an early day, and requested the aid of my hand to
+descend from her elevated station. Thus assisted, she skipped down with
+much agility, and began to tie her double chin into her bonnet.
+
+‘The fee,’ said Steerforth, ‘is--’
+
+‘Five bob,’ replied Miss Mowcher, ‘and dirt cheap, my chicken. Ain’t I
+volatile, Mr. Copperfield?’
+
+I replied politely: ‘Not at all.’ But I thought she was rather so, when
+she tossed up his two half-crowns like a goblin pieman, caught them,
+dropped them in her pocket, and gave it a loud slap.
+
+‘That’s the Till!’ observed Miss Mowcher, standing at the chair again,
+and replacing in the bag a miscellaneous collection of little objects
+she had emptied out of it. ‘Have I got all my traps? It seems so. It
+won’t do to be like long Ned Beadwood, when they took him to church “to
+marry him to somebody”, as he says, and left the bride behind. Ha! ha!
+ha! A wicked rascal, Ned, but droll! Now, I know I’m going to break
+your hearts, but I am forced to leave you. You must call up all your
+fortitude, and try to bear it. Good-bye, Mr. Copperfield! Take care of
+yourself, jockey of Norfolk! How I have been rattling on! It’s all
+the fault of you two wretches. I forgive you! “Bob swore!”--as the
+Englishman said for “Good night”, when he first learnt French, and
+thought it so like English. “Bob swore,” my ducks!’
+
+With the bag slung over her arm, and rattling as she waddled away, she
+waddled to the door, where she stopped to inquire if she should leave
+us a lock of her hair. ‘Ain’t I volatile?’ she added, as a commentary on
+this offer, and, with her finger on her nose, departed.
+
+Steerforth laughed to that degree, that it was impossible for me to help
+laughing too; though I am not sure I should have done so, but for this
+inducement. When we had had our laugh quite out, which was after some
+time, he told me that Miss Mowcher had quite an extensive connexion, and
+made herself useful to a variety of people in a variety of ways. Some
+people trifled with her as a mere oddity, he said; but she was as
+shrewdly and sharply observant as anyone he knew, and as long-headed as
+she was short-armed. He told me that what she had said of being here,
+and there, and everywhere, was true enough; for she made little darts
+into the provinces, and seemed to pick up customers everywhere, and to
+know everybody. I asked him what her disposition was: whether it was at
+all mischievous, and if her sympathies were generally on the right side
+of things: but, not succeeding in attracting his attention to these
+questions after two or three attempts, I forbore or forgot to repeat
+them. He told me instead, with much rapidity, a good deal about her
+skill, and her profits; and about her being a scientific cupper, if I
+should ever have occasion for her service in that capacity.
+
+She was the principal theme of our conversation during the evening:
+and when we parted for the night Steerforth called after me over the
+banisters, ‘Bob swore!’ as I went downstairs.
+
+I was surprised, when I came to Mr. Barkis’s house, to find Ham walking
+up and down in front of it, and still more surprised to learn from him
+that little Em’ly was inside. I naturally inquired why he was not there
+too, instead of pacing the streets by himself?
+
+‘Why, you see, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined, in a hesitating manner, ‘Em’ly,
+she’s talking to some ‘un in here.’
+
+‘I should have thought,’ said I, smiling, ‘that that was a reason for
+your being in here too, Ham.’
+
+‘Well, Mas’r Davy, in a general way, so ‘t would be,’ he returned;
+‘but look’ee here, Mas’r Davy,’ lowering his voice, and speaking very
+gravely. ‘It’s a young woman, sir--a young woman, that Em’ly knowed
+once, and doen’t ought to know no more.’
+
+When I heard these words, a light began to fall upon the figure I had
+seen following them, some hours ago.
+
+‘It’s a poor wurem, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham, ‘as is trod under foot by all
+the town. Up street and down street. The mowld o’ the churchyard don’t
+hold any that the folk shrink away from, more.’
+
+‘Did I see her tonight, Ham, on the sand, after we met you?’
+
+‘Keeping us in sight?’ said Ham. ‘It’s like you did, Mas’r Davy. Not
+that I know’d then, she was theer, sir, but along of her creeping soon
+arterwards under Em’ly’s little winder, when she see the light come,
+and whispering “Em’ly, Em’ly, for Christ’s sake, have a woman’s heart
+towards me. I was once like you!” Those was solemn words, Mas’r Davy,
+fur to hear!’
+
+‘They were indeed, Ham. What did Em’ly do?’ ‘Says Em’ly, “Martha, is
+it you? Oh, Martha, can it be you?”--for they had sat at work together,
+many a day, at Mr. Omer’s.’
+
+‘I recollect her now!’ cried I, recalling one of the two girls I had
+seen when I first went there. ‘I recollect her quite well!’
+
+‘Martha Endell,’ said Ham. ‘Two or three year older than Em’ly, but was
+at the school with her.’
+
+‘I never heard her name,’ said I. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt you.’
+
+‘For the matter o’ that, Mas’r Davy,’ replied Ham, ‘all’s told a’most
+in them words, “Em’ly, Em’ly, for Christ’s sake, have a woman’s heart
+towards me. I was once like you!” She wanted to speak to Em’ly. Em’ly
+couldn’t speak to her theer, for her loving uncle was come home, and
+he wouldn’t--no, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham, with great earnestness, ‘he
+couldn’t, kind-natur’d, tender-hearted as he is, see them two together,
+side by side, for all the treasures that’s wrecked in the sea.’
+
+I felt how true this was. I knew it, on the instant, quite as well as
+Ham.
+
+‘So Em’ly writes in pencil on a bit of paper,’ he pursued, ‘and gives it
+to her out o’ winder to bring here. “Show that,” she says, “to my aunt,
+Mrs. Barkis, and she’ll set you down by her fire, for the love of me,
+till uncle is gone out, and I can come.” By and by she tells me what
+I tell you, Mas’r Davy, and asks me to bring her. What can I do? She
+doen’t ought to know any such, but I can’t deny her, when the tears is
+on her face.’
+
+He put his hand into the breast of his shaggy jacket, and took out with
+great care a pretty little purse.
+
+‘And if I could deny her when the tears was on her face, Mas’r Davy,’
+said Ham, tenderly adjusting it on the rough palm of his hand, ‘how
+could I deny her when she give me this to carry for her--knowing what
+she brought it for? Such a toy as it is!’ said Ham, thoughtfully looking
+on it. ‘With such a little money in it, Em’ly my dear.’
+
+I shook him warmly by the hand when he had put it away again--for that
+was more satisfactory to me than saying anything--and we walked up
+and down, for a minute or two, in silence. The door opened then, and
+Peggotty appeared, beckoning to Ham to come in. I would have kept away,
+but she came after me, entreating me to come in too. Even then, I
+would have avoided the room where they all were, but for its being the
+neat-tiled kitchen I have mentioned more than once. The door opening
+immediately into it, I found myself among them before I considered
+whither I was going.
+
+The girl--the same I had seen upon the sands--was near the fire. She
+was sitting on the ground, with her head and one arm lying on a chair.
+I fancied, from the disposition of her figure, that Em’ly had but newly
+risen from the chair, and that the forlorn head might perhaps have been
+lying on her lap. I saw but little of the girl’s face, over which her
+hair fell loose and scattered, as if she had been disordering it with
+her own hands; but I saw that she was young, and of a fair complexion.
+Peggotty had been crying. So had little Em’ly. Not a word was spoken
+when we first went in; and the Dutch clock by the dresser seemed, in the
+silence, to tick twice as loud as usual. Em’ly spoke first.
+
+‘Martha wants,’ she said to Ham, ‘to go to London.’
+
+‘Why to London?’ returned Ham.
+
+He stood between them, looking on the prostrate girl with a mixture of
+compassion for her, and of jealousy of her holding any companionship
+with her whom he loved so well, which I have always remembered
+distinctly. They both spoke as if she were ill; in a soft, suppressed
+tone that was plainly heard, although it hardly rose above a whisper.
+
+‘Better there than here,’ said a third voice aloud--Martha’s, though she
+did not move. ‘No one knows me there. Everybody knows me here.’
+
+‘What will she do there?’ inquired Ham.
+
+She lifted up her head, and looked darkly round at him for a moment;
+then laid it down again, and curved her right arm about her neck, as
+a woman in a fever, or in an agony of pain from a shot, might twist
+herself.
+
+‘She will try to do well,’ said little Em’ly. ‘You don’t know what she
+has said to us. Does he--do they--aunt?’
+
+Peggotty shook her head compassionately.
+
+‘I’ll try,’ said Martha, ‘if you’ll help me away. I never can do worse
+than I have done here. I may do better. Oh!’ with a dreadful shiver,
+‘take me out of these streets, where the whole town knows me from a
+child!’
+
+As Em’ly held out her hand to Ham, I saw him put in it a little canvas
+bag. She took it, as if she thought it were her purse, and made a step
+or two forward; but finding her mistake, came back to where he had
+retired near me, and showed it to him.
+
+‘It’s all yourn, Em’ly,’ I could hear him say. ‘I haven’t nowt in all
+the wureld that ain’t yourn, my dear. It ain’t of no delight to me,
+except for you!’
+
+The tears rose freshly in her eyes, but she turned away and went to
+Martha. What she gave her, I don’t know. I saw her stooping over her,
+and putting money in her bosom. She whispered something, as she asked
+was that enough? ‘More than enough,’ the other said, and took her hand
+and kissed it.
+
+Then Martha arose, and gathering her shawl about her, covering her
+face with it, and weeping aloud, went slowly to the door. She stopped
+a moment before going out, as if she would have uttered something or
+turned back; but no word passed her lips. Making the same low, dreary,
+wretched moaning in her shawl, she went away.
+
+As the door closed, little Em’ly looked at us three in a hurried manner
+and then hid her face in her hands, and fell to sobbing.
+
+‘Doen’t, Em’ly!’ said Ham, tapping her gently on the shoulder. ‘Doen’t,
+my dear! You doen’t ought to cry so, pretty!’
+
+‘Oh, Ham!’ she exclaimed, still weeping pitifully, ‘I am not so good a
+girl as I ought to be! I know I have not the thankful heart, sometimes,
+I ought to have!’
+
+‘Yes, yes, you have, I’m sure,’ said Ham.
+
+‘No! no! no!’ cried little Em’ly, sobbing, and shaking her head. ‘I am
+not as good a girl as I ought to be. Not near! not near!’ And still she
+cried, as if her heart would break.
+
+‘I try your love too much. I know I do!’ she sobbed. ‘I’m often cross to
+you, and changeable with you, when I ought to be far different. You are
+never so to me. Why am I ever so to you, when I should think of nothing
+but how to be grateful, and to make you happy!’
+
+‘You always make me so,’ said Ham, ‘my dear! I am happy in the sight of
+you. I am happy, all day long, in the thoughts of you.’
+
+‘Ah! that’s not enough!’ she cried. ‘That is because you are good; not
+because I am! Oh, my dear, it might have been a better fortune for
+you, if you had been fond of someone else--of someone steadier and
+much worthier than me, who was all bound up in you, and never vain and
+changeable like me!’
+
+‘Poor little tender-heart,’ said Ham, in a low voice. ‘Martha has
+overset her, altogether.’
+
+‘Please, aunt,’ sobbed Em’ly, ‘come here, and let me lay my head upon
+you. Oh, I am very miserable tonight, aunt! Oh, I am not as good a girl
+as I ought to be. I am not, I know!’
+
+Peggotty had hastened to the chair before the fire. Em’ly, with her
+arms around her neck, kneeled by her, looking up most earnestly into her
+face.
+
+‘Oh, pray, aunt, try to help me! Ham, dear, try to help me! Mr. David,
+for the sake of old times, do, please, try to help me! I want to be a
+better girl than I am. I want to feel a hundred times more thankful than
+I do. I want to feel more, what a blessed thing it is to be the wife of
+a good man, and to lead a peaceful life. Oh me, oh me! Oh my heart, my
+heart!’
+
+She dropped her face on my old nurse’s breast, and, ceasing this
+supplication, which in its agony and grief was half a woman’s, half a
+child’s, as all her manner was (being, in that, more natural, and better
+suited to her beauty, as I thought, than any other manner could have
+been), wept silently, while my old nurse hushed her like an infant.
+
+She got calmer by degrees, and then we soothed her; now talking
+encouragingly, and now jesting a little with her, until she began to
+raise her head and speak to us. So we got on, until she was able to
+smile, and then to laugh, and then to sit up, half ashamed; while
+Peggotty recalled her stray ringlets, dried her eyes, and made her neat
+again, lest her uncle should wonder, when she got home, why his darling
+had been crying.
+
+I saw her do, that night, what I had never seen her do before. I saw her
+innocently kiss her chosen husband on the cheek, and creep close to his
+bluff form as if it were her best support. When they went away together,
+in the waning moonlight, and I looked after them, comparing their
+departure in my mind with Martha’s, I saw that she held his arm with
+both her hands, and still kept close to him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 23. I CORROBORATE Mr. DICK, AND CHOOSE A PROFESSION
+
+
+When I awoke in the morning I thought very much of little Em’ly, and her
+emotion last night, after Martha had left. I felt as if I had come into
+the knowledge of those domestic weaknesses and tendernesses in a sacred
+confidence, and that to disclose them, even to Steerforth, would be
+wrong. I had no gentler feeling towards anyone than towards the
+pretty creature who had been my playmate, and whom I have always been
+persuaded, and shall always be persuaded, to my dying day, I then
+devotedly loved. The repetition to any ears--even to Steerforth’s--of
+what she had been unable to repress when her heart lay open to me by an
+accident, I felt would be a rough deed, unworthy of myself, unworthy of
+the light of our pure childhood, which I always saw encircling her head.
+I made a resolution, therefore, to keep it in my own breast; and there
+it gave her image a new grace.
+
+While we were at breakfast, a letter was delivered to me from my aunt.
+As it contained matter on which I thought Steerforth could advise me
+as well as anyone, and on which I knew I should be delighted to consult
+him, I resolved to make it a subject of discussion on our journey home.
+For the present we had enough to do, in taking leave of all our friends.
+Mr. Barkis was far from being the last among them, in his regret at
+our departure; and I believe would even have opened the box again, and
+sacrificed another guinea, if it would have kept us eight-and-forty
+hours in Yarmouth. Peggotty and all her family were full of grief at our
+going. The whole house of Omer and Joram turned out to bid us good-bye;
+and there were so many seafaring volunteers in attendance on Steerforth,
+when our portmanteaux went to the coach, that if we had had the baggage
+of a regiment with us, we should hardly have wanted porters to carry it.
+In a word, we departed to the regret and admiration of all concerned,
+and left a great many people very sorry behind US.
+
+‘Do you stay long here, Littimer?’ said I, as he stood waiting to see the
+coach start.
+
+‘No, sir,’ he replied; ‘probably not very long, sir.’
+
+‘He can hardly say, just now,’ observed Steerforth, carelessly. ‘He
+knows what he has to do, and he’ll do it.’
+
+‘That I am sure he will,’ said I.
+
+Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgement of my good opinion, and I
+felt about eight years old. He touched it once more, wishing us a good
+journey; and we left him standing on the pavement, as respectable a
+mystery as any pyramid in Egypt.
+
+For some little time we held no conversation, Steerforth being unusually
+silent, and I being sufficiently engaged in wondering, within myself,
+when I should see the old places again, and what new changes might
+happen to me or them in the meanwhile. At length Steerforth, becoming
+gay and talkative in a moment, as he could become anything he liked at
+any moment, pulled me by the arm:
+
+‘Find a voice, David. What about that letter you were speaking of at
+breakfast?’
+
+‘Oh!’ said I, taking it out of my pocket. ‘It’s from my aunt.’
+
+‘And what does she say, requiring consideration?’
+
+‘Why, she reminds me, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘that I came out on this
+expedition to look about me, and to think a little.’
+
+‘Which, of course, you have done?’
+
+‘Indeed I can’t say I have, particularly. To tell you the truth, I am
+afraid I have forgotten it.’
+
+‘Well! look about you now, and make up for your negligence,’ said
+Steerforth. ‘Look to the right, and you’ll see a flat country, with a
+good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you’ll see the same.
+Look to the front, and you’ll find no difference; look to the rear,
+and there it is still.’ I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable
+profession in the whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to
+its flatness.
+
+‘What says our aunt on the subject?’ inquired Steerforth, glancing at
+the letter in my hand. ‘Does she suggest anything?’
+
+‘Why, yes,’ said I. ‘She asks me, here, if I think I should like to be a
+proctor? What do you think of it?’
+
+‘Well, I don’t know,’ replied Steerforth, coolly. ‘You may as well do
+that as anything else, I suppose?’
+
+I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and
+professions so equally; and I told him so.
+
+‘What is a proctor, Steerforth?’ said I.
+
+‘Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney,’ replied Steerforth. ‘He is, to
+some faded courts held in Doctors’ Commons,--a lazy old nook near St.
+Paul’s Churchyard--what solicitors are to the courts of law and equity.
+He is a functionary whose existence, in the natural course of things,
+would have terminated about two hundred years ago. I can tell you best
+what he is, by telling you what Doctors’ Commons is. It’s a
+little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called
+ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old
+monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know
+nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in
+a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. It’s a place that has an
+ancient monopoly in suits about people’s wills and people’s marriages,
+and disputes among ships and boats.’
+
+‘Nonsense, Steerforth!’ I exclaimed. ‘You don’t mean to say that there
+is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical matters?’
+
+‘I don’t, indeed, my dear boy,’ he returned; ‘but I mean to say that
+they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that
+same Doctors’ Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them
+blundering through half the nautical terms in Young’s Dictionary,
+apropos of the “Nancy” having run down the “Sarah Jane”, or Mr. Peggotty
+and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind with an anchor
+and cable to the “Nelson” Indiaman in distress; and you shall go there
+another day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro and con, respecting
+a clergyman who has misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge
+in the nautical case, the advocate in the clergyman’s case, or
+contrariwise. They are like actors: now a man’s a judge, and now he is
+not a judge; now he’s one thing, now he’s another; now he’s something
+else, change and change about; but it’s always a very pleasant,
+profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an
+uncommonly select audience.’
+
+‘But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?’ said I, a little
+puzzled. ‘Are they?’
+
+‘No,’ returned Steerforth, ‘the advocates are civilians--men who have
+taken a doctor’s degree at college--which is the first reason of my
+knowing anything about it. The proctors employ the advocates. Both get
+very comfortable fees, and altogether they make a mighty snug little
+party. On the whole, I would recommend you to take to Doctors’ Commons
+kindly, David. They plume them-selves on their gentility there, I can
+tell you, if that’s any satisfaction.’
+
+I made allowance for Steerforth’s light way of treating the subject,
+and, considering it with reference to the staid air of gravity and
+antiquity which I associated with that ‘lazy old nook near St. Paul’s
+Churchyard’, did not feel indisposed towards my aunt’s suggestion; which
+she left to my free decision, making no scruple of telling me that it
+had occurred to her, on her lately visiting her own proctor in Doctors’
+Commons for the purpose of settling her will in my favour.
+
+‘That’s a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at all events,’
+said Steerforth, when I mentioned it; ‘and one deserving of all
+encouragement. Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to Doctors’
+Commons.’
+
+I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my aunt
+was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that she had
+taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel at Lincoln’s Inn
+Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in
+the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in London was
+going to be burnt down every night.
+
+We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to
+Doctors’ Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a
+proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and
+whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we came to our journey’s
+end, he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one; and I
+drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where I found my aunt up, and waiting
+supper.
+
+If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have been
+better pleased to meet again. My aunt cried outright as she embraced me;
+and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother had been alive,
+that silly little creature would have shed tears, she had no doubt.
+
+‘So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?’ said I. ‘I am sorry for that.
+Ah, Janet, how do you do?’
+
+As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt’s visage
+lengthen very much.
+
+‘I am sorry for it, too,’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose. ‘I have had
+no peace of mind, Trot, since I have been here.’ Before I could ask why,
+she told me.
+
+‘I am convinced,’ said my aunt, laying her hand with melancholy firmness
+on the table, ‘that Dick’s character is not a character to keep the
+donkeys off. I am confident he wants strength of purpose. I ought to
+have left Janet at home, instead, and then my mind might perhaps have
+been at ease. If ever there was a donkey trespassing on my green,’ said
+my aunt, with emphasis, ‘there was one this afternoon at four o’clock.
+A cold feeling came over me from head to foot, and I know it was a
+donkey!’
+
+I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected consolation.
+
+‘It was a donkey,’ said my aunt; ‘and it was the one with the stumpy
+tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she came to my
+house.’ This had been, ever since, the only name my aunt knew for Miss
+Murdstone. ‘If there is any Donkey in Dover, whose audacity it is harder
+to me to bear than another’s, that,’ said my aunt, striking the table,
+‘is the animal!’
+
+Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself
+unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was then
+engaged in the sand-and-gravel line of business, and was not available
+for purposes of trespass. But my aunt wouldn’t hear of it.
+
+Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt’s rooms were very
+high up--whether that she might have more stone stairs for her money, or
+might be nearer to the door in the roof, I don’t know--and consisted of
+a roast fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to all of which I did ample
+justice, and which were all excellent. But my aunt had her own ideas
+concerning London provision, and ate but little.
+
+‘I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a cellar,’
+said my aunt, ‘and never took the air except on a hackney coach-stand. I
+hope the steak may be beef, but I don’t believe it. Nothing’s genuine in
+the place, in my opinion, but the dirt.’
+
+‘Don’t you think the fowl may have come out of the country, aunt?’ I
+hinted.
+
+‘Certainly not,’ returned my aunt. ‘It would be no pleasure to a London
+tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was.’
+
+I did not venture to controvert this opinion, but I made a good supper,
+which it greatly satisfied her to see me do. When the table was cleared,
+Janet assisted her to arrange her hair, to put on her nightcap, which
+was of a smarter construction than usual [‘in case of fire’, my aunt
+said), and to fold her gown back over her knees, these being her usual
+preparations for warming herself before going to bed. I then made her,
+according to certain established regulations from which no deviation,
+however slight, could ever be permitted, a glass of hot wine and
+water, and a slice of toast cut into long thin strips. With these
+accompaniments we were left alone to finish the evening, my aunt sitting
+opposite to me drinking her wine and water; soaking her strips of toast
+in it, one by one, before eating them; and looking benignantly on me,
+from among the borders of her nightcap.
+
+‘Well, Trot,’ she began, ‘what do you think of the proctor plan? Or have
+you not begun to think about it yet?’
+
+‘I have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and I have talked a
+good deal about it with Steerforth. I like it very much indeed. I like
+it exceedingly.’
+
+‘Come!’ said my aunt. ‘That’s cheering!’
+
+‘I have only one difficulty, aunt.’
+
+‘Say what it is, Trot,’ she returned.
+
+‘Why, I want to ask, aunt, as this seems, from what I understand, to
+be a limited profession, whether my entrance into it would not be very
+expensive?’
+
+‘It will cost,’ returned my aunt, ‘to article you, just a thousand
+pounds.’
+
+‘Now, my dear aunt,’ said I, drawing my chair nearer, ‘I am uneasy in
+my mind about that. It’s a large sum of money. You have expended a
+great deal on my education, and have always been as liberal to me in all
+things as it was possible to be. You have been the soul of generosity.
+Surely there are some ways in which I might begin life with hardly any
+outlay, and yet begin with a good hope of getting on by resolution and
+exertion. Are you sure that it would not be better to try that course?
+Are you certain that you can afford to part with so much money, and that
+it is right that it should be so expended? I only ask you, my second
+mother, to consider. Are you certain?’
+
+My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was then
+engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; and then setting
+her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands upon her folded
+skirts, replied as follows:
+
+‘Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for
+your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. I am bent upon it--so is
+Dick. I should like some people that I know to hear Dick’s conversation
+on the subject. Its sagacity is wonderful. But no one knows the
+resources of that man’s intellect, except myself!’
+
+She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, and went on:
+
+‘It’s in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some influence
+upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better friends with your
+poor father. Perhaps I might have been better friends with that poor
+child your mother, even after your sister Betsey Trotwood disappointed
+me. When you came to me, a little runaway boy, all dusty and way-worn,
+perhaps I thought so. From that time until now, Trot, you have ever been
+a credit to me and a pride and a pleasure. I have no other claim upon
+my means; at least’--here to my surprise she hesitated, and was
+confused--‘no, I have no other claim upon my means--and you are my
+adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my age, and bear with my
+whims and fancies; and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of
+life was not so happy or conciliating as it might have been, than ever
+that old woman did for you.’
+
+It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past history.
+There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of doing so, and of dismissing
+it, which would have exalted her in my respect and affection, if
+anything could.
+
+‘All is agreed and understood between us, now, Trot,’ said my aunt,
+‘and we need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we’ll go to the
+Commons after breakfast tomorrow.’
+
+We had a long chat by the fire before we went to bed. I slept in a room
+on the same floor with my aunt’s, and was a little disturbed in the
+course of the night by her knocking at my door as often as she was
+agitated by a distant sound of hackney-coaches or market-carts, and
+inquiring, ‘if I heard the engines?’ But towards morning she slept
+better, and suffered me to do so too.
+
+At about mid-day, we set out for the office of Messrs Spenlow and
+Jorkins, in Doctors’ Commons. My aunt, who had this other general
+opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw was a pickpocket,
+gave me her purse to carry for her, which had ten guineas in it and some
+silver.
+
+We made a pause at the toy shop in Fleet Street, to see the giants of
+Saint Dunstan’s strike upon the bells--we had timed our going, so as to
+catch them at it, at twelve o’clock--and then went on towards Ludgate
+Hill, and St. Paul’s Churchyard. We were crossing to the former place,
+when I found that my aunt greatly accelerated her speed, and looked
+frightened. I observed, at the same time, that a lowering ill-dressed
+man who had stopped and stared at us in passing, a little before, was
+coming so close after us as to brush against her.
+
+‘Trot! My dear Trot!’ cried my aunt, in a terrified whisper, and
+pressing my arm. ‘I don’t know what I am to do.’
+
+‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said I. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. Step into
+a shop, and I’ll soon get rid of this fellow.’
+
+‘No, no, child!’ she returned. ‘Don’t speak to him for the world. I
+entreat, I order you!’
+
+‘Good Heaven, aunt!’ said I. ‘He is nothing but a sturdy beggar.’
+
+‘You don’t know what he is!’ replied my aunt. ‘You don’t know who he is!
+You don’t know what you say!’
+
+We had stopped in an empty door-way, while this was passing, and he had
+stopped too.
+
+‘Don’t look at him!’ said my aunt, as I turned my head indignantly, ‘but
+get me a coach, my dear, and wait for me in St. Paul’s Churchyard.’
+
+‘Wait for you?’ I replied.
+
+‘Yes,’ rejoined my aunt. ‘I must go alone. I must go with him.’
+
+‘With him, aunt? This man?’
+
+‘I am in my senses,’ she replied, ‘and I tell you I must. Get me a
+coach!’
+
+However much astonished I might be, I was sensible that I had no right
+to refuse compliance with such a peremptory command. I hurried away a
+few paces, and called a hackney-chariot which was passing empty. Almost
+before I could let down the steps, my aunt sprang in, I don’t know how,
+and the man followed. She waved her hand to me to go away, so earnestly,
+that, all confounded as I was, I turned from them at once. In doing so,
+I heard her say to the coachman, ‘Drive anywhere! Drive straight on!’
+and presently the chariot passed me, going up the hill.
+
+What Mr. Dick had told me, and what I had supposed to be a delusion of
+his, now came into my mind. I could not doubt that this person was the
+person of whom he had made such mysterious mention, though what the
+nature of his hold upon my aunt could possibly be, I was quite unable
+to imagine. After half an hour’s cooling in the churchyard, I saw the
+chariot coming back. The driver stopped beside me, and my aunt was
+sitting in it alone.
+
+She had not yet sufficiently recovered from her agitation to be quite
+prepared for the visit we had to make. She desired me to get into the
+chariot, and to tell the coachman to drive slowly up and down a little
+while. She said no more, except, ‘My dear child, never ask me what
+it was, and don’t refer to it,’ until she had perfectly regained her
+composure, when she told me she was quite herself now, and we might get
+out. On her giving me her purse to pay the driver, I found that all the
+guineas were gone, and only the loose silver remained.
+
+Doctors’ Commons was approached by a little low archway. Before we had
+taken many paces down the street beyond it, the noise of the city seemed
+to melt, as if by magic, into a softened distance. A few dull courts
+and narrow ways brought us to the sky-lighted offices of Spenlow and
+Jorkins; in the vestibule of which temple, accessible to pilgrims
+without the ceremony of knocking, three or four clerks were at work as
+copyists. One of these, a little dry man, sitting by himself, who wore
+a stiff brown wig that looked as if it were made of gingerbread, rose to
+receive my aunt, and show us into Mr. Spenlow’s room.
+
+‘Mr. Spenlow’s in Court, ma’am,’ said the dry man; ‘it’s an Arches day;
+but it’s close by, and I’ll send for him directly.’
+
+As we were left to look about us while Mr. Spenlow was fetched, I
+availed myself of the opportunity. The furniture of the room was
+old-fashioned and dusty; and the green baize on the top of the
+writing-table had lost all its colour, and was as withered and pale as
+an old pauper. There were a great many bundles of papers on it, some
+endorsed as Allegations, and some (to my surprise) as Libels, and some
+as being in the Consistory Court, and some in the Arches Court, and some
+in the Prerogative Court, and some in the Admiralty Court, and some in
+the Delegates’ Court; giving me occasion to wonder much, how many Courts
+there might be in the gross, and how long it would take to understand
+them all. Besides these, there were sundry immense manuscript Books
+of Evidence taken on affidavit, strongly bound, and tied together in
+massive sets, a set to each cause, as if every cause were a history in
+ten or twenty volumes. All this looked tolerably expensive, I thought,
+and gave me an agreeable notion of a proctor’s business. I was casting
+my eyes with increasing complacency over these and many similar objects,
+when hasty footsteps were heard in the room outside, and Mr. Spenlow,
+in a black gown trimmed with white fur, came hurrying in, taking off his
+hat as he came.
+
+He was a little light-haired gentleman, with undeniable boots, and the
+stiffest of white cravats and shirt-collars. He was buttoned up, mighty
+trim and tight, and must have taken a great deal of pains with his
+whiskers, which were accurately curled. His gold watch-chain was so
+massive, that a fancy came across me, that he ought to have a sinewy
+golden arm, to draw it out with, like those which are put up over the
+goldbeaters’ shops. He was got up with such care, and was so stiff, that
+he could hardly bend himself; being obliged, when he glanced at some
+papers on his desk, after sitting down in his chair, to move his whole
+body, from the bottom of his spine, like Punch.
+
+I had previously been presented by my aunt, and had been courteously
+received. He now said:
+
+‘And so, Mr. Copperfield, you think of entering into our profession?
+I casually mentioned to Miss Trotwood, when I had the pleasure of an
+interview with her the other day,’--with another inclination of his
+body--Punch again--‘that there was a vacancy here. Miss Trotwood was
+good enough to mention that she had a nephew who was her peculiar care,
+and for whom she was seeking to provide genteelly in life. That
+nephew, I believe, I have now the pleasure of’--Punch again. I bowed my
+acknowledgements, and said, my aunt had mentioned to me that there was
+that opening, and that I believed I should like it very much. That I was
+strongly inclined to like it, and had taken immediately to the proposal.
+That I could not absolutely pledge myself to like it, until I knew
+something more about it. That although it was little else than a matter
+of form, I presumed I should have an opportunity of trying how I liked
+it, before I bound myself to it irrevocably.
+
+‘Oh surely! surely!’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘We always, in this house,
+propose a month--an initiatory month. I should be happy, myself, to
+propose two months--three--an indefinite period, in fact--but I have a
+partner. Mr. Jorkins.’
+
+‘And the premium, sir,’ I returned, ‘is a thousand pounds?’
+
+‘And the premium, Stamp included, is a thousand pounds,’ said Mr.
+Spenlow. ‘As I have mentioned to Miss Trotwood, I am actuated by no
+mercenary considerations; few men are less so, I believe; but Mr.
+Jorkins has his opinions on these subjects, and I am bound to respect
+Mr. Jorkins’s opinions. Mr. Jorkins thinks a thousand pounds too little,
+in short.’
+
+‘I suppose, sir,’ said I, still desiring to spare my aunt, ‘that it is
+not the custom here, if an articled clerk were particularly useful,
+and made himself a perfect master of his profession’--I could not help
+blushing, this looked so like praising myself--‘I suppose it is not the
+custom, in the later years of his time, to allow him any--’
+
+Mr. Spenlow, by a great effort, just lifted his head far enough out of
+his cravat to shake it, and answered, anticipating the word ‘salary’:
+
+‘No. I will not say what consideration I might give to that point
+myself, Mr. Copperfield, if I were unfettered. Mr. Jorkins is
+immovable.’
+
+I was quite dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins. But I found
+out afterwards that he was a mild man of a heavy temperament, whose
+place in the business was to keep himself in the background, and be
+constantly exhibited by name as the most obdurate and ruthless of men.
+If a clerk wanted his salary raised, Mr. Jorkins wouldn’t listen to such
+a proposition. If a client were slow to settle his bill of costs, Mr.
+Jorkins was resolved to have it paid; and however painful these things
+might be (and always were) to the feelings of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins
+would have his bond. The heart and hand of the good angel Spenlow would
+have been always open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins. As I have
+grown older, I think I have had experience of some other houses doing
+business on the principle of Spenlow and Jorkins!
+
+It was settled that I should begin my month’s probation as soon as I
+pleased, and that my aunt need neither remain in town nor return at
+its expiration, as the articles of agreement, of which I was to be the
+subject, could easily be sent to her at home for her signature. When
+we had got so far, Mr. Spenlow offered to take me into Court then and
+there, and show me what sort of place it was. As I was willing enough
+to know, we went out with this object, leaving my aunt behind; who would
+trust herself, she said, in no such place, and who, I think, regarded
+all Courts of Law as a sort of powder-mills that might blow up at any
+time.
+
+Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved courtyard formed of grave brick
+houses, which I inferred, from the Doctors’ names upon the doors, to be
+the official abiding-places of the learned advocates of whom Steerforth
+had told me; and into a large dull room, not unlike a chapel to my
+thinking, on the left hand. The upper part of this room was fenced off
+from the rest; and there, on the two sides of a raised platform of the
+horse-shoe form, sitting on easy old-fashioned dining-room chairs, were
+sundry gentlemen in red gowns and grey wigs, whom I found to be the
+Doctors aforesaid. Blinking over a little desk like a pulpit-desk, in
+the curve of the horse-shoe, was an old gentleman, whom, if I had seen
+him in an aviary, I should certainly have taken for an owl, but who, I
+learned, was the presiding judge. In the space within the horse-shoe,
+lower than these, that is to say, on about the level of the floor, were
+sundry other gentlemen, of Mr. Spenlow’s rank, and dressed like him in
+black gowns with white fur upon them, sitting at a long green table.
+Their cravats were in general stiff, I thought, and their looks haughty;
+but in this last respect I presently conceived I had done them an
+injustice, for when two or three of them had to rise and answer a
+question of the presiding dignitary, I never saw anything more sheepish.
+The public, represented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby-genteel
+man secretly eating crumbs out of his coat pockets, was warming itself
+at a stove in the centre of the Court. The languid stillness of the
+place was only broken by the chirping of this fire and by the voice of
+one of the Doctors, who was wandering slowly through a perfect library
+of evidence, and stopping to put up, from time to time, at little
+roadside inns of argument on the journey. Altogether, I have never,
+on any occasion, made one at such a cosey, dosey, old-fashioned,
+time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little family-party in all my life; and
+I felt it would be quite a soothing opiate to belong to it in any
+character--except perhaps as a suitor.
+
+Very well satisfied with the dreamy nature of this retreat, I informed
+Mr. Spenlow that I had seen enough for that time, and we rejoined
+my aunt; in company with whom I presently departed from the Commons,
+feeling very young when I went out of Spenlow and Jorkins’s, on account
+of the clerks poking one another with their pens to point me out.
+
+We arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields without any new adventures, except
+encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger’s cart, who suggested
+painful associations to my aunt. We had another long talk about my
+plans, when we were safely housed; and as I knew she was anxious to
+get home, and, between fire, food, and pickpockets, could never be
+considered at her ease for half-an-hour in London, I urged her not to be
+uncomfortable on my account, but to leave me to take care of myself.
+
+‘I have not been here a week tomorrow, without considering that too, my
+dear,’ she returned. ‘There is a furnished little set of chambers to be
+let in the Adelphi, Trot, which ought to suit you to a marvel.’
+
+With this brief introduction, she produced from her pocket an
+advertisement, carefully cut out of a newspaper, setting forth that in
+Buckingham Street in the Adelphi there was to be let furnished, with a
+view of the river, a singularly desirable, and compact set of chambers,
+forming a genteel residence for a young gentleman, a member of one
+of the Inns of Court, or otherwise, with immediate possession. Terms
+moderate, and could be taken for a month only, if required.
+
+‘Why, this is the very thing, aunt!’ said I, flushed with the possible
+dignity of living in chambers.
+
+‘Then come,’ replied my aunt, immediately resuming the bonnet she had a
+minute before laid aside. ‘We’ll go and look at ‘em.’
+
+Away we went. The advertisement directed us to apply to Mrs. Crupp
+on the premises, and we rung the area bell, which we supposed to
+communicate with Mrs. Crupp. It was not until we had rung three or four
+times that we could prevail on Mrs. Crupp to communicate with us, but
+at last she appeared, being a stout lady with a flounce of flannel
+petticoat below a nankeen gown.
+
+‘Let us see these chambers of yours, if you please, ma’am,’ said my
+aunt.
+
+‘For this gentleman?’ said Mrs. Crupp, feeling in her pocket for her
+keys.
+
+‘Yes, for my nephew,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘And a sweet set they is for sich!’ said Mrs. Crupp.
+
+So we went upstairs.
+
+They were on the top of the house--a great point with my aunt, being
+near the fire-escape--and consisted of a little half-blind entry where
+you could see hardly anything, a little stone-blind pantry where you
+could see nothing at all, a sitting-room, and a bedroom. The furniture
+was rather faded, but quite good enough for me; and, sure enough, the
+river was outside the windows.
+
+As I was delighted with the place, my aunt and Mrs. Crupp withdrew into
+the pantry to discuss the terms, while I remained on the sitting-room
+sofa, hardly daring to think it possible that I could be destined to
+live in such a noble residence. After a single combat of some duration
+they returned, and I saw, to my joy, both in Mrs. Crupp’s countenance
+and in my aunt’s, that the deed was done.
+
+‘Is it the last occupant’s furniture?’ inquired my aunt.
+
+‘Yes, it is, ma’am,’ said Mrs. Crupp.
+
+‘What’s become of him?’ asked my aunt.
+
+Mrs. Crupp was taken with a troublesome cough, in the midst of which
+she articulated with much difficulty. ‘He was took ill here, ma’am,
+and--ugh! ugh! ugh! dear me!--and he died!’
+
+‘Hey! What did he die of?’ asked my aunt.
+
+‘Well, ma’am, he died of drink,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in confidence. ‘And
+smoke.’
+
+‘Smoke? You don’t mean chimneys?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘No, ma’am,’ returned Mrs. Crupp. ‘Cigars and pipes.’
+
+‘That’s not catching, Trot, at any rate,’ remarked my aunt, turning to
+me.
+
+‘No, indeed,’ said I.
+
+In short, my aunt, seeing how enraptured I was with the premises, took
+them for a month, with leave to remain for twelve months when that
+time was out. Mrs. Crupp was to find linen, and to cook; every other
+necessary was already provided; and Mrs. Crupp expressly intimated that
+she should always yearn towards me as a son. I was to take possession
+the day after tomorrow, and Mrs. Crupp said, thank Heaven she had now
+found summun she could care for!
+
+On our way back, my aunt informed me how she confidently trusted that
+the life I was now to lead would make me firm and self-reliant, which
+was all I wanted. She repeated this several times next day, in the
+intervals of our arranging for the transmission of my clothes and books
+from Mr. Wickfield’s; relative to which, and to all my late holiday, I
+wrote a long letter to Agnes, of which my aunt took charge, as she was
+to leave on the succeeding day. Not to lengthen these particulars, I
+need only add, that she made a handsome provision for all my
+possible wants during my month of trial; that Steerforth, to my great
+disappointment and hers too, did not make his appearance before she went
+away; that I saw her safely seated in the Dover coach, exulting in the
+coming discomfiture of the vagrant donkeys, with Janet at her side; and
+that when the coach was gone, I turned my face to the Adelphi, pondering
+on the old days when I used to roam about its subterranean arches, and
+on the happy changes which had brought me to the surface.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 24. MY FIRST DISSIPATION
+
+
+It was a wonderfully fine thing to have that lofty castle to myself, and
+to feel, when I shut my outer door, like Robinson Crusoe, when he had
+got into his fortification, and pulled his ladder up after him. It was a
+wonderfully fine thing to walk about town with the key of my house in my
+pocket, and to know that I could ask any fellow to come home, and make
+quite sure of its being inconvenient to nobody, if it were not so to me.
+It was a wonderfully fine thing to let myself in and out, and to come
+and go without a word to anyone, and to ring Mrs. Crupp up, gasping,
+from the depths of the earth, when I wanted her--and when she was
+disposed to come. All this, I say, was wonderfully fine; but I must say,
+too, that there were times when it was very dreary.
+
+It was fine in the morning, particularly in the fine mornings. It looked
+a very fresh, free life, by daylight: still fresher, and more free, by
+sunlight. But as the day declined, the life seemed to go down too. I
+don’t know how it was; it seldom looked well by candle-light. I wanted
+somebody to talk to, then. I missed Agnes. I found a tremendous blank,
+in the place of that smiling repository of my confidence. Mrs. Crupp
+appeared to be a long way off. I thought about my predecessor, who had
+died of drink and smoke; and I could have wished he had been so good as
+to live, and not bother me with his decease.
+
+After two days and nights, I felt as if I had lived there for a year,
+and yet I was not an hour older, but was quite as much tormented by my
+own youthfulness as ever.
+
+Steerforth not yet appearing, which induced me to apprehend that he must
+be ill, I left the Commons early on the third day, and walked out to
+Highgate. Mrs. Steerforth was very glad to see me, and said that he had
+gone away with one of his Oxford friends to see another who lived near
+St. Albans, but that she expected him to return tomorrow. I was so fond
+of him, that I felt quite jealous of his Oxford friends.
+
+As she pressed me to stay to dinner, I remained, and I believe we talked
+about nothing but him all day. I told her how much the people liked him
+at Yarmouth, and what a delightful companion he had been. Miss Dartle
+was full of hints and mysterious questions, but took a great interest
+in all our proceedings there, and said, ‘Was it really though?’ and so
+forth, so often, that she got everything out of me she wanted to know.
+Her appearance was exactly what I have described it, when I first saw
+her; but the society of the two ladies was so agreeable, and came so
+natural to me, that I felt myself falling a little in love with her. I
+could not help thinking, several times in the course of the evening, and
+particularly when I walked home at night, what delightful company she
+would be in Buckingham Street.
+
+I was taking my coffee and roll in the morning, before going to the
+Commons--and I may observe in this place that it is surprising how
+much coffee Mrs. Crupp used, and how weak it was, considering--when
+Steerforth himself walked in, to my unbounded joy.
+
+‘My dear Steerforth,’ cried I, ‘I began to think I should never see you
+again!’
+
+‘I was carried off, by force of arms,’ said Steerforth, ‘the very next
+morning after I got home. Why, Daisy, what a rare old bachelor you are
+here!’
+
+I showed him over the establishment, not omitting the pantry, with no
+little pride, and he commended it highly. ‘I tell you what, old boy,’ he
+added, ‘I shall make quite a town-house of this place, unless you give
+me notice to quit.’
+
+This was a delightful hearing. I told him if he waited for that, he
+would have to wait till doomsday.
+
+‘But you shall have some breakfast!’ said I, with my hand on the
+bell-rope, ‘and Mrs. Crupp shall make you some fresh coffee, and I’ll
+toast you some bacon in a bachelor’s Dutch-oven, that I have got here.’
+
+‘No, no!’ said Steerforth. ‘Don’t ring! I can’t! I am going to breakfast
+with one of these fellows who is at the Piazza Hotel, in Covent Garden.’
+
+‘But you’ll come back to dinner?’ said I.
+
+‘I can’t, upon my life. There’s nothing I should like better, but I must
+remain with these two fellows. We are all three off together tomorrow
+morning.’
+
+‘Then bring them here to dinner,’ I returned. ‘Do you think they would
+come?’
+
+‘Oh! they would come fast enough,’ said Steerforth; ‘but we should
+inconvenience you. You had better come and dine with us somewhere.’
+
+I would not by any means consent to this, for it occurred to me that I
+really ought to have a little house-warming, and that there never
+could be a better opportunity. I had a new pride in my rooms after
+his approval of them, and burned with a desire to develop their utmost
+resources. I therefore made him promise positively in the names of his
+two friends, and we appointed six o’clock as the dinner-hour.
+
+When he was gone, I rang for Mrs. Crupp, and acquainted her with my
+desperate design. Mrs. Crupp said, in the first place, of course it was
+well known she couldn’t be expected to wait, but she knew a handy young
+man, who she thought could be prevailed upon to do it, and whose terms
+would be five shillings, and what I pleased. I said, certainly we would
+have him. Next Mrs. Crupp said it was clear she couldn’t be in two
+places at once (which I felt to be reasonable), and that ‘a young gal’
+stationed in the pantry with a bedroom candle, there never to desist
+from washing plates, would be indispensable. I said, what would be
+the expense of this young female? and Mrs. Crupp said she supposed
+eighteenpence would neither make me nor break me. I said I supposed not;
+and THAT was settled. Then Mrs. Crupp said, Now about the dinner.
+
+It was a remarkable instance of want of forethought on the part of the
+ironmonger who had made Mrs. Crupp’s kitchen fireplace, that it was
+capable of cooking nothing but chops and mashed potatoes. As to a
+fish-kittle, Mrs. Crupp said, well! would I only come and look at the
+range? She couldn’t say fairer than that. Would I come and look at
+it? As I should not have been much the wiser if I HAD looked at it, I
+declined, and said, ‘Never mind fish.’ But Mrs. Crupp said, Don’t say
+that; oysters was in, why not them? So THAT was settled. Mrs. Crupp
+then said what she would recommend would be this. A pair of hot
+roast fowls--from the pastry-cook’s; a dish of stewed beef, with
+vegetables--from the pastry-cook’s; two little corner things, as a
+raised pie and a dish of kidneys--from the pastrycook’s; a tart, and (if
+I liked) a shape of jelly--from the pastrycook’s. This, Mrs. Crupp said,
+would leave her at full liberty to concentrate her mind on the potatoes,
+and to serve up the cheese and celery as she could wish to see it done.
+
+I acted on Mrs. Crupp’s opinion, and gave the order at the pastry-cook’s
+myself. Walking along the Strand, afterwards, and observing a hard
+mottled substance in the window of a ham and beef shop, which resembled
+marble, but was labelled ‘Mock Turtle’, I went in and bought a slab of
+it, which I have since seen reason to believe would have sufficed for
+fifteen people. This preparation, Mrs. Crupp, after some difficulty,
+consented to warm up; and it shrunk so much in a liquid state, that we
+found it what Steerforth called ‘rather a tight fit’ for four.
+
+These preparations happily completed, I bought a little dessert in
+Covent Garden Market, and gave a rather extensive order at a retail
+wine-merchant’s in that vicinity. When I came home in the afternoon, and
+saw the bottles drawn up in a square on the pantry floor, they looked
+so numerous (though there were two missing, which made Mrs. Crupp very
+uncomfortable), that I was absolutely frightened at them.
+
+One of Steerforth’s friends was named Grainger, and the other Markham.
+They were both very gay and lively fellows; Grainger, something older
+than Steerforth; Markham, youthful-looking, and I should say not
+more than twenty. I observed that the latter always spoke of himself
+indefinitely, as ‘a man’, and seldom or never in the first person
+singular.
+
+‘A man might get on very well here, Mr. Copperfield,’ said
+Markham--meaning himself.
+
+‘It’s not a bad situation,’ said I, ‘and the rooms are really
+commodious.’
+
+‘I hope you have both brought appetites with you?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Upon my honour,’ returned Markham, ‘town seems to sharpen a man’s
+appetite. A man is hungry all day long. A man is perpetually eating.’
+
+Being a little embarrassed at first, and feeling much too young to
+preside, I made Steerforth take the head of the table when dinner was
+announced, and seated myself opposite to him. Everything was very good;
+we did not spare the wine; and he exerted himself so brilliantly to make
+the thing pass off well, that there was no pause in our festivity. I was
+not quite such good company during dinner as I could have wished to be,
+for my chair was opposite the door, and my attention was distracted by
+observing that the handy young man went out of the room very often, and
+that his shadow always presented itself, immediately afterwards, on the
+wall of the entry, with a bottle at its mouth. The ‘young gal’ likewise
+occasioned me some uneasiness: not so much by neglecting to wash the
+plates, as by breaking them. For being of an inquisitive disposition,
+and unable to confine herself (as her positive instructions were) to the
+pantry, she was constantly peering in at us, and constantly imagining
+herself detected; in which belief, she several times retired upon the
+plates (with which she had carefully paved the floor), and did a great
+deal of destruction.
+
+These, however, were small drawbacks, and easily forgotten when the
+cloth was cleared, and the dessert put on the table; at which period of
+the entertainment the handy young man was discovered to be speechless.
+Giving him private directions to seek the society of Mrs. Crupp, and
+to remove the ‘young gal’ to the basement also, I abandoned myself to
+enjoyment.
+
+I began, by being singularly cheerful and light-hearted; all sorts of
+half-forgotten things to talk about, came rushing into my mind, and made
+me hold forth in a most unwonted manner. I laughed heartily at my own
+jokes, and everybody else’s; called Steerforth to order for not passing
+the wine; made several engagements to go to Oxford; announced that
+I meant to have a dinner-party exactly like that, once a week, until
+further notice; and madly took so much snuff out of Grainger’s box, that
+I was obliged to go into the pantry, and have a private fit of sneezing
+ten minutes long.
+
+I went on, by passing the wine faster and faster yet, and continually
+starting up with a corkscrew to open more wine, long before any was
+needed. I proposed Steerforth’s health. I said he was my dearest friend,
+the protector of my boyhood, and the companion of my prime. I said I was
+delighted to propose his health. I said I owed him more obligations than
+I could ever repay, and held him in a higher admiration than I could
+ever express. I finished by saying, ‘I’ll give you Steerforth! God bless
+him! Hurrah!’ We gave him three times three, and another, and a good one
+to finish with. I broke my glass in going round the table to shake
+hands with him, and I said (in two words)
+
+‘Steerforth--you’retheguidingstarofmyexistence.’
+
+I went on, by finding suddenly that somebody was in the middle of a
+song. Markham was the singer, and he sang ‘When the heart of a man is
+depressed with care’. He said, when he had sung it, he would give us
+‘Woman!’ I took objection to that, and I couldn’t allow it. I said
+it was not a respectful way of proposing the toast, and I would never
+permit that toast to be drunk in my house otherwise than as ‘The
+Ladies!’ I was very high with him, mainly I think because I saw
+Steerforth and Grainger laughing at me--or at him--or at both of us. He
+said a man was not to be dictated to. I said a man was. He said a man
+was not to be insulted, then. I said he was right there--never under
+my roof, where the Lares were sacred, and the laws of hospitality
+paramount. He said it was no derogation from a man’s dignity to confess
+that I was a devilish good fellow. I instantly proposed his health.
+
+Somebody was smoking. We were all smoking. I was smoking, and trying
+to suppress a rising tendency to shudder. Steerforth had made a speech
+about me, in the course of which I had been affected almost to tears.
+I returned thanks, and hoped the present company would dine with me
+tomorrow, and the day after--each day at five o’clock, that we might
+enjoy the pleasures of conversation and society through a long evening.
+I felt called upon to propose an individual. I would give them my aunt.
+Miss Betsey Trotwood, the best of her sex!
+
+Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead
+against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his
+face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as ‘Copperfield’, and
+saying, ‘Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn’t
+do it.’ Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the
+looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass;
+my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair--only my hair, nothing
+else--looked drunk.
+
+Somebody said to me, ‘Let us go to the theatre, Copperfield!’ There was
+no bedroom before me, but again the jingling table covered with glasses;
+the lamp; Grainger on my right hand, Markham on my left, and Steerforth
+opposite--all sitting in a mist, and a long way off. The theatre? To
+be sure. The very thing. Come along! But they must excuse me if I saw
+everybody out first, and turned the lamp off--in case of fire.
+
+Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. I was feeling
+for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing, took me by
+the arm and led me out. We went downstairs, one behind another. Near
+the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was
+Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on
+my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation
+for it.
+
+A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the streets!
+There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. I considered it frosty.
+Steerforth dusted me under a lamp-post, and put my hat into shape, which
+somebody produced from somewhere in a most extraordinary manner, for
+I hadn’t had it on before. Steerforth then said, ‘You are all right,
+Copperfield, are you not?’ and I told him, ‘Neverberrer.’
+
+A man, sitting in a pigeon-hole-place, looked out of the fog, and took
+money from somebody, inquiring if I was one of the gentlemen paid for,
+and appearing rather doubtful (as I remember in the glimpse I had of
+him) whether to take the money for me or not. Shortly afterwards, we
+were very high up in a very hot theatre, looking down into a large pit,
+that seemed to me to smoke; the people with whom it was crammed were so
+indistinct. There was a great stage, too, looking very clean and
+smooth after the streets; and there were people upon it, talking about
+something or other, but not at all intelligibly. There was an abundance
+of bright lights, and there was music, and there were ladies down in the
+boxes, and I don’t know what more. The whole building looked to me as if
+it were learning to swim; it conducted itself in such an unaccountable
+manner, when I tried to steady it.
+
+On somebody’s motion, we resolved to go downstairs to the dress-boxes,
+where the ladies were. A gentleman lounging, full dressed, on a sofa,
+with an opera-glass in his hand, passed before my view, and also my own
+figure at full length in a glass. Then I was being ushered into one of
+these boxes, and found myself saying something as I sat down, and people
+about me crying ‘Silence!’ to somebody, and ladies casting indignant
+glances at me, and--what! yes!--Agnes, sitting on the seat before me, in
+the same box, with a lady and gentleman beside her, whom I didn’t
+know. I see her face now, better than I did then, I dare say, with its
+indelible look of regret and wonder turned upon me.
+
+‘Agnes!’ I said, thickly, ‘Lorblessmer! Agnes!’
+
+‘Hush! Pray!’ she answered, I could not conceive why. ‘You disturb the
+company. Look at the stage!’
+
+I tried, on her injunction, to fix it, and to hear something of what was
+going on there, but quite in vain. I looked at her again by and by, and
+saw her shrink into her corner, and put her gloved hand to her forehead.
+
+‘Agnes!’ I said. ‘I’mafraidyou’renorwell.’
+
+‘Yes, yes. Do not mind me, Trotwood,’ she returned. ‘Listen! Are you
+going away soon?’
+
+‘Amigoarawaysoo?’ I repeated.
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+I had a stupid intention of replying that I was going to wait, to hand
+her downstairs. I suppose I expressed it, somehow; for after she had
+looked at me attentively for a little while, she appeared to understand,
+and replied in a low tone:
+
+‘I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell you I am very earnest in
+it. Go away now, Trotwood, for my sake, and ask your friends to take you
+home.’
+
+She had so far improved me, for the time, that though I was angry with
+her, I felt ashamed, and with a short ‘Goori!’ (which I intended for
+‘Good night!’) got up and went away. They followed, and I stepped at
+once out of the box-door into my bedroom, where only Steerforth was with
+me, helping me to undress, and where I was by turns telling him that
+Agnes was my sister, and adjuring him to bring the corkscrew, that I
+might open another bottle of wine.
+
+How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying and doing all this over again,
+at cross purposes, in a feverish dream all night--the bed a rocking sea
+that was never still! How, as that somebody slowly settled down into
+myself, did I begin to parch, and feel as if my outer covering of skin
+were a hard board; my tongue the bottom of an empty kettle, furred with
+long service, and burning up over a slow fire; the palms of my hands,
+hot plates of metal which no ice could cool!
+
+But the agony of mind, the remorse, and shame I felt when I became
+conscious next day! My horror of having committed a thousand offences I
+had forgotten, and which nothing could ever expiate--my recollection
+of that indelible look which Agnes had given me--the torturing
+impossibility of communicating with her, not knowing, Beast that I was,
+how she came to be in London, or where she stayed--my disgust of
+the very sight of the room where the revel had been held--my racking
+head--the smell of smoke, the sight of glasses, the impossibility of
+going out, or even getting up! Oh, what a day it was!
+
+Oh, what an evening, when I sat down by my fire to a basin of mutton
+broth, dimpled all over with fat, and thought I was going the way of my
+predecessor, and should succeed to his dismal story as well as to his
+chambers, and had half a mind to rush express to Dover and reveal
+all! What an evening, when Mrs. Crupp, coming in to take away the
+broth-basin, produced one kidney on a cheese-plate as the entire remains
+of yesterday’s feast, and I was really inclined to fall upon her nankeen
+breast and say, in heartfelt penitence, ‘Oh, Mrs. Crupp, Mrs. Crupp,
+never mind the broken meats! I am very miserable!’--only that I doubted,
+even at that pass, if Mrs. Crupp were quite the sort of woman to confide
+in!
+
+
+CHAPTER 25. GOOD AND BAD ANGELS
+
+
+I was going out at my door on the morning after that deplorable day of
+headache, sickness, and repentance, with an odd confusion in my mind
+relative to the date of my dinner-party, as if a body of Titans had
+taken an enormous lever and pushed the day before yesterday some months
+back, when I saw a ticket-porter coming upstairs, with a letter in his
+hand. He was taking his time about his errand, then; but when he saw me
+on the top of the staircase, looking at him over the banisters, he swung
+into a trot, and came up panting as if he had run himself into a state
+of exhaustion.
+
+‘T. Copperfield, Esquire,’ said the ticket-porter, touching his hat with
+his little cane.
+
+I could scarcely lay claim to the name: I was so disturbed by the
+conviction that the letter came from Agnes. However, I told him I was T.
+Copperfield, Esquire, and he believed it, and gave me the letter, which
+he said required an answer. I shut him out on the landing to wait for
+the answer, and went into my chambers again, in such a nervous state
+that I was fain to lay the letter down on my breakfast table, and
+familiarize myself with the outside of it a little, before I could
+resolve to break the seal.
+
+I found, when I did open it, that it was a very kind note, containing
+no reference to my condition at the theatre. All it said was, ‘My dear
+Trotwood. I am staying at the house of papa’s agent, Mr. Waterbrook, in
+Ely Place, Holborn. Will you come and see me today, at any time you like
+to appoint? Ever yours affectionately, AGNES.’
+
+It took me such a long time to write an answer at all to my
+satisfaction, that I don’t know what the ticket-porter can have
+thought, unless he thought I was learning to write. I must have written
+half-a-dozen answers at least. I began one, ‘How can I ever hope,
+my dear Agnes, to efface from your remembrance the disgusting
+impression’--there I didn’t like it, and then I tore it up. I began
+another, ‘Shakespeare has observed, my dear Agnes, how strange it is
+that a man should put an enemy into his mouth’--that reminded me of
+Markham, and it got no farther. I even tried poetry. I began one note,
+in a six-syllable line, ‘Oh, do not remember’--but that associated
+itself with the fifth of November, and became an absurdity. After many
+attempts, I wrote, ‘My dear Agnes. Your letter is like you, and what
+could I say of it that would be higher praise than that? I will come at
+four o’clock. Affectionately and sorrowfully, T.C.’ With this missive
+(which I was in twenty minds at once about recalling, as soon as it was
+out of my hands), the ticket-porter at last departed.
+
+If the day were half as tremendous to any other professional gentleman
+in Doctors’ Commons as it was to me, I sincerely believe he made some
+expiation for his share in that rotten old ecclesiastical cheese.
+Although I left the office at half past three, and was prowling about
+the place of appointment within a few minutes afterwards, the appointed
+time was exceeded by a full quarter of an hour, according to the
+clock of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, before I could muster up sufficient
+desperation to pull the private bell-handle let into the left-hand
+door-post of Mr. Waterbrook’s house.
+
+The professional business of Mr. Waterbrook’s establishment was done on
+the ground-floor, and the genteel business (of which there was a good
+deal) in the upper part of the building. I was shown into a pretty but
+rather close drawing-room, and there sat Agnes, netting a purse.
+
+She looked so quiet and good, and reminded me so strongly of my airy
+fresh school days at Canterbury, and the sodden, smoky, stupid wretch
+I had been the other night, that, nobody being by, I yielded to my
+self-reproach and shame, and--in short, made a fool of myself. I cannot
+deny that I shed tears. To this hour I am undecided whether it was upon
+the whole the wisest thing I could have done, or the most ridiculous.
+
+‘If it had been anyone but you, Agnes,’ said I, turning away my head, ‘I
+should not have minded it half so much. But that it should have been you
+who saw me! I almost wish I had been dead, first.’
+
+She put her hand--its touch was like no other hand--upon my arm for a
+moment; and I felt so befriended and comforted, that I could not help
+moving it to my lips, and gratefully kissing it.
+
+‘Sit down,’ said Agnes, cheerfully. ‘Don’t be unhappy, Trotwood. If you
+cannot confidently trust me, whom will you trust?’
+
+‘Ah, Agnes!’ I returned. ‘You are my good Angel!’
+
+She smiled rather sadly, I thought, and shook her head.
+
+‘Yes, Agnes, my good Angel! Always my good Angel!’
+
+‘If I were, indeed, Trotwood,’ she returned, ‘there is one thing that I
+should set my heart on very much.’
+
+I looked at her inquiringly; but already with a foreknowledge of her
+meaning.
+
+‘On warning you,’ said Agnes, with a steady glance, ‘against your bad
+Angel.’
+
+‘My dear Agnes,’ I began, ‘if you mean Steerforth--’
+
+‘I do, Trotwood,’ she returned. ‘Then, Agnes, you wrong him very much.
+He my bad Angel, or anyone’s! He, anything but a guide, a support, and
+a friend to me! My dear Agnes! Now, is it not unjust, and unlike you, to
+judge him from what you saw of me the other night?’
+
+‘I do not judge him from what I saw of you the other night,’ she quietly
+replied.
+
+‘From what, then?’
+
+‘From many things--trifles in themselves, but they do not seem to me to
+be so, when they are put together. I judge him, partly from your account
+of him, Trotwood, and your character, and the influence he has over
+you.’
+
+There was always something in her modest voice that seemed to touch a
+chord within me, answering to that sound alone. It was always earnest;
+but when it was very earnest, as it was now, there was a thrill in it
+that quite subdued me. I sat looking at her as she cast her eyes down on
+her work; I sat seeming still to listen to her; and Steerforth, in spite
+of all my attachment to him, darkened in that tone.
+
+‘It is very bold in me,’ said Agnes, looking up again, ‘who have lived
+in such seclusion, and can know so little of the world, to give you my
+advice so confidently, or even to have this strong opinion. But I know
+in what it is engendered, Trotwood,--in how true a remembrance of our
+having grown up together, and in how true an interest in all relating
+to you. It is that which makes me bold. I am certain that what I say is
+right. I am quite sure it is. I feel as if it were someone else speaking
+to you, and not I, when I caution you that you have made a dangerous
+friend.’
+
+Again I looked at her, again I listened to her after she was silent, and
+again his image, though it was still fixed in my heart, darkened.
+
+‘I am not so unreasonable as to expect,’ said Agnes, resuming her usual
+tone, after a little while, ‘that you will, or that you can, at once,
+change any sentiment that has become a conviction to you; least of all
+a sentiment that is rooted in your trusting disposition. You ought not
+hastily to do that. I only ask you, Trotwood, if you ever think of me--I
+mean,’ with a quiet smile, for I was going to interrupt her, and she
+knew why, ‘as often as you think of me--to think of what I have said. Do
+you forgive me for all this?’
+
+‘I will forgive you, Agnes,’ I replied, ‘when you come to do Steerforth
+justice, and to like him as well as I do.’
+
+‘Not until then?’ said Agnes.
+
+I saw a passing shadow on her face when I made this mention of him, but
+she returned my smile, and we were again as unreserved in our mutual
+confidence as of old.
+
+‘And when, Agnes,’ said I, ‘will you forgive me the other night?’
+
+‘When I recall it,’ said Agnes.
+
+She would have dismissed the subject so, but I was too full of it to
+allow that, and insisted on telling her how it happened that I had
+disgraced myself, and what chain of accidental circumstances had had the
+theatre for its final link. It was a great relief to me to do this, and
+to enlarge on the obligation that I owed to Steerforth for his care of
+me when I was unable to take care of myself.
+
+‘You must not forget,’ said Agnes, calmly changing the conversation as
+soon as I had concluded, ‘that you are always to tell me, not only when
+you fall into trouble, but when you fall in love. Who has succeeded to
+Miss Larkins, Trotwood?’
+
+‘No one, Agnes.’
+
+‘Someone, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, laughing, and holding up her finger.
+
+‘No, Agnes, upon my word! There is a lady, certainly, at Mrs.
+Steerforth’s house, who is very clever, and whom I like to talk to--Miss
+Dartle--but I don’t adore her.’
+
+Agnes laughed again at her own penetration, and told me that if I were
+faithful to her in my confidence she thought she should keep a little
+register of my violent attachments, with the date, duration, and
+termination of each, like the table of the reigns of the kings and
+queens, in the History of England. Then she asked me if I had seen
+Uriah.
+
+‘Uriah Heep?’ said I. ‘No. Is he in London?’
+
+‘He comes to the office downstairs, every day,’ returned Agnes. ‘He
+was in London a week before me. I am afraid on disagreeable business,
+Trotwood.’
+
+‘On some business that makes you uneasy, Agnes, I see,’ said I. ‘What
+can that be?’
+
+Agnes laid aside her work, and replied, folding her hands upon one
+another, and looking pensively at me out of those beautiful soft eyes of
+hers:
+
+‘I believe he is going to enter into partnership with papa.’
+
+‘What? Uriah? That mean, fawning fellow, worm himself into such
+promotion!’ I cried, indignantly. ‘Have you made no remonstrance about
+it, Agnes? Consider what a connexion it is likely to be. You must speak
+out. You must not allow your father to take such a mad step. You must
+prevent it, Agnes, while there’s time.’
+
+Still looking at me, Agnes shook her head while I was speaking, with a
+faint smile at my warmth: and then replied:
+
+‘You remember our last conversation about papa? It was not long after
+that--not more than two or three days--when he gave me the first
+intimation of what I tell you. It was sad to see him struggling between
+his desire to represent it to me as a matter of choice on his part,
+and his inability to conceal that it was forced upon him. I felt very
+sorry.’
+
+‘Forced upon him, Agnes! Who forces it upon him?’
+
+‘Uriah,’ she replied, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘has made himself
+indispensable to papa. He is subtle and watchful. He has mastered papa’s
+weaknesses, fostered them, and taken advantage of them, until--to say
+all that I mean in a word, Trotwood,--until papa is afraid of him.’
+
+There was more that she might have said; more that she knew, or that she
+suspected; I clearly saw. I could not give her pain by asking what it
+was, for I knew that she withheld it from me, to spare her father. It
+had long been going on to this, I was sensible: yes, I could not but
+feel, on the least reflection, that it had been going on to this for a
+long time. I remained silent.
+
+‘His ascendancy over papa,’ said Agnes, ‘is very great. He professes
+humility and gratitude--with truth, perhaps: I hope so--but his position
+is really one of power, and I fear he makes a hard use of his power.’
+
+I said he was a hound, which, at the moment, was a great satisfaction to
+me.
+
+‘At the time I speak of, as the time when papa spoke to me,’ pursued
+Agnes, ‘he had told papa that he was going away; that he was very sorry,
+and unwilling to leave, but that he had better prospects. Papa was very
+much depressed then, and more bowed down by care than ever you or I have
+seen him; but he seemed relieved by this expedient of the partnership,
+though at the same time he seemed hurt by it and ashamed of it.’
+
+‘And how did you receive it, Agnes?’
+
+‘I did, Trotwood,’ she replied, ‘what I hope was right. Feeling sure
+that it was necessary for papa’s peace that the sacrifice should be
+made, I entreated him to make it. I said it would lighten the load
+of his life--I hope it will!--and that it would give me increased
+opportunities of being his companion. Oh, Trotwood!’ cried Agnes,
+putting her hands before her face, as her tears started on it, ‘I almost
+feel as if I had been papa’s enemy, instead of his loving child. For
+I know how he has altered, in his devotion to me. I know how he has
+narrowed the circle of his sympathies and duties, in the concentration
+of his whole mind upon me. I know what a multitude of things he has shut
+out for my sake, and how his anxious thoughts of me have shadowed his
+life, and weakened his strength and energy, by turning them always upon
+one idea. If I could ever set this right! If I could ever work out his
+restoration, as I have so innocently been the cause of his decline!’
+
+I had never before seen Agnes cry. I had seen tears in her eyes when I
+had brought new honours home from school, and I had seen them there when
+we last spoke about her father, and I had seen her turn her gentle head
+aside when we took leave of one another; but I had never seen her grieve
+like this. It made me so sorry that I could only say, in a foolish,
+helpless manner, ‘Pray, Agnes, don’t! Don’t, my dear sister!’
+
+But Agnes was too superior to me in character and purpose, as I know
+well now, whatever I might know or not know then, to be long in need of
+my entreaties. The beautiful, calm manner, which makes her so different
+in my remembrance from everybody else, came back again, as if a cloud
+had passed from a serene sky.
+
+‘We are not likely to remain alone much longer,’ said Agnes, ‘and while
+I have an opportunity, let me earnestly entreat you, Trotwood, to be
+friendly to Uriah. Don’t repel him. Don’t resent (as I think you have a
+general disposition to do) what may be uncongenial to you in him. He may
+not deserve it, for we know no certain ill of him. In any case, think
+first of papa and me!’
+
+Agnes had no time to say more, for the room door opened, and Mrs.
+Waterbrook, who was a large lady--or who wore a large dress: I don’t
+exactly know which, for I don’t know which was dress and which was
+lady--came sailing in. I had a dim recollection of having seen her
+at the theatre, as if I had seen her in a pale magic lantern; but she
+appeared to remember me perfectly, and still to suspect me of being in a
+state of intoxication.
+
+Finding by degrees, however, that I was sober, and (I hope) that I was
+a modest young gentleman, Mrs. Waterbrook softened towards me
+considerably, and inquired, firstly, if I went much into the parks,
+and secondly, if I went much into society. On my replying to both these
+questions in the negative, it occurred to me that I fell again in her
+good opinion; but she concealed the fact gracefully, and invited me to
+dinner next day. I accepted the invitation, and took my leave, making a
+call on Uriah in the office as I went out, and leaving a card for him in
+his absence.
+
+When I went to dinner next day, and on the street door being opened,
+plunged into a vapour-bath of haunch of mutton, I divined that I was
+not the only guest, for I immediately identified the ticket-porter in
+disguise, assisting the family servant, and waiting at the foot of the
+stairs to carry up my name. He looked, to the best of his ability, when
+he asked me for it confidentially, as if he had never seen me before;
+but well did I know him, and well did he know me. Conscience made
+cowards of us both.
+
+I found Mr. Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gentleman, with a short
+throat, and a good deal of shirt-collar, who only wanted a black nose to
+be the portrait of a pug-dog. He told me he was happy to have the
+honour of making my acquaintance; and when I had paid my homage to Mrs.
+Waterbrook, presented me, with much ceremony, to a very awful lady in
+a black velvet dress, and a great black velvet hat, whom I remember as
+looking like a near relation of Hamlet’s--say his aunt.
+
+Mrs. Henry Spiker was this lady’s name; and her husband was there
+too: so cold a man, that his head, instead of being grey, seemed to
+be sprinkled with hoar-frost. Immense deference was shown to the Henry
+Spikers, male and female; which Agnes told me was on account of Mr.
+Henry Spiker being solicitor to something or to somebody, I forget what
+or which, remotely connected with the Treasury.
+
+I found Uriah Heep among the company, in a suit of black, and in deep
+humility. He told me, when I shook hands with him, that he was proud
+to be noticed by me, and that he really felt obliged to me for my
+condescension. I could have wished he had been less obliged to me, for
+he hovered about me in his gratitude all the rest of the evening; and
+whenever I said a word to Agnes, was sure, with his shadowless eyes and
+cadaverous face, to be looking gauntly down upon us from behind.
+
+There were other guests--all iced for the occasion, as it struck me,
+like the wine. But there was one who attracted my attention before he
+came in, on account of my hearing him announced as Mr. Traddles! My mind
+flew back to Salem House; and could it be Tommy, I thought, who used to
+draw the skeletons!
+
+I looked for Mr. Traddles with unusual interest. He was a sober,
+steady-looking young man of retiring manners, with a comic head of hair,
+and eyes that were rather wide open; and he got into an obscure corner
+so soon, that I had some difficulty in making him out. At length I had
+a good view of him, and either my vision deceived me, or it was the old
+unfortunate Tommy.
+
+I made my way to Mr. Waterbrook, and said, that I believed I had the
+pleasure of seeing an old schoolfellow there.
+
+‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Waterbrook, surprised. ‘You are too young to have
+been at school with Mr. Henry Spiker?’
+
+‘Oh, I don’t mean him!’ I returned. ‘I mean the gentleman named
+Traddles.’
+
+‘Oh! Aye, aye! Indeed!’ said my host, with much diminished interest.
+‘Possibly.’
+
+‘If it’s really the same person,’ said I, glancing towards him, ‘it
+was at a place called Salem House where we were together, and he was an
+excellent fellow.’
+
+‘Oh yes. Traddles is a good fellow,’ returned my host nodding his head
+with an air of toleration. ‘Traddles is quite a good fellow.’
+
+‘It’s a curious coincidence,’ said I.
+
+‘It is really,’ returned my host, ‘quite a coincidence, that Traddles
+should be here at all: as Traddles was only invited this morning, when
+the place at table, intended to be occupied by Mrs. Henry Spiker’s
+brother, became vacant, in consequence of his indisposition. A very
+gentlemanly man, Mrs. Henry Spiker’s brother, Mr. Copperfield.’
+
+I murmured an assent, which was full of feeling, considering that I
+knew nothing at all about him; and I inquired what Mr. Traddles was by
+profession.
+
+‘Traddles,’ returned Mr. Waterbrook, ‘is a young man reading for the
+bar. Yes. He is quite a good fellow--nobody’s enemy but his own.’
+
+‘Is he his own enemy?’ said I, sorry to hear this.
+
+‘Well,’ returned Mr. Waterbrook, pursing up his mouth, and playing with
+his watch-chain, in a comfortable, prosperous sort of way. ‘I should say
+he was one of those men who stand in their own light. Yes, I should say
+he would never, for example, be worth five hundred pound. Traddles was
+recommended to me by a professional friend. Oh yes. Yes. He has a kind
+of talent for drawing briefs, and stating a case in writing, plainly. I
+am able to throw something in Traddles’s way, in the course of the year;
+something--for him--considerable. Oh yes. Yes.’
+
+I was much impressed by the extremely comfortable and satisfied manner
+in which Mr. Waterbrook delivered himself of this little word ‘Yes’,
+every now and then. There was wonderful expression in it. It completely
+conveyed the idea of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver
+spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the
+heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from the top of
+the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the
+people down in the trenches.
+
+My reflections on this theme were still in progress when dinner was
+announced. Mr. Waterbrook went down with Hamlet’s aunt. Mr. Henry Spiker
+took Mrs. Waterbrook. Agnes, whom I should have liked to take myself,
+was given to a simpering fellow with weak legs. Uriah, Traddles, and I,
+as the junior part of the company, went down last, how we could. I was
+not so vexed at losing Agnes as I might have been, since it gave me
+an opportunity of making myself known to Traddles on the stairs, who
+greeted me with great fervour; while Uriah writhed with such obtrusive
+satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched
+him over the banisters. Traddles and I were separated at table, being
+billeted in two remote corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady;
+I, in the gloom of Hamlet’s aunt. The dinner was very long, and the
+conversation was about the Aristocracy--and Blood. Mrs. Waterbrook
+repeatedly told us, that if she had a weakness, it was Blood.
+
+It occurred to me several times that we should have got on better, if we
+had not been quite so genteel. We were so exceedingly genteel, that our
+scope was very limited. A Mr. and Mrs. Gulpidge were of the party, who
+had something to do at second-hand (at least, Mr. Gulpidge had) with
+the law business of the Bank; and what with the Bank, and what with
+the Treasury, we were as exclusive as the Court Circular. To mend the
+matter, Hamlet’s aunt had the family failing of indulging in soliloquy,
+and held forth in a desultory manner, by herself, on every topic that
+was introduced. These were few enough, to be sure; but as we always fell
+back upon Blood, she had as wide a field for abstract speculation as her
+nephew himself.
+
+We might have been a party of Ogres, the conversation assumed such a
+sanguine complexion.
+
+‘I confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook’s opinion,’ said Mr. Waterbrook, with
+his wine-glass at his eye. ‘Other things are all very well in their way,
+but give me Blood!’
+
+‘Oh! There is nothing,’ observed Hamlet’s aunt, ‘so satisfactory to one!
+There is nothing that is so much one’s beau-ideal of--of all that sort
+of thing, speaking generally. There are some low minds (not many, I am
+happy to believe, but there are some) that would prefer to do what I
+should call bow down before idols. Positively Idols! Before service,
+intellect, and so on. But these are intangible points. Blood is not so.
+We see Blood in a nose, and we know it. We meet with it in a chin, and
+we say, “There it is! That’s Blood!” It is an actual matter of fact. We
+point it out. It admits of no doubt.’
+
+The simpering fellow with the weak legs, who had taken Agnes down,
+stated the question more decisively yet, I thought.
+
+‘Oh, you know, deuce take it,’ said this gentleman, looking round the
+board with an imbecile smile, ‘we can’t forego Blood, you know. We must
+have Blood, you know. Some young fellows, you know, may be a little
+behind their station, perhaps, in point of education and behaviour, and
+may go a little wrong, you know, and get themselves and other people
+into a variety of fixes--and all that--but deuce take it, it’s
+delightful to reflect that they’ve got Blood in ‘em! Myself, I’d rather
+at any time be knocked down by a man who had got Blood in him, than I’d
+be picked up by a man who hadn’t!’
+
+This sentiment, as compressing the general question into a nutshell,
+gave the utmost satisfaction, and brought the gentleman into great
+notice until the ladies retired. After that, I observed that Mr.
+Gulpidge and Mr. Henry Spiker, who had hitherto been very distant,
+entered into a defensive alliance against us, the common enemy, and
+exchanged a mysterious dialogue across the table for our defeat and
+overthrow.
+
+‘That affair of the first bond for four thousand five hundred pounds has
+not taken the course that was expected, Spiker,’ said Mr. Gulpidge.
+
+‘Do you mean the D. of A.’s?’ said Mr. Spiker.
+
+‘The C. of B.’s!’ said Mr. Gulpidge.
+
+Mr. Spiker raised his eyebrows, and looked much concerned.
+
+‘When the question was referred to Lord--I needn’t name him,’ said Mr.
+Gulpidge, checking himself--
+
+‘I understand,’ said Mr. Spiker, ‘N.’
+
+Mr. Gulpidge darkly nodded--‘was referred to him, his answer was,
+“Money, or no release.”’
+
+‘Lord bless my soul!’ cried Mr. Spiker.
+
+“‘Money, or no release,”’ repeated Mr. Gulpidge, firmly. ‘The next in
+reversion--you understand me?’
+
+‘K.,’ said Mr. Spiker, with an ominous look.
+
+‘--K. then positively refused to sign. He was attended at Newmarket for
+that purpose, and he point-blank refused to do it.’
+
+Mr. Spiker was so interested, that he became quite stony.
+
+‘So the matter rests at this hour,’ said Mr. Gulpidge, throwing himself
+back in his chair. ‘Our friend Waterbrook will excuse me if I forbear to
+explain myself generally, on account of the magnitude of the interests
+involved.’
+
+Mr. Waterbrook was only too happy, as it appeared to me, to have such
+interests, and such names, even hinted at, across his table. He assumed
+an expression of gloomy intelligence (though I am persuaded he knew
+no more about the discussion than I did), and highly approved of the
+discretion that had been observed. Mr. Spiker, after the receipt of such
+a confidence, naturally desired to favour his friend with a confidence
+of his own; therefore the foregoing dialogue was succeeded by another,
+in which it was Mr. Gulpidge’s turn to be surprised, and that by another
+in which the surprise came round to Mr. Spiker’s turn again, and so on,
+turn and turn about. All this time we, the outsiders, remained oppressed
+by the tremendous interests involved in the conversation; and our
+host regarded us with pride, as the victims of a salutary awe and
+astonishment. I was very glad indeed to get upstairs to Agnes, and to
+talk with her in a corner, and to introduce Traddles to her, who was
+shy, but agreeable, and the same good-natured creature still. As he
+was obliged to leave early, on account of going away next morning for
+a month, I had not nearly so much conversation with him as I could have
+wished; but we exchanged addresses, and promised ourselves the pleasure
+of another meeting when he should come back to town. He was greatly
+interested to hear that I knew Steerforth, and spoke of him with such
+warmth that I made him tell Agnes what he thought of him. But Agnes only
+looked at me the while, and very slightly shook her head when only I
+observed her.
+
+As she was not among people with whom I believed she could be very much
+at home, I was almost glad to hear that she was going away within a few
+days, though I was sorry at the prospect of parting from her again
+so soon. This caused me to remain until all the company were gone.
+Conversing with her, and hearing her sing, was such a delightful
+reminder to me of my happy life in the grave old house she had made so
+beautiful, that I could have remained there half the night; but, having
+no excuse for staying any longer, when the lights of Mr. Waterbrook’s
+society were all snuffed out, I took my leave very much against my
+inclination. I felt then, more than ever, that she was my better Angel;
+and if I thought of her sweet face and placid smile, as though they had
+shone on me from some removed being, like an Angel, I hope I thought no
+harm.
+
+I have said that the company were all gone; but I ought to have excepted
+Uriah, whom I don’t include in that denomination, and who had never
+ceased to hover near us. He was close behind me when I went downstairs.
+He was close beside me, when I walked away from the house, slowly
+fitting his long skeleton fingers into the still longer fingers of a
+great Guy Fawkes pair of gloves.
+
+It was in no disposition for Uriah’s company, but in remembrance of the
+entreaty Agnes had made to me, that I asked him if he would come home to
+my rooms, and have some coffee.
+
+‘Oh, really, Master Copperfield,’ he rejoined--‘I beg your pardon,
+Mister Copperfield, but the other comes so natural, I don’t like that
+you should put a constraint upon yourself to ask a numble person like me
+to your ouse.’
+
+‘There is no constraint in the case,’ said I. ‘Will you come?’
+
+‘I should like to, very much,’ replied Uriah, with a writhe.
+
+‘Well, then, come along!’ said I.
+
+I could not help being rather short with him, but he appeared not to
+mind it. We went the nearest way, without conversing much upon the road;
+and he was so humble in respect of those scarecrow gloves, that he
+was still putting them on, and seemed to have made no advance in that
+labour, when we got to my place.
+
+I led him up the dark stairs, to prevent his knocking his head against
+anything, and really his damp cold hand felt so like a frog in mine,
+that I was tempted to drop it and run away. Agnes and hospitality
+prevailed, however, and I conducted him to my fireside. When I lighted
+my candles, he fell into meek transports with the room that was revealed
+to him; and when I heated the coffee in an unassuming block-tin vessel
+in which Mrs. Crupp delighted to prepare it (chiefly, I believe, because
+it was not intended for the purpose, being a shaving-pot, and because
+there was a patent invention of great price mouldering away in the
+pantry), he professed so much emotion, that I could joyfully have
+scalded him.
+
+‘Oh, really, Master Copperfield,--I mean Mister Copperfield,’ said
+Uriah, ‘to see you waiting upon me is what I never could have expected!
+But, one way and another, so many things happen to me which I never
+could have expected, I am sure, in my umble station, that it seems
+to rain blessings on my ed. You have heard something, I des-say, of a
+change in my expectations, Master Copperfield,--I should say, Mister
+Copperfield?’
+
+As he sat on my sofa, with his long knees drawn up under his coffee-cup,
+his hat and gloves upon the ground close to him, his spoon going softly
+round and round, his shadowless red eyes, which looked as if they had
+scorched their lashes off, turned towards me without looking at me, the
+disagreeable dints I have formerly described in his nostrils coming and
+going with his breath, and a snaky undulation pervading his frame from
+his chin to his boots, I decided in my own mind that I disliked him
+intensely. It made me very uncomfortable to have him for a guest, for I
+was young then, and unused to disguise what I so strongly felt.
+
+‘You have heard something, I des-say, of a change in my expectations,
+Master Copperfield,--I should say, Mister Copperfield?’ observed Uriah.
+
+‘Yes,’ said I, ‘something.’
+
+‘Ah! I thought Miss Agnes would know of it!’ he quietly returned. ‘I’m
+glad to find Miss Agnes knows of it. Oh, thank you, Master--Mister
+Copperfield!’
+
+I could have thrown my bootjack at him (it lay ready on the rug), for
+having entrapped me into the disclosure of anything concerning Agnes,
+however immaterial. But I only drank my coffee.
+
+‘What a prophet you have shown yourself, Mister Copperfield!’ pursued
+Uriah. ‘Dear me, what a prophet you have proved yourself to be! Don’t
+you remember saying to me once, that perhaps I should be a partner in
+Mr. Wickfield’s business, and perhaps it might be Wickfield and
+Heep? You may not recollect it; but when a person is umble, Master
+Copperfield, a person treasures such things up!’
+
+‘I recollect talking about it,’ said I, ‘though I certainly did not
+think it very likely then.’ ‘Oh! who would have thought it likely,
+Mister Copperfield!’ returned Uriah, enthusiastically. ‘I am sure I
+didn’t myself. I recollect saying with my own lips that I was much too
+umble. So I considered myself really and truly.’
+
+He sat, with that carved grin on his face, looking at the fire, as I
+looked at him.
+
+‘But the umblest persons, Master Copperfield,’ he presently resumed,
+‘may be the instruments of good. I am glad to think I have been the
+instrument of good to Mr. Wickfield, and that I may be more so. Oh what
+a worthy man he is, Mister Copperfield, but how imprudent he has been!’
+
+‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said I. I could not help adding, rather
+pointedly, ‘on all accounts.’
+
+‘Decidedly so, Mister Copperfield,’ replied Uriah. ‘On all accounts.
+Miss Agnes’s above all! You don’t remember your own eloquent
+expressions, Master Copperfield; but I remember how you said one day
+that everybody must admire her, and how I thanked you for it! You have
+forgot that, I have no doubt, Master Copperfield?’
+
+‘No,’ said I, drily.
+
+‘Oh how glad I am you have not!’ exclaimed Uriah. ‘To think that you
+should be the first to kindle the sparks of ambition in my umble breast,
+and that you’ve not forgot it! Oh!--Would you excuse me asking for a cup
+more coffee?’
+
+Something in the emphasis he laid upon the kindling of those sparks,
+and something in the glance he directed at me as he said it, had made me
+start as if I had seen him illuminated by a blaze of light. Recalled by
+his request, preferred in quite another tone of voice, I did the honours
+of the shaving-pot; but I did them with an unsteadiness of hand, a
+sudden sense of being no match for him, and a perplexed suspicious
+anxiety as to what he might be going to say next, which I felt could not
+escape his observation.
+
+He said nothing at all. He stirred his coffee round and round, he sipped
+it, he felt his chin softly with his grisly hand, he looked at the fire,
+he looked about the room, he gasped rather than smiled at me, he writhed
+and undulated about, in his deferential servility, he stirred and sipped
+again, but he left the renewal of the conversation to me.
+
+‘So, Mr. Wickfield,’ said I, at last, ‘who is worth five hundred of
+you--or me’; for my life, I think, I could not have helped dividing that
+part of the sentence with an awkward jerk; ‘has been imprudent, has he,
+Mr. Heep?’
+
+‘Oh, very imprudent indeed, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, sighing
+modestly. ‘Oh, very much so! But I wish you’d call me Uriah, if you
+please. It’s like old times.’
+
+‘Well! Uriah,’ said I, bolting it out with some difficulty.
+
+‘Thank you,’ he returned, with fervour. ‘Thank you, Master Copperfield!
+It’s like the blowing of old breezes or the ringing of old bellses to
+hear YOU say Uriah. I beg your pardon. Was I making any observation?’
+
+‘About Mr. Wickfield,’ I suggested.
+
+‘Oh! Yes, truly,’ said Uriah. ‘Ah! Great imprudence, Master Copperfield.
+It’s a topic that I wouldn’t touch upon, to any soul but you. Even to
+you I can only touch upon it, and no more. If anyone else had been in
+my place during the last few years, by this time he would have had Mr.
+Wickfield (oh, what a worthy man he is, Master Copperfield, too!) under
+his thumb. Un--der--his thumb,’ said Uriah, very slowly, as he stretched
+out his cruel-looking hand above my table, and pressed his own thumb
+upon it, until it shook, and shook the room.
+
+If I had been obliged to look at him with him splay foot on Mr.
+Wickfield’s head, I think I could scarcely have hated him more.
+
+‘Oh, dear, yes, Master Copperfield,’ he proceeded, in a soft voice,
+most remarkably contrasting with the action of his thumb, which did not
+diminish its hard pressure in the least degree, ‘there’s no doubt of
+it. There would have been loss, disgrace, I don’t know what at all. Mr.
+Wickfield knows it. I am the umble instrument of umbly serving him,
+and he puts me on an eminence I hardly could have hoped to reach. How
+thankful should I be!’ With his face turned towards me, as he finished,
+but without looking at me, he took his crooked thumb off the spot where
+he had planted it, and slowly and thoughtfully scraped his lank jaw with
+it, as if he were shaving himself.
+
+I recollect well how indignantly my heart beat, as I saw his crafty
+face, with the appropriately red light of the fire upon it, preparing
+for something else.
+
+‘Master Copperfield,’ he began--‘but am I keeping you up?’
+
+‘You are not keeping me up. I generally go to bed late.’
+
+‘Thank you, Master Copperfield! I have risen from my umble station since
+first you used to address me, it is true; but I am umble still. I hope I
+never shall be otherwise than umble. You will not think the worse of
+my umbleness, if I make a little confidence to you, Master Copperfield?
+Will you?’
+
+‘Oh no,’ said I, with an effort.
+
+‘Thank you!’ He took out his pocket-handkerchief, and began wiping the
+palms of his hands. ‘Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield--’ ‘Well, Uriah?’
+
+‘Oh, how pleasant to be called Uriah, spontaneously!’ he cried; and gave
+himself a jerk, like a convulsive fish. ‘You thought her looking very
+beautiful tonight, Master Copperfield?’
+
+‘I thought her looking as she always does: superior, in all respects, to
+everyone around her,’ I returned.
+
+‘Oh, thank you! It’s so true!’ he cried. ‘Oh, thank you very much for
+that!’
+
+‘Not at all,’ I said, loftily. ‘There is no reason why you should thank
+me.’
+
+‘Why that, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘is, in fact, the confidence
+that I am going to take the liberty of reposing. Umble as I am,’ he
+wiped his hands harder, and looked at them and at the fire by turns,
+‘umble as my mother is, and lowly as our poor but honest roof has ever
+been, the image of Miss Agnes (I don’t mind trusting you with my secret,
+Master Copperfield, for I have always overflowed towards you since the
+first moment I had the pleasure of beholding you in a pony-shay) has
+been in my breast for years. Oh, Master Copperfield, with what a pure
+affection do I love the ground my Agnes walks on!’
+
+I believe I had a delirious idea of seizing the red-hot poker out of
+the fire, and running him through with it. It went from me with a shock,
+like a ball fired from a rifle: but the image of Agnes, outraged by so
+much as a thought of this red-headed animal’s, remained in my mind when
+I looked at him, sitting all awry as if his mean soul griped his body,
+and made me giddy. He seemed to swell and grow before my eyes; the room
+seemed full of the echoes of his voice; and the strange feeling (to
+which, perhaps, no one is quite a stranger) that all this had occurred
+before, at some indefinite time, and that I knew what he was going to
+say next, took possession of me.
+
+A timely observation of the sense of power that there was in his face,
+did more to bring back to my remembrance the entreaty of Agnes, in
+its full force, than any effort I could have made. I asked him, with
+a better appearance of composure than I could have thought possible a
+minute before, whether he had made his feelings known to Agnes.
+
+‘Oh no, Master Copperfield!’ he returned; ‘oh dear, no! Not to anyone
+but you. You see I am only just emerging from my lowly station. I rest a
+good deal of hope on her observing how useful I am to her father (for
+I trust to be very useful to him indeed, Master Copperfield), and how I
+smooth the way for him, and keep him straight. She’s so much attached
+to her father, Master Copperfield (oh, what a lovely thing it is in a
+daughter!), that I think she may come, on his account, to be kind to
+me.’
+
+I fathomed the depth of the rascal’s whole scheme, and understood why he
+laid it bare.
+
+‘If you’ll have the goodness to keep my secret, Master Copperfield,’ he
+pursued, ‘and not, in general, to go against me, I shall take it as a
+particular favour. You wouldn’t wish to make unpleasantness. I know
+what a friendly heart you’ve got; but having only known me on my umble
+footing (on my umblest I should say, for I am very umble still), you
+might, unbeknown, go against me rather, with my Agnes. I call her mine,
+you see, Master Copperfield. There’s a song that says, “I’d crowns
+resign, to call her mine!” I hope to do it, one of these days.’
+
+Dear Agnes! So much too loving and too good for anyone that I could
+think of, was it possible that she was reserved to be the wife of such a
+wretch as this!
+
+‘There’s no hurry at present, you know, Master Copperfield,’ Uriah
+proceeded, in his slimy way, as I sat gazing at him, with this thought
+in my mind. ‘My Agnes is very young still; and mother and me will have
+to work our way upwards, and make a good many new arrangements, before
+it would be quite convenient. So I shall have time gradually to make her
+familiar with my hopes, as opportunities offer. Oh, I’m so much obliged
+to you for this confidence! Oh, it’s such a relief, you can’t think, to
+know that you understand our situation, and are certain (as you wouldn’t
+wish to make unpleasantness in the family) not to go against me!’
+
+He took the hand which I dared not withhold, and having given it a damp
+squeeze, referred to his pale-faced watch.
+
+‘Dear me!’ he said, ‘it’s past one. The moments slip away so, in the
+confidence of old times, Master Copperfield, that it’s almost half past
+one!’
+
+I answered that I had thought it was later. Not that I had really
+thought so, but because my conversational powers were effectually
+scattered.
+
+‘Dear me!’ he said, considering. ‘The ouse that I am stopping at--a sort
+of a private hotel and boarding ouse, Master Copperfield, near the New
+River ed--will have gone to bed these two hours.’
+
+‘I am sorry,’ I returned, ‘that there is only one bed here, and that
+I--’
+
+‘Oh, don’t think of mentioning beds, Master Copperfield!’ he rejoined
+ecstatically, drawing up one leg. ‘But would you have any objections to
+my laying down before the fire?’
+
+‘If it comes to that,’ I said, ‘pray take my bed, and I’ll lie down
+before the fire.’
+
+His repudiation of this offer was almost shrill enough, in the excess of
+its surprise and humility, to have penetrated to the ears of Mrs. Crupp,
+then sleeping, I suppose, in a distant chamber, situated at about the
+level of low-water mark, soothed in her slumbers by the ticking of an
+incorrigible clock, to which she always referred me when we had any
+little difference on the score of punctuality, and which was never less
+than three-quarters of an hour too slow, and had always been put right
+in the morning by the best authorities. As no arguments I could urge,
+in my bewildered condition, had the least effect upon his modesty
+in inducing him to accept my bedroom, I was obliged to make the best
+arrangements I could, for his repose before the fire. The mattress of
+the sofa (which was a great deal too short for his lank figure), the
+sofa pillows, a blanket, the table-cover, a clean breakfast-cloth, and
+a great-coat, made him a bed and covering, for which he was more than
+thankful. Having lent him a night-cap, which he put on at once, and in
+which he made such an awful figure, that I have never worn one since, I
+left him to his rest.
+
+I never shall forget that night. I never shall forget how I turned
+and tumbled; how I wearied myself with thinking about Agnes and this
+creature; how I considered what could I do, and what ought I to do; how
+I could come to no other conclusion than that the best course for her
+peace was to do nothing, and to keep to myself what I had heard. If
+I went to sleep for a few moments, the image of Agnes with her tender
+eyes, and of her father looking fondly on her, as I had so often seen
+him look, arose before me with appealing faces, and filled me with vague
+terrors. When I awoke, the recollection that Uriah was lying in the next
+room, sat heavy on me like a waking nightmare; and oppressed me with a
+leaden dread, as if I had had some meaner quality of devil for a lodger.
+
+The poker got into my dozing thoughts besides, and wouldn’t come out. I
+thought, between sleeping and waking, that it was still red hot, and I
+had snatched it out of the fire, and run him through the body. I was so
+haunted at last by the idea, though I knew there was nothing in it, that
+I stole into the next room to look at him. There I saw him, lying on his
+back, with his legs extending to I don’t know where, gurglings taking
+place in his throat, stoppages in his nose, and his mouth open like
+a post-office. He was so much worse in reality than in my distempered
+fancy, that afterwards I was attracted to him in very repulsion, and
+could not help wandering in and out every half-hour or so, and taking
+another look at him. Still, the long, long night seemed heavy and
+hopeless as ever, and no promise of day was in the murky sky.
+
+When I saw him going downstairs early in the morning (for, thank Heaven!
+he would not stay to breakfast), it appeared to me as if the night was
+going away in his person. When I went out to the Commons, I charged
+Mrs. Crupp with particular directions to leave the windows open, that my
+sitting-room might be aired, and purged of his presence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 26. I FALL INTO CAPTIVITY
+
+
+I saw no more of Uriah Heep, until the day when Agnes left town. I was
+at the coach office to take leave of her and see her go; and there was
+he, returning to Canterbury by the same conveyance. It was some small
+satisfaction to me to observe his spare, short-waisted, high-shouldered,
+mulberry-coloured great-coat perched up, in company with an umbrella
+like a small tent, on the edge of the back seat on the roof, while
+Agnes was, of course, inside; but what I underwent in my efforts to be
+friendly with him, while Agnes looked on, perhaps deserved that little
+recompense. At the coach window, as at the dinner-party, he hovered
+about us without a moment’s intermission, like a great vulture: gorging
+himself on every syllable that I said to Agnes, or Agnes said to me.
+
+In the state of trouble into which his disclosure by my fire had thrown
+me, I had thought very much of the words Agnes had used in reference to
+the partnership. ‘I did what I hope was right. Feeling sure that it
+was necessary for papa’s peace that the sacrifice should be made, I
+entreated him to make it.’ A miserable foreboding that she would
+yield to, and sustain herself by, the same feeling in reference to any
+sacrifice for his sake, had oppressed me ever since. I knew how she
+loved him. I knew what the devotion of her nature was. I knew from her
+own lips that she regarded herself as the innocent cause of his errors,
+and as owing him a great debt she ardently desired to pay. I had no
+consolation in seeing how different she was from this detestable Rufus
+with the mulberry-coloured great-coat, for I felt that in the very
+difference between them, in the self-denial of her pure soul and the
+sordid baseness of his, the greatest danger lay. All this, doubtless, he
+knew thoroughly, and had, in his cunning, considered well.
+
+Yet I was so certain that the prospect of such a sacrifice afar off,
+must destroy the happiness of Agnes; and I was so sure, from her manner,
+of its being unseen by her then, and having cast no shadow on her yet;
+that I could as soon have injured her, as given her any warning of what
+impended. Thus it was that we parted without explanation: she waving
+her hand and smiling farewell from the coach window; her evil genius
+writhing on the roof, as if he had her in his clutches and triumphed.
+
+I could not get over this farewell glimpse of them for a long time. When
+Agnes wrote to tell me of her safe arrival, I was as miserable as when
+I saw her going away. Whenever I fell into a thoughtful state, this
+subject was sure to present itself, and all my uneasiness was sure to be
+redoubled. Hardly a night passed without my dreaming of it. It became a
+part of my life, and as inseparable from my life as my own head.
+
+I had ample leisure to refine upon my uneasiness: for Steerforth was at
+Oxford, as he wrote to me, and when I was not at the Commons, I was
+very much alone. I believe I had at this time some lurking distrust of
+Steerforth. I wrote to him most affectionately in reply to his, but I
+think I was glad, upon the whole, that he could not come to London just
+then. I suspect the truth to be, that the influence of Agnes was upon
+me, undisturbed by the sight of him; and that it was the more powerful
+with me, because she had so large a share in my thoughts and interest.
+
+In the meantime, days and weeks slipped away. I was articled to Spenlow
+and Jorkins. I had ninety pounds a year (exclusive of my house-rent
+and sundry collateral matters) from my aunt. My rooms were engaged
+for twelve months certain: and though I still found them dreary of an
+evening, and the evenings long, I could settle down into a state of
+equable low spirits, and resign myself to coffee; which I seem, on
+looking back, to have taken by the gallon at about this period of my
+existence. At about this time, too, I made three discoveries: first,
+that Mrs. Crupp was a martyr to a curious disorder called ‘the
+spazzums’, which was generally accompanied with inflammation of the
+nose, and required to be constantly treated with peppermint; secondly,
+that something peculiar in the temperature of my pantry, made the
+brandy-bottles burst; thirdly, that I was alone in the world, and much
+given to record that circumstance in fragments of English versification.
+
+On the day when I was articled, no festivity took place, beyond my
+having sandwiches and sherry into the office for the clerks, and going
+alone to the theatre at night. I went to see The Stranger, as a Doctors’
+Commons sort of play, and was so dreadfully cut up, that I hardly knew
+myself in my own glass when I got home. Mr. Spenlow remarked, on this
+occasion, when we concluded our business, that he should have been
+happy to have seen me at his house at Norwood to celebrate our becoming
+connected, but for his domestic arrangements being in some disorder,
+on account of the expected return of his daughter from finishing her
+education at Paris. But, he intimated that when she came home he should
+hope to have the pleasure of entertaining me. I knew that he was a
+widower with one daughter, and expressed my acknowledgements.
+
+Mr. Spenlow was as good as his word. In a week or two, he referred to
+this engagement, and said, that if I would do him the favour to come
+down next Saturday, and stay till Monday, he would be extremely happy.
+Of course I said I would do him the favour; and he was to drive me down
+in his phaeton, and to bring me back.
+
+When the day arrived, my very carpet-bag was an object of veneration
+to the stipendiary clerks, to whom the house at Norwood was a sacred
+mystery. One of them informed me that he had heard that Mr. Spenlow
+ate entirely off plate and china; and another hinted at champagne being
+constantly on draught, after the usual custom of table-beer. The old
+clerk with the wig, whose name was Mr. Tiffey, had been down on business
+several times in the course of his career, and had on each occasion
+penetrated to the breakfast-parlour. He described it as an apartment of
+the most sumptuous nature, and said that he had drunk brown East India
+sherry there, of a quality so precious as to make a man wink. We had
+an adjourned cause in the Consistory that day--about excommunicating a
+baker who had been objecting in a vestry to a paving-rate--and as the
+evidence was just twice the length of Robinson Crusoe, according to a
+calculation I made, it was rather late in the day before we finished.
+However, we got him excommunicated for six weeks, and sentenced in
+no end of costs; and then the baker’s proctor, and the judge, and the
+advocates on both sides (who were all nearly related), went out of town
+together, and Mr. Spenlow and I drove away in the phaeton.
+
+The phaeton was a very handsome affair; the horses arched their necks
+and lifted up their legs as if they knew they belonged to Doctors’
+Commons. There was a good deal of competition in the Commons on all
+points of display, and it turned out some very choice equipages then;
+though I always have considered, and always shall consider, that in my
+time the great article of competition there was starch: which I think
+was worn among the proctors to as great an extent as it is in the nature
+of man to bear.
+
+We were very pleasant, going down, and Mr. Spenlow gave me some hints in
+reference to my profession. He said it was the genteelest profession in
+the world, and must on no account be confounded with the profession of a
+solicitor: being quite another sort of thing, infinitely more exclusive,
+less mechanical, and more profitable. We took things much more easily
+in the Commons than they could be taken anywhere else, he observed, and
+that set us, as a privileged class, apart. He said it was impossible
+to conceal the disagreeable fact, that we were chiefly employed by
+solicitors; but he gave me to understand that they were an inferior race
+of men, universally looked down upon by all proctors of any pretensions.
+
+I asked Mr. Spenlow what he considered the best sort of professional
+business? He replied, that a good case of a disputed will, where there
+was a neat little estate of thirty or forty thousand pounds, was,
+perhaps, the best of all. In such a case, he said, not only were there
+very pretty pickings, in the way of arguments at every stage of the
+proceedings, and mountains upon mountains of evidence on interrogatory
+and counter-interrogatory (to say nothing of an appeal lying, first to
+the Delegates, and then to the Lords), but, the costs being pretty sure
+to come out of the estate at last, both sides went at it in a lively
+and spirited manner, and expense was no consideration. Then, he launched
+into a general eulogium on the Commons. What was to be particularly
+admired (he said) in the Commons, was its compactness. It was the most
+conveniently organized place in the world. It was the complete idea of
+snugness. It lay in a nutshell. For example: You brought a divorce case,
+or a restitution case, into the Consistory. Very good. You tried it in
+the Consistory. You made a quiet little round game of it, among a family
+group, and you played it out at leisure. Suppose you were not satisfied
+with the Consistory, what did you do then? Why, you went into the
+Arches. What was the Arches? The same court, in the same room, with the
+same bar, and the same practitioners, but another judge, for there the
+Consistory judge could plead any court-day as an advocate. Well, you
+played your round game out again. Still you were not satisfied. Very
+good. What did you do then? Why, you went to the Delegates. Who were the
+Delegates? Why, the Ecclesiastical Delegates were the advocates without
+any business, who had looked on at the round game when it was playing in
+both courts, and had seen the cards shuffled, and cut, and played, and
+had talked to all the players about it, and now came fresh, as judges,
+to settle the matter to the satisfaction of everybody! Discontented
+people might talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness in the
+Commons, and the necessity of reforming the Commons, said Mr. Spenlow
+solemnly, in conclusion; but when the price of wheat per bushel had been
+highest, the Commons had been busiest; and a man might lay his hand upon
+his heart, and say this to the whole world,--‘Touch the Commons, and
+down comes the country!’
+
+I listened to all this with attention; and though, I must say, I had my
+doubts whether the country was quite as much obliged to the Commons as
+Mr. Spenlow made out, I respectfully deferred to his opinion. That
+about the price of wheat per bushel, I modestly felt was too much for
+my strength, and quite settled the question. I have never, to this hour,
+got the better of that bushel of wheat. It has reappeared to annihilate
+me, all through my life, in connexion with all kinds of subjects. I
+don’t know now, exactly, what it has to do with me, or what right it has
+to crush me, on an infinite variety of occasions; but whenever I see my
+old friend the bushel brought in by the head and shoulders (as he always
+is, I observe), I give up a subject for lost.
+
+This is a digression. I was not the man to touch the Commons, and
+bring down the country. I submissively expressed, by my silence, my
+acquiescence in all I had heard from my superior in years and knowledge;
+and we talked about The Stranger and the Drama, and the pairs of horses,
+until we came to Mr. Spenlow’s gate.
+
+There was a lovely garden to Mr. Spenlow’s house; and though that was
+not the best time of the year for seeing a garden, it was so beautifully
+kept, that I was quite enchanted. There was a charming lawn, there were
+clusters of trees, and there were perspective walks that I could just
+distinguish in the dark, arched over with trellis-work, on which shrubs
+and flowers grew in the growing season. ‘Here Miss Spenlow walks by
+herself,’ I thought. ‘Dear me!’
+
+We went into the house, which was cheerfully lighted up, and into a hall
+where there were all sorts of hats, caps, great-coats, plaids, gloves,
+whips, and walking-sticks. ‘Where is Miss Dora?’ said Mr. Spenlow to the
+servant. ‘Dora!’ I thought. ‘What a beautiful name!’
+
+We turned into a room near at hand (I think it was the identical
+breakfast-room, made memorable by the brown East Indian sherry), and I
+heard a voice say, ‘Mr. Copperfield, my daughter Dora, and my daughter
+Dora’s confidential friend!’ It was, no doubt, Mr. Spenlow’s voice,
+but I didn’t know it, and I didn’t care whose it was. All was over in a
+moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved
+Dora Spenlow to distraction!
+
+She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t
+know what she was--anything that no one ever saw, and everything that
+everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an
+instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking
+back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.
+
+‘I,’ observed a well-remembered voice, when I had bowed and murmured
+something, ‘have seen Mr. Copperfield before.’
+
+The speaker was not Dora. No; the confidential friend, Miss Murdstone!
+
+I don’t think I was much astonished. To the best of my judgement,
+no capacity of astonishment was left in me. There was nothing worth
+mentioning in the material world, but Dora Spenlow, to be astonished
+about. I said, ‘How do you do, Miss Murdstone? I hope you are well.’ She
+answered, ‘Very well.’ I said, ‘How is Mr. Murdstone?’ She replied, ‘My
+brother is robust, I am obliged to you.’
+
+Mr. Spenlow, who, I suppose, had been surprised to see us recognize each
+other, then put in his word.
+
+‘I am glad to find,’ he said, ‘Copperfield, that you and Miss Murdstone
+are already acquainted.’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield and myself,’ said Miss Murdstone, with severe
+composure, ‘are connexions. We were once slightly acquainted. It was in
+his childish days. Circumstances have separated us since. I should not
+have known him.’
+
+I replied that I should have known her, anywhere. Which was true enough.
+
+‘Miss Murdstone has had the goodness,’ said Mr. Spenlow to me, ‘to
+accept the office--if I may so describe it--of my daughter Dora’s
+confidential friend. My daughter Dora having, unhappily, no mother, Miss
+Murdstone is obliging enough to become her companion and protector.’
+
+A passing thought occurred to me that Miss Murdstone, like the pocket
+instrument called a life-preserver, was not so much designed for
+purposes of protection as of assault. But as I had none but passing
+thoughts for any subject save Dora, I glanced at her, directly
+afterwards, and was thinking that I saw, in her prettily pettish manner,
+that she was not very much inclined to be particularly confidential to
+her companion and protector, when a bell rang, which Mr. Spenlow said
+was the first dinner-bell, and so carried me off to dress.
+
+The idea of dressing one’s self, or doing anything in the way of action,
+in that state of love, was a little too ridiculous. I could only sit
+down before my fire, biting the key of my carpet-bag, and think of the
+captivating, girlish, bright-eyed lovely Dora. What a form she had, what
+a face she had, what a graceful, variable, enchanting manner!
+
+The bell rang again so soon that I made a mere scramble of my dressing,
+instead of the careful operation I could have wished under the
+circumstances, and went downstairs. There was some company. Dora was
+talking to an old gentleman with a grey head. Grey as he was--and a
+great-grandfather into the bargain, for he said so--I was madly jealous
+of him.
+
+What a state of mind I was in! I was jealous of everybody. I couldn’t
+bear the idea of anybody knowing Mr. Spenlow better than I did. It was
+torturing to me to hear them talk of occurrences in which I had had no
+share. When a most amiable person, with a highly polished bald head,
+asked me across the dinner table, if that were the first occasion of my
+seeing the grounds, I could have done anything to him that was savage
+and revengeful.
+
+I don’t remember who was there, except Dora. I have not the least idea
+what we had for dinner, besides Dora. My impression is, that I dined off
+Dora, entirely, and sent away half-a-dozen plates untouched. I sat next
+to her. I talked to her. She had the most delightful little voice, the
+gayest little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little
+ways, that ever led a lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was rather
+diminutive altogether. So much the more precious, I thought.
+
+When she went out of the room with Miss Murdstone (no other ladies
+were of the party), I fell into a reverie, only disturbed by the cruel
+apprehension that Miss Murdstone would disparage me to her. The amiable
+creature with the polished head told me a long story, which I think was
+about gardening. I think I heard him say, ‘my gardener’, several times.
+I seemed to pay the deepest attention to him, but I was wandering in a
+garden of Eden all the while, with Dora.
+
+My apprehensions of being disparaged to the object of my engrossing
+affection were revived when we went into the drawing-room, by the grim
+and distant aspect of Miss Murdstone. But I was relieved of them in an
+unexpected manner.
+
+‘David Copperfield,’ said Miss Murdstone, beckoning me aside into a
+window. ‘A word.’
+
+I confronted Miss Murdstone alone.
+
+‘David Copperfield,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘I need not enlarge upon
+family circumstances. They are not a tempting subject.’ ‘Far from it,
+ma’am,’ I returned.
+
+‘Far from it,’ assented Miss Murdstone. ‘I do not wish to revive
+the memory of past differences, or of past outrages. I have received
+outrages from a person--a female I am sorry to say, for the credit of my
+sex--who is not to be mentioned without scorn and disgust; and therefore
+I would rather not mention her.’
+
+I felt very fiery on my aunt’s account; but I said it would certainly be
+better, if Miss Murdstone pleased, not to mention her. I could not hear
+her disrespectfully mentioned, I added, without expressing my opinion in
+a decided tone.
+
+Miss Murdstone shut her eyes, and disdainfully inclined her head; then,
+slowly opening her eyes, resumed:
+
+‘David Copperfield, I shall not attempt to disguise the fact, that I
+formed an unfavourable opinion of you in your childhood. It may have
+been a mistaken one, or you may have ceased to justify it. That is not
+in question between us now. I belong to a family remarkable, I believe,
+for some firmness; and I am not the creature of circumstance or change.
+I may have my opinion of you. You may have your opinion of me.’
+
+I inclined my head, in my turn.
+
+‘But it is not necessary,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘that these opinions
+should come into collision here. Under existing circumstances, it is as
+well on all accounts that they should not. As the chances of life have
+brought us together again, and may bring us together on other occasions,
+I would say, let us meet here as distant acquaintances. Family
+circumstances are a sufficient reason for our only meeting on that
+footing, and it is quite unnecessary that either of us should make the
+other the subject of remark. Do you approve of this?’
+
+‘Miss Murdstone,’ I returned, ‘I think you and Mr. Murdstone used me
+very cruelly, and treated my mother with great unkindness. I shall
+always think so, as long as I live. But I quite agree in what you
+propose.’
+
+Miss Murdstone shut her eyes again, and bent her head. Then, just
+touching the back of my hand with the tips of her cold, stiff fingers,
+she walked away, arranging the little fetters on her wrists and round
+her neck; which seemed to be the same set, in exactly the same state,
+as when I had seen her last. These reminded me, in reference to Miss
+Murdstone’s nature, of the fetters over a jail door; suggesting on the
+outside, to all beholders, what was to be expected within.
+
+All I know of the rest of the evening is, that I heard the empress of
+my heart sing enchanted ballads in the French language, generally to the
+effect that, whatever was the matter, we ought always to dance, Ta ra
+la, Ta ra la! accompanying herself on a glorified instrument, resembling
+a guitar. That I was lost in blissful delirium. That I refused
+refreshment. That my soul recoiled from punch particularly. That when
+Miss Murdstone took her into custody and led her away, she smiled and
+gave me her delicious hand. That I caught a view of myself in a mirror,
+looking perfectly imbecile and idiotic. That I retired to bed in a most
+maudlin state of mind, and got up in a crisis of feeble infatuation.
+
+It was a fine morning, and early, and I thought I would go and take a
+stroll down one of those wire-arched walks, and indulge my passion by
+dwelling on her image. On my way through the hall, I encountered her
+little dog, who was called Jip--short for Gipsy. I approached him
+tenderly, for I loved even him; but he showed his whole set of teeth,
+got under a chair expressly to snarl, and wouldn’t hear of the least
+familiarity.
+
+The garden was cool and solitary. I walked about, wondering what my
+feelings of happiness would be, if I could ever become engaged to this
+dear wonder. As to marriage, and fortune, and all that, I believe I was
+almost as innocently undesigning then, as when I loved little Em’ly. To
+be allowed to call her ‘Dora’, to write to her, to dote upon and worship
+her, to have reason to think that when she was with other people she was
+yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition--I am
+sure it was the summit of mine. There is no doubt whatever that I was
+a lackadaisical young spooney; but there was a purity of heart in all
+this, that prevents my having quite a contemptuous recollection of it,
+let me laugh as I may.
+
+I had not been walking long, when I turned a corner, and met her. I
+tingle again from head to foot as my recollection turns that corner, and
+my pen shakes in my hand.
+
+‘You--are--out early, Miss Spenlow,’ said I.
+
+‘It’s so stupid at home,’ she replied, ‘and Miss Murdstone is so absurd!
+She talks such nonsense about its being necessary for the day to be
+aired, before I come out. Aired!’ (She laughed, here, in the most
+melodious manner.) ‘On a Sunday morning, when I don’t practise, I must
+do something. So I told papa last night I must come out. Besides, it’s
+the brightest time of the whole day. Don’t you think so?’
+
+I hazarded a bold flight, and said (not without stammering) that it
+was very bright to me then, though it had been very dark to me a minute
+before.
+
+‘Do you mean a compliment?’ said Dora, ‘or that the weather has really
+changed?’
+
+I stammered worse than before, in replying that I meant no compliment,
+but the plain truth; though I was not aware of any change having taken
+place in the weather. It was in the state of my own feelings, I added
+bashfully: to clench the explanation.
+
+I never saw such curls--how could I, for there never were such
+curls!--as those she shook out to hide her blushes. As to the straw hat
+and blue ribbons which was on the top of the curls, if I could only have
+hung it up in my room in Buckingham Street, what a priceless possession
+it would have been!
+
+‘You have just come home from Paris,’ said I.
+
+‘Yes,’ said she. ‘Have you ever been there?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Oh! I hope you’ll go soon! You would like it so much!’
+
+Traces of deep-seated anguish appeared in my countenance. That she
+should hope I would go, that she should think it possible I could go,
+was insupportable. I depreciated Paris; I depreciated France. I said I
+wouldn’t leave England, under existing circumstances, for any earthly
+consideration. Nothing should induce me. In short, she was shaking the
+curls again, when the little dog came running along the walk to our
+relief.
+
+He was mortally jealous of me, and persisted in barking at me. She took
+him up in her arms--oh my goodness!--and caressed him, but he persisted
+upon barking still. He wouldn’t let me touch him, when I tried; and then
+she beat him. It increased my sufferings greatly to see the pats she
+gave him for punishment on the bridge of his blunt nose, while he winked
+his eyes, and licked her hand, and still growled within himself like a
+little double-bass. At length he was quiet--well he might be with her
+dimpled chin upon his head!--and we walked away to look at a greenhouse.
+
+‘You are not very intimate with Miss Murdstone, are you?’ said Dora.
+--‘My pet.’
+
+(The two last words were to the dog. Oh, if they had only been to me!)
+
+‘No,’ I replied. ‘Not at all so.’
+
+‘She is a tiresome creature,’ said Dora, pouting. ‘I can’t think what
+papa can have been about, when he chose such a vexatious thing to be my
+companion. Who wants a protector? I am sure I don’t want a protector.
+Jip can protect me a great deal better than Miss Murdstone,--can’t you,
+Jip, dear?’
+
+He only winked lazily, when she kissed his ball of a head.
+
+‘Papa calls her my confidential friend, but I am sure she is no such
+thing--is she, Jip? We are not going to confide in any such cross
+people, Jip and I. We mean to bestow our confidence where we like,
+and to find out our own friends, instead of having them found out for
+us--don’t we, Jip?’
+
+Jip made a comfortable noise, in answer, a little like a tea-kettle when
+it sings. As for me, every word was a new heap of fetters, riveted above
+the last.
+
+‘It is very hard, because we have not a kind Mama, that we are to have,
+instead, a sulky, gloomy old thing like Miss Murdstone, always following
+us about--isn’t it, Jip? Never mind, Jip. We won’t be confidential, and
+we’ll make ourselves as happy as we can in spite of her, and we’ll tease
+her, and not please her--won’t we, Jip?’
+
+If it had lasted any longer, I think I must have gone down on my knees
+on the gravel, with the probability before me of grazing them, and of
+being presently ejected from the premises besides. But, by good fortune
+the greenhouse was not far off, and these words brought us to it.
+
+It contained quite a show of beautiful geraniums. We loitered along in
+front of them, and Dora often stopped to admire this one or that one,
+and I stopped to admire the same one, and Dora, laughing, held the dog
+up childishly, to smell the flowers; and if we were not all three in
+Fairyland, certainly I was. The scent of a geranium leaf, at this day,
+strikes me with a half comical half serious wonder as to what change has
+come over me in a moment; and then I see a straw hat and blue ribbons,
+and a quantity of curls, and a little black dog being held up, in two
+slender arms, against a bank of blossoms and bright leaves.
+
+Miss Murdstone had been looking for us. She found us here; and presented
+her uncongenial cheek, the little wrinkles in it filled with hair
+powder, to Dora to be kissed. Then she took Dora’s arm in hers, and
+marched us into breakfast as if it were a soldier’s funeral.
+
+How many cups of tea I drank, because Dora made it, I don’t know. But,
+I perfectly remember that I sat swilling tea until my whole nervous
+system, if I had had any in those days, must have gone by the board. By
+and by we went to church. Miss Murdstone was between Dora and me in the
+pew; but I heard her sing, and the congregation vanished. A sermon was
+delivered--about Dora, of course--and I am afraid that is all I know of
+the service.
+
+We had a quiet day. No company, a walk, a family dinner of four, and an
+evening of looking over books and pictures; Miss Murdstone with a homily
+before her, and her eye upon us, keeping guard vigilantly. Ah! little
+did Mr. Spenlow imagine, when he sat opposite to me after dinner that
+day, with his pocket-handkerchief over his head, how fervently I was
+embracing him, in my fancy, as his son-in-law! Little did he think, when
+I took leave of him at night, that he had just given his full consent to
+my being engaged to Dora, and that I was invoking blessings on his head!
+
+We departed early in the morning, for we had a Salvage case coming on in
+the Admiralty Court, requiring a rather accurate knowledge of the whole
+science of navigation, in which (as we couldn’t be expected to know
+much about those matters in the Commons) the judge had entreated two old
+Trinity Masters, for charity’s sake, to come and help him out. Dora was
+at the breakfast-table to make the tea again, however; and I had the
+melancholy pleasure of taking off my hat to her in the phaeton, as she
+stood on the door-step with Jip in her arms.
+
+What the Admiralty was to me that day; what nonsense I made of our case
+in my mind, as I listened to it; how I saw ‘DORA’ engraved upon the
+blade of the silver oar which they lay upon the table, as the emblem
+of that high jurisdiction; and how I felt when Mr. Spenlow went home
+without me (I had had an insane hope that he might take me back again),
+as if I were a mariner myself, and the ship to which I belonged had
+sailed away and left me on a desert island; I shall make no fruitless
+effort to describe. If that sleepy old court could rouse itself, and
+present in any visible form the daydreams I have had in it about Dora,
+it would reveal my truth.
+
+I don’t mean the dreams that I dreamed on that day alone, but day after
+day, from week to week, and term to term. I went there, not to attend to
+what was going on, but to think about Dora. If ever I bestowed a thought
+upon the cases, as they dragged their slow length before me, it was only
+to wonder, in the matrimonial cases (remembering Dora), how it was
+that married people could ever be otherwise than happy; and, in the
+Prerogative cases, to consider, if the money in question had been left
+to me, what were the foremost steps I should immediately have taken
+in regard to Dora. Within the first week of my passion, I bought four
+sumptuous waistcoats--not for myself; I had no pride in them; for
+Dora--and took to wearing straw-coloured kid gloves in the streets, and
+laid the foundations of all the corns I have ever had. If the boots I
+wore at that period could only be produced and compared with the natural
+size of my feet, they would show what the state of my heart was, in a
+most affecting manner.
+
+And yet, wretched cripple as I made myself by this act of homage to
+Dora, I walked miles upon miles daily in the hope of seeing her. Not
+only was I soon as well known on the Norwood Road as the postmen on that
+beat, but I pervaded London likewise. I walked about the streets where
+the best shops for ladies were, I haunted the Bazaar like an unquiet
+spirit, I fagged through the Park again and again, long after I was
+quite knocked up. Sometimes, at long intervals and on rare occasions, I
+saw her. Perhaps I saw her glove waved in a carriage window; perhaps I
+met her, walked with her and Miss Murdstone a little way, and spoke to
+her. In the latter case I was always very miserable afterwards, to think
+that I had said nothing to the purpose; or that she had no idea of the
+extent of my devotion, or that she cared nothing about me. I was always
+looking out, as may be supposed, for another invitation to Mr. Spenlow’s
+house. I was always being disappointed, for I got none.
+
+Mrs. Crupp must have been a woman of penetration; for when this
+attachment was but a few weeks old, and I had not had the courage
+to write more explicitly even to Agnes, than that I had been to Mr.
+Spenlow’s house, ‘whose family,’ I added, ‘consists of one daughter’;--I
+say Mrs. Crupp must have been a woman of penetration, for, even in that
+early stage, she found it out. She came up to me one evening, when I
+was very low, to ask (she being then afflicted with the disorder I have
+mentioned) if I could oblige her with a little tincture of cardamums
+mixed with rhubarb, and flavoured with seven drops of the essence of
+cloves, which was the best remedy for her complaint;--or, if I had not
+such a thing by me, with a little brandy, which was the next best. It
+was not, she remarked, so palatable to her, but it was the next best. As
+I had never even heard of the first remedy, and always had the second in
+the closet, I gave Mrs. Crupp a glass of the second, which (that I might
+have no suspicion of its being devoted to any improper use) she began to
+take in my presence.
+
+‘Cheer up, sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp. ‘I can’t abear to see you so, sir: I’m
+a mother myself.’
+
+I did not quite perceive the application of this fact to myself, but I
+smiled on Mrs. Crupp, as benignly as was in my power.
+
+‘Come, sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp. ‘Excuse me. I know what it is, sir.
+There’s a lady in the case.’
+
+‘Mrs. Crupp?’ I returned, reddening.
+
+‘Oh, bless you! Keep a good heart, sir!’ said Mrs. Crupp, nodding
+encouragement. ‘Never say die, sir! If She don’t smile upon you,
+there’s a many as will. You are a young gentleman to be smiled on, Mr.
+Copperfull, and you must learn your walue, sir.’
+
+Mrs. Crupp always called me Mr. Copperfull: firstly, no doubt, because
+it was not my name; and secondly, I am inclined to think, in some
+indistinct association with a washing-day.
+
+‘What makes you suppose there is any young lady in the case, Mrs.
+Crupp?’ said I.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfull,’ said Mrs. Crupp, with a great deal of feeling, ‘I’m a
+mother myself.’
+
+For some time Mrs. Crupp could only lay her hand upon her nankeen bosom,
+and fortify herself against returning pain with sips of her medicine. At
+length she spoke again.
+
+‘When the present set were took for you by your dear aunt, Mr.
+Copperfull,’ said Mrs. Crupp, ‘my remark were, I had now found summun
+I could care for. “Thank Ev’in!” were the expression, “I have now found
+summun I can care for!”--You don’t eat enough, sir, nor yet drink.’
+
+‘Is that what you found your supposition on, Mrs. Crupp?’ said I.
+
+‘Sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching to severity, ‘I’ve
+laundressed other young gentlemen besides yourself. A young gentleman
+may be over-careful of himself, or he may be under-careful of himself.
+He may brush his hair too regular, or too un-regular. He may wear his
+boots much too large for him, or much too small. That is according as
+the young gentleman has his original character formed. But let him go to
+which extreme he may, sir, there’s a young lady in both of ‘em.’
+
+Mrs. Crupp shook her head in such a determined manner, that I had not an
+inch of vantage-ground left.
+
+‘It was but the gentleman which died here before yourself,’ said Mrs.
+Crupp, ‘that fell in love--with a barmaid--and had his waistcoats took
+in directly, though much swelled by drinking.’
+
+‘Mrs. Crupp,’ said I, ‘I must beg you not to connect the young lady in
+my case with a barmaid, or anything of that sort, if you please.’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfull,’ returned Mrs. Crupp, ‘I’m a mother myself, and not
+likely. I ask your pardon, sir, if I intrude. I should never wish to
+intrude where I were not welcome. But you are a young gentleman, Mr.
+Copperfull, and my adwice to you is, to cheer up, sir, to keep a good
+heart, and to know your own walue. If you was to take to something,
+sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, ‘if you was to take to skittles, now, which is
+healthy, you might find it divert your mind, and do you good.’
+
+With these words, Mrs. Crupp, affecting to be very careful of the
+brandy--which was all gone--thanked me with a majestic curtsey, and
+retired. As her figure disappeared into the gloom of the entry, this
+counsel certainly presented itself to my mind in the light of a slight
+liberty on Mrs. Crupp’s part; but, at the same time, I was content
+to receive it, in another point of view, as a word to the wise, and a
+warning in future to keep my secret better.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 27. TOMMY TRADDLES
+
+
+It may have been in consequence of Mrs. Crupp’s advice, and, perhaps,
+for no better reason than because there was a certain similarity in the
+sound of the word skittles and Traddles, that it came into my head, next
+day, to go and look after Traddles. The time he had mentioned was more
+than out, and he lived in a little street near the Veterinary College
+at Camden Town, which was principally tenanted, as one of our clerks who
+lived in that direction informed me, by gentlemen students, who bought
+live donkeys, and made experiments on those quadrupeds in their private
+apartments. Having obtained from this clerk a direction to the academic
+grove in question, I set out, the same afternoon, to visit my old
+schoolfellow.
+
+I found that the street was not as desirable a one as I could have
+wished it to be, for the sake of Traddles. The inhabitants appeared to
+have a propensity to throw any little trifles they were not in want of,
+into the road: which not only made it rank and sloppy, but untidy too,
+on account of the cabbage-leaves. The refuse was not wholly vegetable
+either, for I myself saw a shoe, a doubled-up saucepan, a black bonnet,
+and an umbrella, in various stages of decomposition, as I was looking
+out for the number I wanted.
+
+The general air of the place reminded me forcibly of the days when I
+lived with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. An indescribable character of faded
+gentility that attached to the house I sought, and made it unlike
+all the other houses in the street--though they were all built on one
+monotonous pattern, and looked like the early copies of a blundering boy
+who was learning to make houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped
+brick-and-mortar pothooks--reminded me still more of Mr. and Mrs.
+Micawber. Happening to arrive at the door as it was opened to the
+afternoon milkman, I was reminded of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber more forcibly
+yet.
+
+‘Now,’ said the milkman to a very youthful servant girl. ‘Has that there
+little bill of mine been heerd on?’
+
+‘Oh, master says he’ll attend to it immediate,’ was the reply.
+
+‘Because,’ said the milkman, going on as if he had received no answer,
+and speaking, as I judged from his tone, rather for the edification of
+somebody within the house, than of the youthful servant--an
+impression which was strengthened by his manner of glaring down the
+passage--‘because that there little bill has been running so long, that
+I begin to believe it’s run away altogether, and never won’t be heerd
+of. Now, I’m not a going to stand it, you know!’ said the milkman, still
+throwing his voice into the house, and glaring down the passage.
+
+As to his dealing in the mild article of milk, by the by, there never
+was a greater anomaly. His deportment would have been fierce in a
+butcher or a brandy-merchant.
+
+The voice of the youthful servant became faint, but she seemed to me,
+from the action of her lips, again to murmur that it would be attended
+to immediate.
+
+‘I tell you what,’ said the milkman, looking hard at her for the first
+time, and taking her by the chin, ‘are you fond of milk?’
+
+‘Yes, I likes it,’ she replied. ‘Good,’ said the milkman. ‘Then you
+won’t have none tomorrow. D’ye hear? Not a fragment of milk you won’t
+have tomorrow.’
+
+I thought she seemed, upon the whole, relieved by the prospect of having
+any today. The milkman, after shaking his head at her darkly, released
+her chin, and with anything rather than good-will opened his can, and
+deposited the usual quantity in the family jug. This done, he went away,
+muttering, and uttered the cry of his trade next door, in a vindictive
+shriek.
+
+‘Does Mr. Traddles live here?’ I then inquired.
+
+A mysterious voice from the end of the passage replied ‘Yes.’ Upon which
+the youthful servant replied ‘Yes.’
+
+‘Is he at home?’ said I.
+
+Again the mysterious voice replied in the affirmative, and again the
+servant echoed it. Upon this, I walked in, and in pursuance of the
+servant’s directions walked upstairs; conscious, as I passed the
+back parlour-door, that I was surveyed by a mysterious eye, probably
+belonging to the mysterious voice.
+
+When I got to the top of the stairs--the house was only a story high
+above the ground floor--Traddles was on the landing to meet me. He was
+delighted to see me, and gave me welcome, with great heartiness, to
+his little room. It was in the front of the house, and extremely neat,
+though sparely furnished. It was his only room, I saw; for there was a
+sofa-bedstead in it, and his blacking-brushes and blacking were among
+his books--on the top shelf, behind a dictionary. His table was covered
+with papers, and he was hard at work in an old coat. I looked at
+nothing, that I know of, but I saw everything, even to the prospect of
+a church upon his china inkstand, as I sat down--and this, too, was a
+faculty confirmed in me in the old Micawber times. Various ingenious
+arrangements he had made, for the disguise of his chest of drawers,
+and the accommodation of his boots, his shaving-glass, and so forth,
+particularly impressed themselves upon me, as evidences of the same
+Traddles who used to make models of elephants’ dens in writing-paper to
+put flies in; and to comfort himself under ill usage, with the memorable
+works of art I have so often mentioned.
+
+In a corner of the room was something neatly covered up with a large
+white cloth. I could not make out what that was.
+
+‘Traddles,’ said I, shaking hands with him again, after I had sat down,
+‘I am delighted to see you.’
+
+‘I am delighted to see YOU, Copperfield,’ he returned. ‘I am very glad
+indeed to see you. It was because I was thoroughly glad to see you when
+we met in Ely Place, and was sure you were thoroughly glad to see me,
+that I gave you this address instead of my address at chambers.’ ‘Oh!
+You have chambers?’ said I.
+
+‘Why, I have the fourth of a room and a passage, and the fourth of a
+clerk,’ returned Traddles. ‘Three others and myself unite to have a
+set of chambers--to look business-like--and we quarter the clerk too.
+Half-a-crown a week he costs me.’
+
+His old simple character and good temper, and something of his old
+unlucky fortune also, I thought, smiled at me in the smile with which he
+made this explanation.
+
+‘It’s not because I have the least pride, Copperfield, you understand,’
+said Traddles, ‘that I don’t usually give my address here. It’s only on
+account of those who come to me, who might not like to come here. For
+myself, I am fighting my way on in the world against difficulties, and
+it would be ridiculous if I made a pretence of doing anything else.’
+
+‘You are reading for the bar, Mr. Waterbrook informed me?’ said I.
+
+‘Why, yes,’ said Traddles, rubbing his hands slowly over one another. ‘I
+am reading for the bar. The fact is, I have just begun to keep my terms,
+after rather a long delay. It’s some time since I was articled, but the
+payment of that hundred pounds was a great pull. A great pull!’ said
+Traddles, with a wince, as if he had had a tooth out.
+
+‘Do you know what I can’t help thinking of, Traddles, as I sit here
+looking at you?’ I asked him.
+
+‘No,’ said he.
+
+‘That sky-blue suit you used to wear.’
+
+‘Lord, to be sure!’ cried Traddles, laughing. ‘Tight in the arms and
+legs, you know? Dear me! Well! Those were happy times, weren’t they?’
+
+‘I think our schoolmaster might have made them happier, without doing
+any harm to any of us, I acknowledge,’ I returned.
+
+‘Perhaps he might,’ said Traddles. ‘But dear me, there was a good deal
+of fun going on. Do you remember the nights in the bedroom? When we used
+to have the suppers? And when you used to tell the stories? Ha, ha,
+ha! And do you remember when I got caned for crying about Mr. Mell? Old
+Creakle! I should like to see him again, too!’
+
+‘He was a brute to you, Traddles,’ said I, indignantly; for his good
+humour made me feel as if I had seen him beaten but yesterday.
+
+‘Do you think so?’ returned Traddles. ‘Really? Perhaps he was rather.
+But it’s all over, a long while. Old Creakle!’
+
+‘You were brought up by an uncle, then?’ said I.
+
+‘Of course I was!’ said Traddles. ‘The one I was always going to write
+to. And always didn’t, eh! Ha, ha, ha! Yes, I had an uncle then. He died
+soon after I left school.’
+
+‘Indeed!’
+
+‘Yes. He was a retired--what do you call
+it!--draper--cloth-merchant--and had made me his heir. But he didn’t
+like me when I grew up.’
+
+‘Do you really mean that?’ said I. He was so composed, that I fancied he
+must have some other meaning.
+
+‘Oh dear, yes, Copperfield! I mean it,’ replied Traddles. ‘It was an
+unfortunate thing, but he didn’t like me at all. He said I wasn’t at all
+what he expected, and so he married his housekeeper.’
+
+‘And what did you do?’ I asked.
+
+‘I didn’t do anything in particular,’ said Traddles. ‘I lived with them,
+waiting to be put out in the world, until his gout unfortunately flew
+to his stomach--and so he died, and so she married a young man, and so I
+wasn’t provided for.’
+
+‘Did you get nothing, Traddles, after all?’
+
+‘Oh dear, yes!’ said Traddles. ‘I got fifty pounds. I had never been
+brought up to any profession, and at first I was at a loss what to
+do for myself. However, I began, with the assistance of the son of a
+professional man, who had been to Salem House--Yawler, with his nose on
+one side. Do you recollect him?’
+
+No. He had not been there with me; all the noses were straight in my
+day.
+
+‘It don’t matter,’ said Traddles. ‘I began, by means of his assistance,
+to copy law writings. That didn’t answer very well; and then I began to
+state cases for them, and make abstracts, and that sort of work. For
+I am a plodding kind of fellow, Copperfield, and had learnt the way of
+doing such things pithily. Well! That put it in my head to enter myself
+as a law student; and that ran away with all that was left of the fifty
+pounds. Yawler recommended me to one or two other offices, however--Mr.
+Waterbrook’s for one--and I got a good many jobs. I was fortunate
+enough, too, to become acquainted with a person in the publishing way,
+who was getting up an Encyclopaedia, and he set me to work; and, indeed’
+(glancing at his table), ‘I am at work for him at this minute. I am not
+a bad compiler, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, preserving the same air of
+cheerful confidence in all he said, ‘but I have no invention at all; not
+a particle. I suppose there never was a young man with less originality
+than I have.’
+
+As Traddles seemed to expect that I should assent to this as a matter
+of course, I nodded; and he went on, with the same sprightly patience--I
+can find no better expression--as before.
+
+‘So, by little and little, and not living high, I managed to scrape up
+the hundred pounds at last,’ said Traddles; ‘and thank Heaven that’s
+paid--though it was--though it certainly was,’ said Traddles, wincing
+again as if he had had another tooth out, ‘a pull. I am living by the
+sort of work I have mentioned, still, and I hope, one of these days, to
+get connected with some newspaper: which would almost be the making of
+my fortune. Now, Copperfield, you are so exactly what you used to
+be, with that agreeable face, and it’s so pleasant to see you, that I
+sha’n’t conceal anything. Therefore you must know that I am engaged.’
+
+Engaged! Oh, Dora!
+
+‘She is a curate’s daughter,’ said Traddles; ‘one of ten, down in
+Devonshire. Yes!’ For he saw me glance, involuntarily, at the prospect
+on the inkstand. ‘That’s the church! You come round here to the left,
+out of this gate,’ tracing his finger along the inkstand, ‘and exactly
+where I hold this pen, there stands the house--facing, you understand,
+towards the church.’
+
+The delight with which he entered into these particulars, did not fully
+present itself to me until afterwards; for my selfish thoughts were
+making a ground-plan of Mr. Spenlow’s house and garden at the same
+moment.
+
+‘She is such a dear girl!’ said Traddles; ‘a little older than me, but
+the dearest girl! I told you I was going out of town? I have been down
+there. I walked there, and I walked back, and I had the most delightful
+time! I dare say ours is likely to be a rather long engagement, but our
+motto is “Wait and hope!” We always say that. “Wait and hope,” we always
+say. And she would wait, Copperfield, till she was sixty--any age you
+can mention--for me!’
+
+Traddles rose from his chair, and, with a triumphant smile, put his hand
+upon the white cloth I had observed.
+
+‘However,’ he said, ‘it’s not that we haven’t made a beginning towards
+housekeeping. No, no; we have begun. We must get on by degrees, but we
+have begun. Here,’ drawing the cloth off with great pride and care, ‘are
+two pieces of furniture to commence with. This flower-pot and stand,
+she bought herself. You put that in a parlour window,’ said Traddles,
+falling a little back from it to survey it with the greater admiration,
+‘with a plant in it, and--and there you are! This little round table
+with the marble top (it’s two feet ten in circumference), I bought. You
+want to lay a book down, you know, or somebody comes to see you or your
+wife, and wants a place to stand a cup of tea upon, and--and there you
+are again!’ said Traddles. ‘It’s an admirable piece of workmanship--firm
+as a rock!’ I praised them both, highly, and Traddles replaced the
+covering as carefully as he had removed it.
+
+‘It’s not a great deal towards the furnishing,’ said Traddles, ‘but
+it’s something. The table-cloths, and pillow-cases, and articles of
+that kind, are what discourage me most, Copperfield. So does
+the ironmongery--candle-boxes, and gridirons, and that sort of
+necessaries--because those things tell, and mount up. However, “wait and
+hope!” And I assure you she’s the dearest girl!’
+
+‘I am quite certain of it,’ said I.
+
+‘In the meantime,’ said Traddles, coming back to his chair; ‘and this is
+the end of my prosing about myself, I get on as well as I can. I don’t
+make much, but I don’t spend much. In general, I board with the people
+downstairs, who are very agreeable people indeed. Both Mr. and Mrs.
+Micawber have seen a good deal of life, and are excellent company.’
+
+‘My dear Traddles!’ I quickly exclaimed. ‘What are you talking about?’
+
+Traddles looked at me, as if he wondered what I was talking about.
+
+‘Mr. and Mrs. Micawber!’ I repeated. ‘Why, I am intimately acquainted
+with them!’
+
+An opportune double knock at the door, which I knew well from old
+experience in Windsor Terrace, and which nobody but Mr. Micawber could
+ever have knocked at that door, resolved any doubt in my mind as to
+their being my old friends. I begged Traddles to ask his landlord
+to walk up. Traddles accordingly did so, over the banister; and Mr.
+Micawber, not a bit changed--his tights, his stick, his shirt-collar,
+and his eye-glass, all the same as ever--came into the room with a
+genteel and youthful air.
+
+‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Traddles,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll
+in his voice, as he checked himself in humming a soft tune. ‘I was not
+aware that there was any individual, alien to this tenement, in your
+sanctum.’
+
+Mr. Micawber slightly bowed to me, and pulled up his shirt-collar.
+
+‘How do you do, Mr. Micawber?’ said I.
+
+‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you are exceedingly obliging. I am in statu
+quo.’
+
+‘And Mrs. Micawber?’ I pursued.
+
+‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘she is also, thank God, in statu quo.’
+
+‘And the children, Mr. Micawber?’
+
+‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I rejoice to reply that they are, likewise,
+in the enjoyment of salubrity.’
+
+All this time, Mr. Micawber had not known me in the least, though he
+had stood face to face with me. But now, seeing me smile, he examined my
+features with more attention, fell back, cried, ‘Is it possible! Have I
+the pleasure of again beholding Copperfield!’ and shook me by both hands
+with the utmost fervour.
+
+‘Good Heaven, Mr. Traddles!’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘to think that I should
+find you acquainted with the friend of my youth, the companion of
+earlier days! My dear!’ calling over the banisters to Mrs. Micawber,
+while Traddles looked (with reason) not a little amazed at this
+description of me. ‘Here is a gentleman in Mr. Traddles’s apartment,
+whom he wishes to have the pleasure of presenting to you, my love!’
+
+Mr. Micawber immediately reappeared, and shook hands with me again.
+
+‘And how is our good friend the Doctor, Copperfield?’ said Mr. Micawber,
+‘and all the circle at Canterbury?’
+
+‘I have none but good accounts of them,’ said I.
+
+‘I am most delighted to hear it,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘It was at
+Canterbury where we last met. Within the shadow, I may figuratively say,
+of that religious edifice immortalized by Chaucer, which was anciently
+the resort of Pilgrims from the remotest corners of--in short,’ said Mr.
+Micawber, ‘in the immediate neighbourhood of the Cathedral.’
+
+I replied that it was. Mr. Micawber continued talking as volubly as he
+could; but not, I thought, without showing, by some marks of concern in
+his countenance, that he was sensible of sounds in the next room, as
+of Mrs. Micawber washing her hands, and hurriedly opening and shutting
+drawers that were uneasy in their action.
+
+‘You find us, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, with one eye on Traddles,
+‘at present established, on what may be designated as a small and
+unassuming scale; but, you are aware that I have, in the course of my
+career, surmounted difficulties, and conquered obstacles. You are no
+stranger to the fact, that there have been periods of my life, when it
+has been requisite that I should pause, until certain expected events
+should turn up; when it has been necessary that I should fall back,
+before making what I trust I shall not be accused of presumption in
+terming--a spring. The present is one of those momentous stages in the
+life of man. You find me, fallen back, FOR a spring; and I have every
+reason to believe that a vigorous leap will shortly be the result.’
+
+I was expressing my satisfaction, when Mrs. Micawber came in; a little
+more slatternly than she used to be, or so she seemed now, to my
+unaccustomed eyes, but still with some preparation of herself for
+company, and with a pair of brown gloves on.
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, leading her towards me, ‘here is
+a gentleman of the name of Copperfield, who wishes to renew his
+acquaintance with you.’
+
+It would have been better, as it turned out, to have led gently up
+to this announcement, for Mrs. Micawber, being in a delicate state of
+health, was overcome by it, and was taken so unwell, that Mr. Micawber
+was obliged, in great trepidation, to run down to the water-butt in
+the backyard, and draw a basinful to lave her brow with. She
+presently revived, however, and was really pleased to see me. We had
+half-an-hour’s talk, all together; and I asked her about the twins,
+who, she said, were ‘grown great creatures’; and after Master and Miss
+Micawber, whom she described as ‘absolute giants’, but they were not
+produced on that occasion.
+
+Mr. Micawber was very anxious that I should stay to dinner. I should not
+have been averse to do so, but that I imagined I detected trouble, and
+calculation relative to the extent of the cold meat, in Mrs. Micawber’s
+eye. I therefore pleaded another engagement; and observing that Mrs.
+Micawber’s spirits were immediately lightened, I resisted all persuasion
+to forego it.
+
+But I told Traddles, and Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, that before I could
+think of leaving, they must appoint a day when they would come and dine
+with me. The occupations to which Traddles stood pledged, rendered it
+necessary to fix a somewhat distant one; but an appointment was made for
+the purpose, that suited us all, and then I took my leave.
+
+Mr. Micawber, under pretence of showing me a nearer way than that by
+which I had come, accompanied me to the corner of the street; being
+anxious (he explained to me) to say a few words to an old friend, in
+confidence.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I need hardly tell you that
+to have beneath our roof, under existing circumstances, a mind like that
+which gleams--if I may be allowed the expression--which gleams--in your
+friend Traddles, is an unspeakable comfort. With a washerwoman, who
+exposes hard-bake for sale in her parlour-window, dwelling next door,
+and a Bow-street officer residing over the way, you may imagine that his
+society is a source of consolation to myself and to Mrs. Micawber. I
+am at present, my dear Copperfield, engaged in the sale of corn upon
+commission. It is not an avocation of a remunerative description--in
+other words, it does not pay--and some temporary embarrassments of a
+pecuniary nature have been the consequence. I am, however, delighted to
+add that I have now an immediate prospect of something turning up (I am
+not at liberty to say in what direction), which I trust will enable me
+to provide, permanently, both for myself and for your friend Traddles,
+in whom I have an unaffected interest. You may, perhaps, be prepared
+to hear that Mrs. Micawber is in a state of health which renders it
+not wholly improbable that an addition may be ultimately made to those
+pledges of affection which--in short, to the infantine group. Mrs.
+Micawber’s family have been so good as to express their dissatisfaction
+at this state of things. I have merely to observe, that I am not aware
+that it is any business of theirs, and that I repel that exhibition of
+feeling with scorn, and with defiance!’
+
+Mr. Micawber then shook hands with me again, and left me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 28. Mr. MICAWBER’S GAUNTLET
+
+
+Until the day arrived on which I was to entertain my newly-found
+old friends, I lived principally on Dora and coffee. In my love-lorn
+condition, my appetite languished; and I was glad of it, for I felt
+as though it would have been an act of perfidy towards Dora to have a
+natural relish for my dinner. The quantity of walking exercise I took,
+was not in this respect attended with its usual consequence, as the
+disappointment counteracted the fresh air. I have my doubts, too,
+founded on the acute experience acquired at this period of my life,
+whether a sound enjoyment of animal food can develop itself freely in
+any human subject who is always in torment from tight boots. I think
+the extremities require to be at peace before the stomach will conduct
+itself with vigour.
+
+On the occasion of this domestic little party, I did not repeat my
+former extensive preparations. I merely provided a pair of soles,
+a small leg of mutton, and a pigeon-pie. Mrs. Crupp broke out into
+rebellion on my first bashful hint in reference to the cooking of the
+fish and joint, and said, with a dignified sense of injury, ‘No! No,
+sir! You will not ask me sich a thing, for you are better acquainted
+with me than to suppose me capable of doing what I cannot do with ampial
+satisfaction to my own feelings!’ But, in the end, a compromise was
+effected; and Mrs. Crupp consented to achieve this feat, on condition
+that I dined from home for a fortnight afterwards.
+
+And here I may remark, that what I underwent from Mrs. Crupp, in
+consequence of the tyranny she established over me, was dreadful. I
+never was so much afraid of anyone. We made a compromise of everything.
+If I hesitated, she was taken with that wonderful disorder which was
+always lying in ambush in her system, ready, at the shortest notice, to
+prey upon her vitals. If I rang the bell impatiently, after half-a-dozen
+unavailing modest pulls, and she appeared at last--which was not by any
+means to be relied upon--she would appear with a reproachful aspect,
+sink breathless on a chair near the door, lay her hand upon her nankeen
+bosom, and become so ill, that I was glad, at any sacrifice of brandy or
+anything else, to get rid of her. If I objected to having my bed made at
+five o’clock in the afternoon--which I do still think an uncomfortable
+arrangement--one motion of her hand towards the same nankeen region of
+wounded sensibility was enough to make me falter an apology. In short,
+I would have done anything in an honourable way rather than give Mrs.
+Crupp offence; and she was the terror of my life.
+
+I bought a second-hand dumb-waiter for this dinner-party, in preference
+to re-engaging the handy young man; against whom I had conceived a
+prejudice, in consequence of meeting him in the Strand, one Sunday
+morning, in a waistcoat remarkably like one of mine, which had been
+missing since the former occasion. The ‘young gal’ was re-engaged; but
+on the stipulation that she should only bring in the dishes, and then
+withdraw to the landing-place, beyond the outer door; where a habit of
+sniffing she had contracted would be lost upon the guests, and where her
+retiring on the plates would be a physical impossibility.
+
+Having laid in the materials for a bowl of punch, to be compounded
+by Mr. Micawber; having provided a bottle of lavender-water, two
+wax-candles, a paper of mixed pins, and a pincushion, to assist Mrs.
+Micawber in her toilette at my dressing-table; having also caused the
+fire in my bedroom to be lighted for Mrs. Micawber’s convenience; and
+having laid the cloth with my own hands, I awaited the result with
+composure.
+
+At the appointed time, my three visitors arrived together. Mr. Micawber
+with more shirt-collar than usual, and a new ribbon to his eye-glass;
+Mrs. Micawber with her cap in a whitey-brown paper parcel; Traddles
+carrying the parcel, and supporting Mrs. Micawber on his arm. They were
+all delighted with my residence. When I conducted Mrs. Micawber to my
+dressing-table, and she saw the scale on which it was prepared for her,
+she was in such raptures, that she called Mr. Micawber to come in and
+look.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘this is luxurious. This is a
+way of life which reminds me of the period when I was myself in a state
+of celibacy, and Mrs. Micawber had not yet been solicited to plight her
+faith at the Hymeneal altar.’
+
+‘He means, solicited by him, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber,
+archly. ‘He cannot answer for others.’
+
+‘My dear,’ returned Mr. Micawber with sudden seriousness, ‘I have no
+desire to answer for others. I am too well aware that when, in the
+inscrutable decrees of Fate, you were reserved for me, it is possible
+you may have been reserved for one, destined, after a protracted
+struggle, at length to fall a victim to pecuniary involvements of a
+complicated nature. I understand your allusion, my love. I regret it,
+but I can bear it.’
+
+‘Micawber!’ exclaimed Mrs. Micawber, in tears. ‘Have I deserved this! I,
+who never have deserted you; who never WILL desert you, Micawber!’ ‘My
+love,’ said Mr. Micawber, much affected, ‘you will forgive, and our old
+and tried friend Copperfield will, I am sure, forgive, the momentary
+laceration of a wounded spirit, made sensitive by a recent collision
+with the Minion of Power--in other words, with a ribald Turncock
+attached to the water-works--and will pity, not condemn, its excesses.’
+
+Mr. Micawber then embraced Mrs. Micawber, and pressed my hand; leaving
+me to infer from this broken allusion that his domestic supply of
+water had been cut off that afternoon, in consequence of default in the
+payment of the company’s rates.
+
+To divert his thoughts from this melancholy subject, I informed Mr.
+Micawber that I relied upon him for a bowl of punch, and led him to
+the lemons. His recent despondency, not to say despair, was gone in a
+moment. I never saw a man so thoroughly enjoy himself amid the fragrance
+of lemon-peel and sugar, the odour of burning rum, and the steam of
+boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that afternoon. It was wonderful to
+see his face shining at us out of a thin cloud of these delicate fumes,
+as he stirred, and mixed, and tasted, and looked as if he were making,
+instead of punch, a fortune for his family down to the latest posterity.
+As to Mrs. Micawber, I don’t know whether it was the effect of the cap,
+or the lavender-water, or the pins, or the fire, or the wax-candles, but
+she came out of my room, comparatively speaking, lovely. And the lark
+was never gayer than that excellent woman.
+
+I suppose--I never ventured to inquire, but I suppose--that Mrs. Crupp,
+after frying the soles, was taken ill. Because we broke down at that
+point. The leg of mutton came up very red within, and very pale without:
+besides having a foreign substance of a gritty nature sprinkled over
+it, as if if had had a fall into the ashes of that remarkable kitchen
+fireplace. But we were not in condition to judge of this fact from the
+appearance of the gravy, forasmuch as the ‘young gal’ had dropped it all
+upon the stairs--where it remained, by the by, in a long train, until it
+was worn out. The pigeon-pie was not bad, but it was a delusive pie: the
+crust being like a disappointing head, phrenologically speaking: full
+of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath. In short, the
+banquet was such a failure that I should have been quite unhappy--about
+the failure, I mean, for I was always unhappy about Dora--if I had not
+been relieved by the great good humour of my company, and by a bright
+suggestion from Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘My dear friend Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘accidents will occur
+in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that
+pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances the--a--I would
+say, in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of
+Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with
+philosophy. If you will allow me to take the liberty of remarking that
+there are few comestibles better, in their way, than a Devil, and that
+I believe, with a little division of labour, we could accomplish a good
+one if the young person in attendance could produce a gridiron, I would
+put it to you, that this little misfortune may be easily repaired.’
+
+There was a gridiron in the pantry, on which my morning rasher of
+bacon was cooked. We had it in, in a twinkling, and immediately applied
+ourselves to carrying Mr. Micawber’s idea into effect. The division of
+labour to which he had referred was this:--Traddles cut the mutton into
+slices; Mr. Micawber (who could do anything of this sort to perfection)
+covered them with pepper, mustard, salt, and cayenne; I put them on
+the gridiron, turned them with a fork, and took them off, under Mr.
+Micawber’s direction; and Mrs. Micawber heated, and continually stirred,
+some mushroom ketchup in a little saucepan. When we had slices enough
+done to begin upon, we fell-to, with our sleeves still tucked up at the
+wrist, more slices sputtering and blazing on the fire, and our attention
+divided between the mutton on our plates, and the mutton then preparing.
+
+What with the novelty of this cookery, the excellence of it, the bustle
+of it, the frequent starting up to look after it, the frequent sitting
+down to dispose of it as the crisp slices came off the gridiron hot and
+hot, the being so busy, so flushed with the fire, so amused, and in the
+midst of such a tempting noise and savour, we reduced the leg of mutton
+to the bone. My own appetite came back miraculously. I am ashamed to
+record it, but I really believe I forgot Dora for a little while. I am
+satisfied that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber could not have enjoyed the
+feast more, if they had sold a bed to provide it. Traddles laughed as
+heartily, almost the whole time, as he ate and worked. Indeed we all
+did, all at once; and I dare say there was never a greater success.
+
+We were at the height of our enjoyment, and were all busily engaged, in
+our several departments, endeavouring to bring the last batch of slices
+to a state of perfection that should crown the feast, when I was aware
+of a strange presence in the room, and my eyes encountered those of the
+staid Littimer, standing hat in hand before me.
+
+‘What’s the matter?’ I involuntarily asked.
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir, I was directed to come in. Is my master not
+here, sir?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Have you not seen him, sir?’
+
+‘No; don’t you come from him?’
+
+‘Not immediately so, sir.’
+
+‘Did he tell you you would find him here?’
+
+‘Not exactly so, sir. But I should think he might be here tomorrow, as
+he has not been here today.’ ‘Is he coming up from Oxford?’
+
+‘I beg, sir,’ he returned respectfully, ‘that you will be seated, and
+allow me to do this.’ With which he took the fork from my unresisting
+hand, and bent over the gridiron, as if his whole attention were
+concentrated on it.
+
+We should not have been much discomposed, I dare say, by the appearance
+of Steerforth himself, but we became in a moment the meekest of the meek
+before his respectable serving-man. Mr. Micawber, humming a tune, to
+show that he was quite at ease, subsided into his chair, with the handle
+of a hastily concealed fork sticking out of the bosom of his coat, as
+if he had stabbed himself. Mrs. Micawber put on her brown gloves, and
+assumed a genteel languor. Traddles ran his greasy hands through
+his hair, and stood it bolt upright, and stared in confusion on the
+table-cloth. As for me, I was a mere infant at the head of my own table;
+and hardly ventured to glance at the respectable phenomenon, who had
+come from Heaven knows where, to put my establishment to rights.
+
+Meanwhile he took the mutton off the gridiron, and gravely handed it
+round. We all took some, but our appreciation of it was gone, and we
+merely made a show of eating it. As we severally pushed away our plates,
+he noiselessly removed them, and set on the cheese. He took that off,
+too, when it was done with; cleared the table; piled everything on the
+dumb-waiter; gave us our wine-glasses; and, of his own accord, wheeled
+the dumb-waiter into the pantry. All this was done in a perfect manner,
+and he never raised his eyes from what he was about. Yet his very
+elbows, when he had his back towards me, seemed to teem with the
+expression of his fixed opinion that I was extremely young.
+
+‘Can I do anything more, sir?’
+
+I thanked him and said, No; but would he take no dinner himself?
+
+‘None, I am obliged to you, sir.’
+
+‘Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford?’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
+
+‘Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford?’
+
+‘I should imagine that he might be here tomorrow, sir. I rather thought
+he might have been here today, sir. The mistake is mine, no doubt, sir.’
+
+‘If you should see him first--’ said I.
+
+‘If you’ll excuse me, sir, I don’t think I shall see him first.’
+
+‘In case you do,’ said I, ‘pray say that I am sorry he was not here
+today, as an old schoolfellow of his was here.’
+
+‘Indeed, sir!’ and he divided a bow between me and Traddles, with a
+glance at the latter.
+
+He was moving softly to the door, when, in a forlorn hope of saying
+something naturally--which I never could, to this man--I said:
+
+‘Oh! Littimer!’
+
+‘Sir!’
+
+‘Did you remain long at Yarmouth, that time?’
+
+‘Not particularly so, sir.’
+
+‘You saw the boat completed?’
+
+‘Yes, sir. I remained behind on purpose to see the boat completed.’
+
+‘I know!’ He raised his eyes to mine respectfully.
+
+‘Mr. Steerforth has not seen it yet, I suppose?’
+
+‘I really can’t say, sir. I think--but I really can’t say, sir. I wish
+you good night, sir.’
+
+He comprehended everybody present, in the respectful bow with which he
+followed these words, and disappeared. My visitors seemed to breathe
+more freely when he was gone; but my own relief was very great, for
+besides the constraint, arising from that extraordinary sense of
+being at a disadvantage which I always had in this man’s presence, my
+conscience had embarrassed me with whispers that I had mistrusted his
+master, and I could not repress a vague uneasy dread that he might
+find it out. How was it, having so little in reality to conceal, that I
+always DID feel as if this man were finding me out?
+
+Mr. Micawber roused me from this reflection, which was blended with
+a certain remorseful apprehension of seeing Steerforth himself, by
+bestowing many encomiums on the absent Littimer as a most respectable
+fellow, and a thoroughly admirable servant. Mr. Micawber, I may remark,
+had taken his full share of the general bow, and had received it with
+infinite condescension.
+
+‘But punch, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, tasting it, ‘like
+time and tide, waits for no man. Ah! it is at the present moment in high
+flavour. My love, will you give me your opinion?’
+
+Mrs. Micawber pronounced it excellent.
+
+‘Then I will drink,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if my friend Copperfield
+will permit me to take that social liberty, to the days when my friend
+Copperfield and myself were younger, and fought our way in the world
+side by side. I may say, of myself and Copperfield, in words we have
+sung together before now, that
+
+ We twa hae run about the braes
+ And pu’d the gowans’ fine
+--in a figurative point of view--on several occasions. I am not exactly
+aware,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll in his voice, and the old
+indescribable air of saying something genteel, ‘what gowans may be, but
+I have no doubt that Copperfield and myself would frequently have taken
+a pull at them, if it had been feasible.’
+
+Mr. Micawber, at the then present moment, took a pull at his punch. So
+we all did: Traddles evidently lost in wondering at what distant time
+Mr. Micawber and I could have been comrades in the battle of the world.
+
+‘Ahem!’ said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat, and warming with the
+punch and with the fire. ‘My dear, another glass?’
+
+Mrs. Micawber said it must be very little; but we couldn’t allow that,
+so it was a glassful.
+
+‘As we are quite confidential here, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, sipping her punch, ‘Mr. Traddles being a part of our
+domesticity, I should much like to have your opinion on Mr. Micawber’s
+prospects. For corn,’ said Mrs. Micawber argumentatively, ‘as I have
+repeatedly said to Mr. Micawber, may be gentlemanly, but it is not
+remunerative. Commission to the extent of two and ninepence in
+a fortnight cannot, however limited our ideas, be considered
+remunerative.’
+
+We were all agreed upon that.
+
+‘Then,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who prided herself on taking a clear view of
+things, and keeping Mr. Micawber straight by her woman’s wisdom, when he
+might otherwise go a little crooked, ‘then I ask myself this question.
+If corn is not to be relied upon, what is? Are coals to be relied upon?
+Not at all. We have turned our attention to that experiment, on the
+suggestion of my family, and we find it fallacious.’
+
+Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair with his hands in his pockets,
+eyed us aside, and nodded his head, as much as to say that the case was
+very clearly put.
+
+‘The articles of corn and coals,’ said Mrs. Micawber, still more
+argumentatively, ‘being equally out of the question, Mr. Copperfield,
+I naturally look round the world, and say, “What is there in which a
+person of Mr. Micawber’s talent is likely to succeed?” And I exclude
+the doing anything on commission, because commission is not a certainty.
+What is best suited to a person of Mr. Micawber’s peculiar temperament
+is, I am convinced, a certainty.’
+
+Traddles and I both expressed, by a feeling murmur, that this great
+discovery was no doubt true of Mr. Micawber, and that it did him much
+credit.
+
+‘I will not conceal from you, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘that I have long felt the Brewing business to be particularly
+adapted to Mr. Micawber. Look at Barclay and Perkins! Look at Truman,
+Hanbury, and Buxton! It is on that extensive footing that Mr. Micawber,
+I know from my own knowledge of him, is calculated to shine; and the
+profits, I am told, are e-NOR-MOUS! But if Mr. Micawber cannot get into
+those firms--which decline to answer his letters, when he offers his
+services even in an inferior capacity--what is the use of dwelling upon
+that idea? None. I may have a conviction that Mr. Micawber’s manners--’
+
+‘Hem! Really, my dear,’ interposed Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘My love, be silent,’ said Mrs. Micawber, laying her brown glove on his
+hand. ‘I may have a conviction, Mr. Copperfield, that Mr. Micawber’s
+manners peculiarly qualify him for the Banking business. I may argue
+within myself, that if I had a deposit at a banking-house, the manners
+of Mr. Micawber, as representing that banking-house, would inspire
+confidence, and must extend the connexion. But if the various
+banking-houses refuse to avail themselves of Mr. Micawber’s abilities,
+or receive the offer of them with contumely, what is the use of dwelling
+upon THAT idea? None. As to originating a banking-business, I may know
+that there are members of my family who, if they chose to place their
+money in Mr. Micawber’s hands, might found an establishment of that
+description. But if they do NOT choose to place their money in Mr.
+Micawber’s hands--which they don’t--what is the use of that? Again I
+contend that we are no farther advanced than we were before.’
+
+I shook my head, and said, ‘Not a bit.’ Traddles also shook his head,
+and said, ‘Not a bit.’
+
+‘What do I deduce from this?’ Mrs. Micawber went on to say, still with
+the same air of putting a case lucidly. ‘What is the conclusion, my
+dear Mr. Copperfield, to which I am irresistibly brought? Am I wrong in
+saying, it is clear that we must live?’
+
+I answered ‘Not at all!’ and Traddles answered ‘Not at all!’ and I found
+myself afterwards sagely adding, alone, that a person must either live
+or die.
+
+‘Just so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, ‘It is precisely that. And the fact
+is, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that we can not live without something
+widely different from existing circumstances shortly turning up. Now
+I am convinced, myself, and this I have pointed out to Mr. Micawber
+several times of late, that things cannot be expected to turn up of
+themselves. We must, in a measure, assist to turn them up. I may be
+wrong, but I have formed that opinion.’
+
+Both Traddles and I applauded it highly.
+
+‘Very well,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘Then what do I recommend? Here is Mr.
+Micawber with a variety of qualifications--with great talent--’
+
+‘Really, my love,’ said Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘Pray, my dear, allow me to conclude. Here is Mr. Micawber, with a
+variety of qualifications, with great talent--I should say, with genius,
+but that may be the partiality of a wife--’
+
+Traddles and I both murmured ‘No.’
+
+‘And here is Mr. Micawber without any suitable position or employment.
+Where does that responsibility rest? Clearly on society. Then I would
+make a fact so disgraceful known, and boldly challenge society to set it
+right. It appears to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber,
+forcibly, ‘that what Mr. Micawber has to do, is to throw down the
+gauntlet to society, and say, in effect, “Show me who will take that up.
+Let the party immediately step forward.”’
+
+I ventured to ask Mrs. Micawber how this was to be done.
+
+‘By advertising,’ said Mrs. Micawber--‘in all the papers. It appears to
+me, that what Mr. Micawber has to do, in justice to himself, in justice
+to his family, and I will even go so far as to say in justice to
+society, by which he has been hitherto overlooked, is to advertise in
+all the papers; to describe himself plainly as so-and-so, with such and
+such qualifications and to put it thus: “Now employ me, on remunerative
+terms, and address, post-paid, to W. M., Post Office, Camden Town.”’
+
+‘This idea of Mrs. Micawber’s, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+making his shirt-collar meet in front of his chin, and glancing at me
+sideways, ‘is, in fact, the Leap to which I alluded, when I last had the
+pleasure of seeing you.’
+
+‘Advertising is rather expensive,’ I remarked, dubiously.
+
+‘Exactly so!’ said Mrs. Micawber, preserving the same logical air.
+‘Quite true, my dear Mr. Copperfield! I have made the identical
+observation to Mr. Micawber. It is for that reason especially, that I
+think Mr. Micawber ought (as I have already said, in justice to himself,
+in justice to his family, and in justice to society) to raise a certain
+sum of money--on a bill.’
+
+Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair, trifled with his eye-glass
+and cast his eyes up at the ceiling; but I thought him observant of
+Traddles, too, who was looking at the fire.
+
+‘If no member of my family,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘is possessed of
+sufficient natural feeling to negotiate that bill--I believe there is a
+better business-term to express what I mean--’
+
+Mr. Micawber, with his eyes still cast up at the ceiling, suggested
+‘Discount.’
+
+‘To discount that bill,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘then my opinion is, that
+Mr. Micawber should go into the City, should take that bill into the
+Money Market, and should dispose of it for what he can get. If the
+individuals in the Money Market oblige Mr. Micawber to sustain a great
+sacrifice, that is between themselves and their consciences. I view
+it, steadily, as an investment. I recommend Mr. Micawber, my dear Mr.
+Copperfield, to do the same; to regard it as an investment which is sure
+of return, and to make up his mind to any sacrifice.’
+
+I felt, but I am sure I don’t know why, that this was self-denying
+and devoted in Mrs. Micawber, and I uttered a murmur to that effect.
+Traddles, who took his tone from me, did likewise, still looking at the
+fire.
+
+‘I will not,’ said Mrs. Micawber, finishing her punch, and gathering her
+scarf about her shoulders, preparatory to her withdrawal to my bedroom:
+‘I will not protract these remarks on the subject of Mr. Micawber’s
+pecuniary affairs. At your fireside, my dear Mr. Copperfield, and in the
+presence of Mr. Traddles, who, though not so old a friend, is quite one
+of ourselves, I could not refrain from making you acquainted with the
+course I advise Mr. Micawber to take. I feel that the time is arrived
+when Mr. Micawber should exert himself and--I will add--assert himself,
+and it appears to me that these are the means. I am aware that I am
+merely a female, and that a masculine judgement is usually considered
+more competent to the discussion of such questions; still I must not
+forget that, when I lived at home with my papa and mama, my papa was in
+the habit of saying, “Emma’s form is fragile, but her grasp of a subject
+is inferior to none.” That my papa was too partial, I well know; but
+that he was an observer of character in some degree, my duty and my
+reason equally forbid me to doubt.’
+
+With these words, and resisting our entreaties that she would grace
+the remaining circulation of the punch with her presence, Mrs. Micawber
+retired to my bedroom. And really I felt that she was a noble woman--the
+sort of woman who might have been a Roman matron, and done all manner of
+heroic things, in times of public trouble.
+
+In the fervour of this impression, I congratulated Mr. Micawber on the
+treasure he possessed. So did Traddles. Mr. Micawber extended his
+hand to each of us in succession, and then covered his face with his
+pocket-handkerchief, which I think had more snuff upon it than he
+was aware of. He then returned to the punch, in the highest state of
+exhilaration.
+
+He was full of eloquence. He gave us to understand that in our children
+we lived again, and that, under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties,
+any accession to their number was doubly welcome. He said that Mrs.
+Micawber had latterly had her doubts on this point, but that he had
+dispelled them, and reassured her. As to her family, they were totally
+unworthy of her, and their sentiments were utterly indifferent to him,
+and they might--I quote his own expression--go to the Devil.
+
+Mr. Micawber then delivered a warm eulogy on Traddles. He said
+Traddles’s was a character, to the steady virtues of which he (Mr.
+Micawber) could lay no claim, but which, he thanked Heaven, he could
+admire. He feelingly alluded to the young lady, unknown, whom Traddles
+had honoured with his affection, and who had reciprocated that affection
+by honouring and blessing Traddles with her affection. Mr. Micawber
+pledged her. So did I. Traddles thanked us both, by saying, with a
+simplicity and honesty I had sense enough to be quite charmed with,
+‘I am very much obliged to you indeed. And I do assure you, she’s the
+dearest girl!--’
+
+Mr. Micawber took an early opportunity, after that, of hinting, with the
+utmost delicacy and ceremony, at the state of my affections. Nothing
+but the serious assurance of his friend Copperfield to the contrary,
+he observed, could deprive him of the impression that his friend
+Copperfield loved and was beloved. After feeling very hot and
+uncomfortable for some time, and after a good deal of blushing,
+stammering, and denying, I said, having my glass in my hand, ‘Well! I
+would give them D.!’ which so excited and gratified Mr. Micawber,
+that he ran with a glass of punch into my bedroom, in order that Mrs.
+Micawber might drink D., who drank it with enthusiasm, crying from
+within, in a shrill voice, ‘Hear, hear! My dear Mr. Copperfield, I am
+delighted. Hear!’ and tapping at the wall, by way of applause.
+
+Our conversation, afterwards, took a more worldly turn; Mr. Micawber
+telling us that he found Camden Town inconvenient, and that the first
+thing he contemplated doing, when the advertisement should have been the
+cause of something satisfactory turning up, was to move. He mentioned
+a terrace at the western end of Oxford Street, fronting Hyde Park, on
+which he had always had his eye, but which he did not expect to attain
+immediately, as it would require a large establishment. There would
+probably be an interval, he explained, in which he should content
+himself with the upper part of a house, over some respectable place of
+business--say in Piccadilly,--which would be a cheerful situation for
+Mrs. Micawber; and where, by throwing out a bow-window, or carrying up
+the roof another story, or making some little alteration of that sort,
+they might live, comfortably and reputably, for a few years. Whatever
+was reserved for him, he expressly said, or wherever his abode might be,
+we might rely on this--there would always be a room for Traddles, and a
+knife and fork for me. We acknowledged his kindness; and he begged us
+to forgive his having launched into these practical and business-like
+details, and to excuse it as natural in one who was making entirely new
+arrangements in life.
+
+Mrs. Micawber, tapping at the wall again to know if tea were ready,
+broke up this particular phase of our friendly conversation. She made
+tea for us in a most agreeable manner; and, whenever I went near her, in
+handing about the tea-cups and bread-and-butter, asked me, in a whisper,
+whether D. was fair, or dark, or whether she was short, or tall: or
+something of that kind; which I think I liked. After tea, we discussed a
+variety of topics before the fire; and Mrs. Micawber was good enough
+to sing us (in a small, thin, flat voice, which I remembered to have
+considered, when I first knew her, the very table-beer of acoustics) the
+favourite ballads of ‘The Dashing White Sergeant’, and ‘Little Tafflin’.
+For both of these songs Mrs. Micawber had been famous when she lived at
+home with her papa and mama. Mr. Micawber told us, that when he heard
+her sing the first one, on the first occasion of his seeing her beneath
+the parental roof, she had attracted his attention in an extraordinary
+degree; but that when it came to Little Tafflin, he had resolved to win
+that woman or perish in the attempt.
+
+It was between ten and eleven o’clock when Mrs. Micawber rose to replace
+her cap in the whitey-brown paper parcel, and to put on her bonnet. Mr.
+Micawber took the opportunity of Traddles putting on his great-coat, to
+slip a letter into my hand, with a whispered request that I would read
+it at my leisure. I also took the opportunity of my holding a candle
+over the banisters to light them down, when Mr. Micawber was going
+first, leading Mrs. Micawber, and Traddles was following with the cap,
+to detain Traddles for a moment on the top of the stairs.
+
+‘Traddles,’ said I, ‘Mr. Micawber don’t mean any harm, poor fellow: but,
+if I were you, I wouldn’t lend him anything.’
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Traddles, smiling, ‘I haven’t got
+anything to lend.’
+
+‘You have got a name, you know,’ said I.
+
+‘Oh! You call THAT something to lend?’ returned Traddles, with a
+thoughtful look.
+
+‘Certainly.’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Traddles. ‘Yes, to be sure! I am very much obliged to you,
+Copperfield; but--I am afraid I have lent him that already.’
+
+‘For the bill that is to be a certain investment?’ I inquired.
+
+‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Not for that one. This is the first I have heard
+of that one. I have been thinking that he will most likely propose that
+one, on the way home. Mine’s another.’
+
+‘I hope there will be nothing wrong about it,’ said I. ‘I hope not,’
+said Traddles. ‘I should think not, though, because he told me, only the
+other day, that it was provided for. That was Mr. Micawber’s expression,
+“Provided for.”’
+
+Mr. Micawber looking up at this juncture to where we were standing, I
+had only time to repeat my caution. Traddles thanked me, and descended.
+But I was much afraid, when I observed the good-natured manner in which
+he went down with the cap in his hand, and gave Mrs. Micawber his arm,
+that he would be carried into the Money Market neck and heels.
+
+I returned to my fireside, and was musing, half gravely and half
+laughing, on the character of Mr. Micawber and the old relations between
+us, when I heard a quick step ascending the stairs. At first, I thought
+it was Traddles coming back for something Mrs. Micawber had left behind;
+but as the step approached, I knew it, and felt my heart beat high, and
+the blood rush to my face, for it was Steerforth’s.
+
+I was never unmindful of Agnes, and she never left that sanctuary in my
+thoughts--if I may call it so--where I had placed her from the first.
+But when he entered, and stood before me with his hand out, the darkness
+that had fallen on him changed to light, and I felt confounded and
+ashamed of having doubted one I loved so heartily. I loved her none the
+less; I thought of her as the same benignant, gentle angel in my life; I
+reproached myself, not her, with having done him an injury; and I would
+have made him any atonement if I had known what to make, and how to make
+it.
+
+‘Why, Daisy, old boy, dumb-foundered!’ laughed Steerforth, shaking
+my hand heartily, and throwing it gaily away. ‘Have I detected you in
+another feast, you Sybarite! These Doctors’ Commons fellows are the
+gayest men in town, I believe, and beat us sober Oxford people all to
+nothing!’ His bright glance went merrily round the room, as he took
+the seat on the sofa opposite to me, which Mrs. Micawber had recently
+vacated, and stirred the fire into a blaze.
+
+‘I was so surprised at first,’ said I, giving him welcome with all
+the cordiality I felt, ‘that I had hardly breath to greet you with,
+Steerforth.’
+
+‘Well, the sight of me is good for sore eyes, as the Scotch say,’
+replied Steerforth, ‘and so is the sight of you, Daisy, in full bloom.
+How are you, my Bacchanal?’
+
+‘I am very well,’ said I; ‘and not at all Bacchanalian tonight, though I
+confess to another party of three.’
+
+‘All of whom I met in the street, talking loud in your praise,’ returned
+Steerforth. ‘Who’s our friend in the tights?’
+
+I gave him the best idea I could, in a few words, of Mr. Micawber. He
+laughed heartily at my feeble portrait of that gentleman, and said he
+was a man to know, and he must know him. ‘But who do you suppose our
+other friend is?’ said I, in my turn.
+
+‘Heaven knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘Not a bore, I hope? I thought he
+looked a little like one.’
+
+‘Traddles!’ I replied, triumphantly.
+
+‘Who’s he?’ asked Steerforth, in his careless way.
+
+‘Don’t you remember Traddles? Traddles in our room at Salem House?’
+
+‘Oh! That fellow!’ said Steerforth, beating a lump of coal on the top
+of the fire, with the poker. ‘Is he as soft as ever? And where the deuce
+did you pick him up?’
+
+I extolled Traddles in reply, as highly as I could; for I felt that
+Steerforth rather slighted him. Steerforth, dismissing the subject with
+a light nod, and a smile, and the remark that he would be glad to see
+the old fellow too, for he had always been an odd fish, inquired if I
+could give him anything to eat? During most of this short dialogue, when
+he had not been speaking in a wild vivacious manner, he had sat idly
+beating on the lump of coal with the poker. I observed that he did the
+same thing while I was getting out the remains of the pigeon-pie, and so
+forth.
+
+‘Why, Daisy, here’s a supper for a king!’ he exclaimed, starting out of
+his silence with a burst, and taking his seat at the table. ‘I shall do
+it justice, for I have come from Yarmouth.’
+
+‘I thought you came from Oxford?’ I returned.
+
+‘Not I,’ said Steerforth. ‘I have been seafaring--better employed.’
+
+‘Littimer was here today, to inquire for you,’ I remarked, ‘and I
+understood him that you were at Oxford; though, now I think of it, he
+certainly did not say so.’
+
+‘Littimer is a greater fool than I thought him, to have been inquiring
+for me at all,’ said Steerforth, jovially pouring out a glass of wine,
+and drinking to me. ‘As to understanding him, you are a cleverer fellow
+than most of us, Daisy, if you can do that.’
+
+‘That’s true, indeed,’ said I, moving my chair to the table. ‘So you
+have been at Yarmouth, Steerforth!’ interested to know all about it.
+‘Have you been there long?’
+
+‘No,’ he returned. ‘An escapade of a week or so.’
+
+‘And how are they all? Of course, little Emily is not married yet?’
+
+‘Not yet. Going to be, I believe--in so many weeks, or months, or
+something or other. I have not seen much of ‘em. By the by’; he laid
+down his knife and fork, which he had been using with great diligence,
+and began feeling in his pockets; ‘I have a letter for you.’
+
+‘From whom?’
+
+‘Why, from your old nurse,’ he returned, taking some papers out of his
+breast pocket. “‘J. Steerforth, Esquire, debtor, to The Willing
+Mind”; that’s not it. Patience, and we’ll find it presently. Old
+what’s-his-name’s in a bad way, and it’s about that, I believe.’
+
+‘Barkis, do you mean?’
+
+‘Yes!’ still feeling in his pockets, and looking over their contents:
+‘it’s all over with poor Barkis, I am afraid. I saw a little apothecary
+there--surgeon, or whatever he is--who brought your worship into the
+world. He was mighty learned about the case, to me; but the upshot of
+his opinion was, that the carrier was making his last journey rather
+fast.---Put your hand into the breast pocket of my great-coat on the
+chair yonder, and I think you’ll find the letter. Is it there?’
+
+‘Here it is!’ said I.
+
+‘That’s right!’
+
+It was from Peggotty; something less legible than usual, and brief. It
+informed me of her husband’s hopeless state, and hinted at his being
+‘a little nearer’ than heretofore, and consequently more difficult
+to manage for his own comfort. It said nothing of her weariness
+and watching, and praised him highly. It was written with a plain,
+unaffected, homely piety that I knew to be genuine, and ended with ‘my
+duty to my ever darling’--meaning myself.
+
+While I deciphered it, Steerforth continued to eat and drink.
+
+‘It’s a bad job,’ he said, when I had done; ‘but the sun sets every day,
+and people die every minute, and we mustn’t be scared by the common lot.
+If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot at all men’s doors
+was heard knocking somewhere, every object in this world would slip from
+us. No! Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but
+ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!’
+
+‘And win what race?’ said I.
+
+‘The race that one has started in,’ said he. ‘Ride on!’
+
+I noticed, I remember, as he paused, looking at me with his handsome
+head a little thrown back, and his glass raised in his hand, that,
+though the freshness of the sea-wind was on his face, and it was ruddy,
+there were traces in it, made since I last saw it, as if he had applied
+himself to some habitual strain of the fervent energy which, when
+roused, was so passionately roused within him. I had it in my thoughts
+to remonstrate with him upon his desperate way of pursuing any fancy
+that he took--such as this buffeting of rough seas, and braving of hard
+weather, for example--when my mind glanced off to the immediate subject
+of our conversation again, and pursued that instead.
+
+‘I tell you what, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘if your high spirits will listen
+to me--’
+
+‘They are potent spirits, and will do whatever you like,’ he answered,
+moving from the table to the fireside again.
+
+‘Then I tell you what, Steerforth. I think I will go down and see my
+old nurse. It is not that I can do her any good, or render her any real
+service; but she is so attached to me that my visit will have as much
+effect on her, as if I could do both. She will take it so kindly that it
+will be a comfort and support to her. It is no great effort to make,
+I am sure, for such a friend as she has been to me. Wouldn’t you go a
+day’s journey, if you were in my place?’
+
+His face was thoughtful, and he sat considering a little before he
+answered, in a low voice, ‘Well! Go. You can do no harm.’
+
+‘You have just come back,’ said I, ‘and it would be in vain to ask you
+to go with me?’
+
+‘Quite,’ he returned. ‘I am for Highgate tonight. I have not seen
+my mother this long time, and it lies upon my conscience, for
+it’s something to be loved as she loves her prodigal son.---Bah!
+Nonsense!--You mean to go tomorrow, I suppose?’ he said, holding me out
+at arm’s length, with a hand on each of my shoulders.
+
+‘Yes, I think so.’
+
+‘Well, then, don’t go till next day. I wanted you to come and stay a
+few days with us. Here I am, on purpose to bid you, and you fly off to
+Yarmouth!’
+
+‘You are a nice fellow to talk of flying off, Steerforth, who are always
+running wild on some unknown expedition or other!’
+
+He looked at me for a moment without speaking, and then rejoined, still
+holding me as before, and giving me a shake:
+
+‘Come! Say the next day, and pass as much of tomorrow as you can with
+us! Who knows when we may meet again, else? Come! Say the next day! I
+want you to stand between Rosa Dartle and me, and keep us asunder.’
+
+‘Would you love each other too much, without me?’
+
+‘Yes; or hate,’ laughed Steerforth; ‘no matter which. Come! Say the next
+day!’
+
+I said the next day; and he put on his great-coat and lighted his cigar,
+and set off to walk home. Finding him in this intention, I put on my own
+great-coat (but did not light my own cigar, having had enough of that
+for one while) and walked with him as far as the open road: a dull road,
+then, at night. He was in great spirits all the way; and when we parted,
+and I looked after him going so gallantly and airily homeward, I thought
+of his saying, ‘Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!’ and
+wished, for the first time, that he had some worthy race to run.
+
+I was undressing in my own room, when Mr. Micawber’s letter tumbled on
+the floor. Thus reminded of it, I broke the seal and read as follows. It
+was dated an hour and a half before dinner. I am not sure whether I
+have mentioned that, when Mr. Micawber was at any particularly desperate
+crisis, he used a sort of legal phraseology, which he seemed to think
+equivalent to winding up his affairs.
+
+
+‘SIR--for I dare not say my dear Copperfield,
+
+‘It is expedient that I should inform you that the undersigned is
+Crushed. Some flickering efforts to spare you the premature knowledge of
+his calamitous position, you may observe in him this day; but hope has
+sunk beneath the horizon, and the undersigned is Crushed.
+
+‘The present communication is penned within the personal range (I cannot
+call it the society) of an individual, in a state closely bordering
+on intoxication, employed by a broker. That individual is in legal
+possession of the premises, under a distress for rent. His inventory
+includes, not only the chattels and effects of every description
+belonging to the undersigned, as yearly tenant of this habitation, but
+also those appertaining to Mr. Thomas Traddles, lodger, a member of the
+Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.
+
+‘If any drop of gloom were wanting in the overflowing cup, which is now
+“commended” (in the language of an immortal Writer) to the lips of the
+undersigned, it would be found in the fact, that a friendly acceptance
+granted to the undersigned, by the before-mentioned Mr. Thomas Traddles,
+for the sum Of 23l 4s 9 1/2d is over due, and is NOT provided for. Also,
+in the fact that the living responsibilities clinging to the undersigned
+will, in the course of nature, be increased by the sum of one more
+helpless victim; whose miserable appearance may be looked for--in round
+numbers--at the expiration of a period not exceeding six lunar months
+from the present date.
+
+‘After premising thus much, it would be a work of supererogation to add,
+that dust and ashes are for ever scattered
+
+ ‘On
+ ‘The
+ ‘Head
+ ‘Of
+ ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
+
+
+Poor Traddles! I knew enough of Mr. Micawber by this time, to foresee
+that he might be expected to recover the blow; but my night’s rest was
+sorely distressed by thoughts of Traddles, and of the curate’s daughter,
+who was one of ten, down in Devonshire, and who was such a dear girl,
+and who would wait for Traddles (ominous praise!) until she was sixty,
+or any age that could be mentioned.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 29. I VISIT STEERFORTH AT HIS HOME, AGAIN
+
+
+I mentioned to Mr. Spenlow in the morning, that I wanted leave of
+absence for a short time; and as I was not in the receipt of any salary,
+and consequently was not obnoxious to the implacable Jorkins, there was
+no difficulty about it. I took that opportunity, with my voice sticking
+in my throat, and my sight failing as I uttered the words, to express
+my hope that Miss Spenlow was quite well; to which Mr. Spenlow replied,
+with no more emotion than if he had been speaking of an ordinary human
+being, that he was much obliged to me, and she was very well.
+
+We articled clerks, as germs of the patrician order of proctors, were
+treated with so much consideration, that I was almost my own master at
+all times. As I did not care, however, to get to Highgate before one
+or two o’clock in the day, and as we had another little excommunication
+case in court that morning, which was called The office of the judge
+promoted by Tipkins against Bullock for his soul’s correction, I passed
+an hour or two in attendance on it with Mr. Spenlow very agreeably.
+It arose out of a scuffle between two churchwardens, one of whom was
+alleged to have pushed the other against a pump; the handle of which
+pump projecting into a school-house, which school-house was under a
+gable of the church-roof, made the push an ecclesiastical offence.
+It was an amusing case; and sent me up to Highgate, on the box of the
+stage-coach, thinking about the Commons, and what Mr. Spenlow had said
+about touching the Commons and bringing down the country.
+
+Mrs. Steerforth was pleased to see me, and so was Rosa Dartle. I was
+agreeably surprised to find that Littimer was not there, and that we
+were attended by a modest little parlour-maid, with blue ribbons in her
+cap, whose eye it was much more pleasant, and much less disconcerting,
+to catch by accident, than the eye of that respectable man. But what I
+particularly observed, before I had been half-an-hour in the house, was
+the close and attentive watch Miss Dartle kept upon me; and the lurking
+manner in which she seemed to compare my face with Steerforth’s, and
+Steerforth’s with mine, and to lie in wait for something to come out
+between the two. So surely as I looked towards her, did I see that eager
+visage, with its gaunt black eyes and searching brow, intent on mine; or
+passing suddenly from mine to Steerforth’s; or comprehending both of us
+at once. In this lynx-like scrutiny she was so far from faltering when
+she saw I observed it, that at such a time she only fixed her piercing
+look upon me with a more intent expression still. Blameless as I was,
+and knew that I was, in reference to any wrong she could possibly
+suspect me of, I shrunk before her strange eyes, quite unable to endure
+their hungry lustre.
+
+All day, she seemed to pervade the whole house. If I talked to
+Steerforth in his room, I heard her dress rustle in the little gallery
+outside. When he and I engaged in some of our old exercises on the lawn
+behind the house, I saw her face pass from window to window, like a
+wandering light, until it fixed itself in one, and watched us. When we
+all four went out walking in the afternoon, she closed her thin hand on
+my arm like a spring, to keep me back, while Steerforth and his mother
+went on out of hearing: and then spoke to me.
+
+‘You have been a long time,’ she said, ‘without coming here. Is your
+profession really so engaging and interesting as to absorb your whole
+attention? I ask because I always want to be informed, when I am
+ignorant. Is it really, though?’
+
+I replied that I liked it well enough, but that I certainly could not
+claim so much for it.
+
+‘Oh! I am glad to know that, because I always like to be put right when
+I am wrong,’ said Rosa Dartle. ‘You mean it is a little dry, perhaps?’
+
+‘Well,’ I replied; ‘perhaps it was a little dry.’
+
+‘Oh! and that’s a reason why you want relief and change--excitement and
+all that?’ said she. ‘Ah! very true! But isn’t it a little--Eh?--for
+him; I don’t mean you?’
+
+A quick glance of her eye towards the spot where Steerforth was walking,
+with his mother leaning on his arm, showed me whom she meant; but beyond
+that, I was quite lost. And I looked so, I have no doubt.
+
+‘Don’t it--I don’t say that it does, mind I want to know--don’t it
+rather engross him? Don’t it make him, perhaps, a little more remiss
+than usual in his visits to his blindly-doting--eh?’ With another
+quick glance at them, and such a glance at me as seemed to look into my
+innermost thoughts.
+
+‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘pray do not think--’
+
+‘I don’t!’ she said. ‘Oh dear me, don’t suppose that I think anything!
+I am not suspicious. I only ask a question. I don’t state any opinion. I
+want to found an opinion on what you tell me. Then, it’s not so? Well! I
+am very glad to know it.’
+
+‘It certainly is not the fact,’ said I, perplexed, ‘that I am
+accountable for Steerforth’s having been away from home longer than
+usual--if he has been: which I really don’t know at this moment, unless
+I understand it from you. I have not seen him this long while, until
+last night.’
+
+‘No?’
+
+‘Indeed, Miss Dartle, no!’
+
+As she looked full at me, I saw her face grow sharper and paler, and the
+marks of the old wound lengthen out until it cut through the disfigured
+lip, and deep into the nether lip, and slanted down the face. There was
+something positively awful to me in this, and in the brightness of her
+eyes, as she said, looking fixedly at me:
+
+‘What is he doing?’
+
+I repeated the words, more to myself than her, being so amazed.
+
+‘What is he doing?’ she said, with an eagerness that seemed enough to
+consume her like a fire. ‘In what is that man assisting him, who never
+looks at me without an inscrutable falsehood in his eyes? If you are
+honourable and faithful, I don’t ask you to betray your friend. I ask
+you only to tell me, is it anger, is it hatred, is it pride, is it
+restlessness, is it some wild fancy, is it love, what is it, that is
+leading him?’
+
+‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘how shall I tell you, so that you will
+believe me, that I know of nothing in Steerforth different from what
+there was when I first came here? I can think of nothing. I firmly
+believe there is nothing. I hardly understand even what you mean.’
+
+As she still stood looking fixedly at me, a twitching or throbbing,
+from which I could not dissociate the idea of pain, came into that cruel
+mark; and lifted up the corner of her lip as if with scorn, or with a
+pity that despised its object. She put her hand upon it hurriedly--a
+hand so thin and delicate, that when I had seen her hold it up before
+the fire to shade her face, I had compared it in my thoughts to fine
+porcelain--and saying, in a quick, fierce, passionate way, ‘I swear you
+to secrecy about this!’ said not a word more.
+
+Mrs. Steerforth was particularly happy in her son’s society, and
+Steerforth was, on this occasion, particularly attentive and respectful
+to her. It was very interesting to me to see them together, not only on
+account of their mutual affection, but because of the strong personal
+resemblance between them, and the manner in which what was haughty or
+impetuous in him was softened by age and sex, in her, to a gracious
+dignity. I thought, more than once, that it was well no serious cause of
+division had ever come between them; or two such natures--I ought rather
+to express it, two such shades of the same nature--might have been
+harder to reconcile than the two extremest opposites in creation. The
+idea did not originate in my own discernment, I am bound to confess, but
+in a speech of Rosa Dartle’s.
+
+She said at dinner:
+
+‘Oh, but do tell me, though, somebody, because I have been thinking
+about it all day, and I want to know.’
+
+‘You want to know what, Rosa?’ returned Mrs. Steerforth. ‘Pray, pray,
+Rosa, do not be mysterious.’
+
+‘Mysterious!’ she cried. ‘Oh! really? Do you consider me so?’
+
+‘Do I constantly entreat you,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, ‘to speak plainly,
+in your own natural manner?’
+
+‘Oh! then this is not my natural manner?’ she rejoined. ‘Now you must
+really bear with me, because I ask for information. We never know
+ourselves.’
+
+‘It has become a second nature,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, without any
+displeasure; ‘but I remember,--and so must you, I think,--when your
+manner was different, Rosa; when it was not so guarded, and was more
+trustful.’
+
+‘I am sure you are right,’ she returned; ‘and so it is that bad habits
+grow upon one! Really? Less guarded and more trustful? How can I,
+imperceptibly, have changed, I wonder! Well, that’s very odd! I must
+study to regain my former self.’
+
+‘I wish you would,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, with a smile.
+
+‘Oh! I really will, you know!’ she answered. ‘I will learn frankness
+from--let me see--from James.’
+
+‘You cannot learn frankness, Rosa,’ said Mrs. Steerforth quickly--for
+there was always some effect of sarcasm in what Rosa Dartle said,
+though it was said, as this was, in the most unconscious manner in the
+world--‘in a better school.’
+
+‘That I am sure of,’ she answered, with uncommon fervour. ‘If I am sure
+of anything, of course, you know, I am sure of that.’
+
+Mrs. Steerforth appeared to me to regret having been a little nettled;
+for she presently said, in a kind tone:
+
+‘Well, my dear Rosa, we have not heard what it is that you want to be
+satisfied about?’
+
+‘That I want to be satisfied about?’ she replied, with provoking
+coldness. ‘Oh! It was only whether people, who are like each other in
+their moral constitution--is that the phrase?’
+
+‘It’s as good a phrase as another,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Thank you:--whether people, who are like each other in their moral
+constitution, are in greater danger than people not so circumstanced,
+supposing any serious cause of variance to arise between them, of being
+divided angrily and deeply?’
+
+‘I should say yes,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Should you?’ she retorted. ‘Dear me! Supposing then, for instance--any
+unlikely thing will do for a supposition--that you and your mother were
+to have a serious quarrel.’
+
+‘My dear Rosa,’ interposed Mrs. Steerforth, laughing good-naturedly,
+‘suggest some other supposition! James and I know our duty to each other
+better, I pray Heaven!’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Miss Dartle, nodding her head thoughtfully. ‘To be sure. That
+would prevent it? Why, of course it would. Exactly. Now, I am glad I
+have been so foolish as to put the case, for it is so very good to know
+that your duty to each other would prevent it! Thank you very much.’
+
+One other little circumstance connected with Miss Dartle I must
+not omit; for I had reason to remember it thereafter, when all the
+irremediable past was rendered plain. During the whole of this day, but
+especially from this period of it, Steerforth exerted himself with his
+utmost skill, and that was with his utmost ease, to charm this singular
+creature into a pleasant and pleased companion. That he should succeed,
+was no matter of surprise to me. That she should struggle against the
+fascinating influence of his delightful art--delightful nature I thought
+it then--did not surprise me either; for I knew that she was sometimes
+jaundiced and perverse. I saw her features and her manner slowly change;
+I saw her look at him with growing admiration; I saw her try, more and
+more faintly, but always angrily, as if she condemned a weakness in
+herself, to resist the captivating power that he possessed; and finally,
+I saw her sharp glance soften, and her smile become quite gentle, and I
+ceased to be afraid of her as I had really been all day, and we all sat
+about the fire, talking and laughing together, with as little reserve as
+if we had been children.
+
+Whether it was because we had sat there so long, or because Steerforth
+was resolved not to lose the advantage he had gained, I do not know; but
+we did not remain in the dining-room more than five minutes after her
+departure. ‘She is playing her harp,’ said Steerforth, softly, at the
+drawing-room door, ‘and nobody but my mother has heard her do that, I
+believe, these three years.’ He said it with a curious smile, which was
+gone directly; and we went into the room and found her alone.
+
+‘Don’t get up,’ said Steerforth (which she had already done)’ my dear
+Rosa, don’t! Be kind for once, and sing us an Irish song.’
+
+‘What do you care for an Irish song?’ she returned.
+
+‘Much!’ said Steerforth. ‘Much more than for any other. Here is Daisy,
+too, loves music from his soul. Sing us an Irish song, Rosa! and let me
+sit and listen as I used to do.’
+
+He did not touch her, or the chair from which she had risen, but sat
+himself near the harp. She stood beside it for some little while, in a
+curious way, going through the motion of playing it with her right hand,
+but not sounding it. At length she sat down, and drew it to her with one
+sudden action, and played and sang.
+
+I don’t know what it was, in her touch or voice, that made that song the
+most unearthly I have ever heard in my life, or can imagine. There was
+something fearful in the reality of it. It was as if it had never been
+written, or set to music, but sprung out of passion within her; which
+found imperfect utterance in the low sounds of her voice, and crouched
+again when all was still. I was dumb when she leaned beside the harp
+again, playing it, but not sounding it, with her right hand.
+
+A minute more, and this had roused me from my trance:--Steerforth had
+left his seat, and gone to her, and had put his arm laughingly about
+her, and had said, ‘Come, Rosa, for the future we will love each other
+very much!’ And she had struck him, and had thrown him off with the fury
+of a wild cat, and had burst out of the room.
+
+‘What is the matter with Rosa?’ said Mrs. Steerforth, coming in.
+
+‘She has been an angel, mother,’ returned Steerforth, ‘for a little
+while; and has run into the opposite extreme, since, by way of
+compensation.’
+
+‘You should be careful not to irritate her, James. Her temper has been
+soured, remember, and ought not to be tried.’
+
+Rosa did not come back; and no other mention was made of her, until I
+went with Steerforth into his room to say Good night. Then he laughed
+about her, and asked me if I had ever seen such a fierce little piece of
+incomprehensibility.
+
+I expressed as much of my astonishment as was then capable of
+expression, and asked if he could guess what it was that she had taken
+so much amiss, so suddenly.
+
+‘Oh, Heaven knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘Anything you like--or nothing!
+I told you she took everything, herself included, to a grindstone, and
+sharpened it. She is an edge-tool, and requires great care in dealing
+with. She is always dangerous. Good night!’
+
+‘Good night!’ said I, ‘my dear Steerforth! I shall be gone before you
+wake in the morning. Good night!’
+
+He was unwilling to let me go; and stood, holding me out, with a hand on
+each of my shoulders, as he had done in my own room.
+
+‘Daisy,’ he said, with a smile--‘for though that’s not the name your
+godfathers and godmothers gave you, it’s the name I like best to call
+you by--and I wish, I wish, I wish, you could give it to me!’
+
+‘Why so I can, if I choose,’ said I.
+
+‘Daisy, if anything should ever separate us, you must think of me at my
+best, old boy. Come! Let us make that bargain. Think of me at my best,
+if circumstances should ever part us!’
+
+‘You have no best to me, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘and no worst. You are
+always equally loved, and cherished in my heart.’
+
+So much compunction for having ever wronged him, even by a shapeless
+thought, did I feel within me, that the confession of having done so was
+rising to my lips. But for the reluctance I had to betray the confidence
+of Agnes, but for my uncertainty how to approach the subject with no
+risk of doing so, it would have reached them before he said, ‘God bless
+you, Daisy, and good night!’ In my doubt, it did NOT reach them; and we
+shook hands, and we parted.
+
+I was up with the dull dawn, and, having dressed as quietly as I could,
+looked into his room. He was fast asleep; lying, easily, with his head
+upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school.
+
+The time came in its season, and that was very soon, when I almost
+wondered that nothing troubled his repose, as I looked at him. But he
+slept--let me think of him so again--as I had often seen him sleep at
+school; and thus, in this silent hour, I left him. --Never more, oh
+God forgive you, Steerforth! to touch that passive hand in love and
+friendship. Never, never more!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 30. A LOSS
+
+
+I got down to Yarmouth in the evening, and went to the inn. I knew that
+Peggotty’s spare room--my room--was likely to have occupation enough
+in a little while, if that great Visitor, before whose presence all
+the living must give place, were not already in the house; so I betook
+myself to the inn, and dined there, and engaged my bed.
+
+It was ten o’clock when I went out. Many of the shops were shut, and the
+town was dull. When I came to Omer and Joram’s, I found the shutters up,
+but the shop door standing open. As I could obtain a perspective view
+of Mr. Omer inside, smoking his pipe by the parlour door, I entered, and
+asked him how he was.
+
+‘Why, bless my life and soul!’ said Mr. Omer, ‘how do you find yourself?
+Take a seat.---Smoke not disagreeable, I hope?’
+
+‘By no means,’ said I. ‘I like it--in somebody else’s pipe.’
+
+‘What, not in your own, eh?’ Mr. Omer returned, laughing. ‘All the
+better, sir. Bad habit for a young man. Take a seat. I smoke, myself,
+for the asthma.’
+
+Mr. Omer had made room for me, and placed a chair. He now sat down again
+very much out of breath, gasping at his pipe as if it contained a supply
+of that necessary, without which he must perish.
+
+‘I am sorry to have heard bad news of Mr. Barkis,’ said I.
+
+Mr. Omer looked at me, with a steady countenance, and shook his head.
+
+‘Do you know how he is tonight?’ I asked.
+
+‘The very question I should have put to you, sir,’ returned Mr. Omer,
+‘but on account of delicacy. It’s one of the drawbacks of our line of
+business. When a party’s ill, we can’t ask how the party is.’
+
+The difficulty had not occurred to me; though I had had my apprehensions
+too, when I went in, of hearing the old tune. On its being mentioned, I
+recognized it, however, and said as much.
+
+‘Yes, yes, you understand,’ said Mr. Omer, nodding his head. ‘We dursn’t
+do it. Bless you, it would be a shock that the generality of parties
+mightn’t recover, to say “Omer and Joram’s compliments, and how do you
+find yourself this morning?”--or this afternoon--as it may be.’
+
+Mr. Omer and I nodded at each other, and Mr. Omer recruited his wind by
+the aid of his pipe.
+
+‘It’s one of the things that cut the trade off from attentions they
+could often wish to show,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Take myself. If I have known
+Barkis a year, to move to as he went by, I have known him forty years.
+But I can’t go and say, “how is he?”’
+
+I felt it was rather hard on Mr. Omer, and I told him so.
+
+‘I’m not more self-interested, I hope, than another man,’ said Mr. Omer.
+‘Look at me! My wind may fail me at any moment, and it ain’t
+likely that, to my own knowledge, I’d be self-interested under such
+circumstances. I say it ain’t likely, in a man who knows his wind will
+go, when it DOES go, as if a pair of bellows was cut open; and that man
+a grandfather,’ said Mr. Omer.
+
+I said, ‘Not at all.’
+
+‘It ain’t that I complain of my line of business,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘It
+ain’t that. Some good and some bad goes, no doubt, to all callings. What
+I wish is, that parties was brought up stronger-minded.’
+
+Mr. Omer, with a very complacent and amiable face, took several puffs in
+silence; and then said, resuming his first point:
+
+‘Accordingly we’re obleeged, in ascertaining how Barkis goes on, to
+limit ourselves to Em’ly. She knows what our real objects are, and she
+don’t have any more alarms or suspicions about us, than if we was so
+many lambs. Minnie and Joram have just stepped down to the house, in
+fact (she’s there, after hours, helping her aunt a bit), to ask her how
+he is tonight; and if you was to please to wait till they come back,
+they’d give you full partic’lers. Will you take something? A glass of
+srub and water, now? I smoke on srub and water, myself,’ said Mr. Omer,
+taking up his glass, ‘because it’s considered softening to the passages,
+by which this troublesome breath of mine gets into action. But, Lord
+bless you,’ said Mr. Omer, huskily, ‘it ain’t the passages that’s out of
+order! “Give me breath enough,” said I to my daughter Minnie, “and I’ll
+find passages, my dear.”’
+
+He really had no breath to spare, and it was very alarming to see him
+laugh. When he was again in a condition to be talked to, I thanked
+him for the proffered refreshment, which I declined, as I had just had
+dinner; and, observing that I would wait, since he was so good as to
+invite me, until his daughter and his son-in-law came back, I inquired
+how little Emily was?
+
+‘Well, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, removing his pipe, that he might rub his
+chin: ‘I tell you truly, I shall be glad when her marriage has taken
+place.’
+
+‘Why so?’ I inquired.
+
+‘Well, she’s unsettled at present,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘It ain’t that she’s
+not as pretty as ever, for she’s prettier--I do assure you, she is
+prettier. It ain’t that she don’t work as well as ever, for she does.
+She WAS worth any six, and she IS worth any six. But somehow she wants
+heart. If you understand,’ said Mr. Omer, after rubbing his chin again,
+and smoking a little, ‘what I mean in a general way by the expression,
+“A long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether, my hearties,
+hurrah!” I should say to you, that that was--in a general way--what I
+miss in Em’ly.’
+
+Mr. Omer’s face and manner went for so much, that I could
+conscientiously nod my head, as divining his meaning. My quickness of
+apprehension seemed to please him, and he went on: ‘Now I consider this
+is principally on account of her being in an unsettled state, you
+see. We have talked it over a good deal, her uncle and myself, and her
+sweetheart and myself, after business; and I consider it is principally
+on account of her being unsettled. You must always recollect of Em’ly,’
+said Mr. Omer, shaking his head gently, ‘that she’s a most extraordinary
+affectionate little thing. The proverb says, “You can’t make a silk
+purse out of a sow’s ear.” Well, I don’t know about that. I rather think
+you may, if you begin early in life. She has made a home out of that old
+boat, sir, that stone and marble couldn’t beat.’
+
+‘I am sure she has!’ said I.
+
+‘To see the clinging of that pretty little thing to her uncle,’ said
+Mr. Omer; ‘to see the way she holds on to him, tighter and tighter, and
+closer and closer, every day, is to see a sight. Now, you know, there’s
+a struggle going on when that’s the case. Why should it be made a longer
+one than is needful?’
+
+I listened attentively to the good old fellow, and acquiesced, with all
+my heart, in what he said.
+
+‘Therefore, I mentioned to them,’ said Mr. Omer, in a comfortable,
+easy-going tone, ‘this. I said, “Now, don’t consider Em’ly nailed down
+in point of time, at all. Make it your own time. Her services have been
+more valuable than was supposed; her learning has been quicker than was
+supposed; Omer and Joram can run their pen through what remains; and
+she’s free when you wish. If she likes to make any little arrangement,
+afterwards, in the way of doing any little thing for us at home,
+very well. If she don’t, very well still. We’re no losers, anyhow.”
+ For--don’t you see,’ said Mr. Omer, touching me with his pipe, ‘it ain’t
+likely that a man so short of breath as myself, and a grandfather too,
+would go and strain points with a little bit of a blue-eyed blossom,
+like her?’
+
+‘Not at all, I am certain,’ said I.
+
+‘Not at all! You’re right!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir, her cousin--you
+know it’s a cousin she’s going to be married to?’
+
+‘Oh yes,’ I replied. ‘I know him well.’
+
+‘Of course you do,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir! Her cousin being, as it
+appears, in good work, and well to do, thanked me in a very manly sort
+of manner for this (conducting himself altogether, I must say, in a way
+that gives me a high opinion of him), and went and took as comfortable
+a little house as you or I could wish to clap eyes on. That little
+house is now furnished right through, as neat and complete as a doll’s
+parlour; and but for Barkis’s illness having taken this bad turn, poor
+fellow, they would have been man and wife--I dare say, by this time. As
+it is, there’s a postponement.’
+
+‘And Emily, Mr. Omer?’ I inquired. ‘Has she become more settled?’
+
+‘Why that, you know,’ he returned, rubbing his double chin again, ‘can’t
+naturally be expected. The prospect of the change and separation, and
+all that, is, as one may say, close to her and far away from her, both
+at once. Barkis’s death needn’t put it off much, but his lingering
+might. Anyway, it’s an uncertain state of matters, you see.’
+
+‘I see,’ said I.
+
+‘Consequently,’ pursued Mr. Omer, ‘Em’ly’s still a little down, and a
+little fluttered; perhaps, upon the whole, she’s more so than she was.
+Every day she seems to get fonder and fonder of her uncle, and more loth
+to part from all of us. A kind word from me brings the tears into her
+eyes; and if you was to see her with my daughter Minnie’s little girl,
+you’d never forget it. Bless my heart alive!’ said Mr. Omer, pondering,
+‘how she loves that child!’
+
+Having so favourable an opportunity, it occurred to me to ask Mr. Omer,
+before our conversation should be interrupted by the return of his
+daughter and her husband, whether he knew anything of Martha.
+
+‘Ah!’ he rejoined, shaking his head, and looking very much dejected.
+‘No good. A sad story, sir, however you come to know it. I never thought
+there was harm in the girl. I wouldn’t wish to mention it before my
+daughter Minnie--for she’d take me up directly--but I never did. None of
+us ever did.’
+
+Mr. Omer, hearing his daughter’s footstep before I heard it, touched me
+with his pipe, and shut up one eye, as a caution. She and her husband
+came in immediately afterwards.
+
+Their report was, that Mr. Barkis was ‘as bad as bad could be’; that he
+was quite unconscious; and that Mr. Chillip had mournfully said in the
+kitchen, on going away just now, that the College of Physicians, the
+College of Surgeons, and Apothecaries’ Hall, if they were all called
+in together, couldn’t help him. He was past both Colleges, Mr. Chillip
+said, and the Hall could only poison him.
+
+Hearing this, and learning that Mr. Peggotty was there, I determined to
+go to the house at once. I bade good night to Mr. Omer, and to Mr. and
+Mrs. Joram; and directed my steps thither, with a solemn feeling, which
+made Mr. Barkis quite a new and different creature.
+
+My low tap at the door was answered by Mr. Peggotty. He was not so much
+surprised to see me as I had expected. I remarked this in Peggotty,
+too, when she came down; and I have seen it since; and I think, in the
+expectation of that dread surprise, all other changes and surprises
+dwindle into nothing.
+
+I shook hands with Mr. Peggotty, and passed into the kitchen, while he
+softly closed the door. Little Emily was sitting by the fire, with her
+hands before her face. Ham was standing near her.
+
+We spoke in whispers; listening, between whiles, for any sound in the
+room above. I had not thought of it on the occasion of my last visit,
+but how strange it was to me, now, to miss Mr. Barkis out of the
+kitchen!
+
+‘This is very kind of you, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘It’s oncommon kind,’ said Ham.
+
+‘Em’ly, my dear,’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘See here! Here’s Mas’r Davy come!
+What, cheer up, pretty! Not a wured to Mas’r Davy?’
+
+There was a trembling upon her, that I can see now. The coldness of her
+hand when I touched it, I can feel yet. Its only sign of animation was
+to shrink from mine; and then she glided from the chair, and creeping
+to the other side of her uncle, bowed herself, silently and trembling
+still, upon his breast.
+
+‘It’s such a loving art,’ said Mr. Peggotty, smoothing her rich hair
+with his great hard hand, ‘that it can’t abear the sorrer of this.
+It’s nat’ral in young folk, Mas’r Davy, when they’re new to these here
+trials, and timid, like my little bird,--it’s nat’ral.’
+
+She clung the closer to him, but neither lifted up her face, nor spoke a
+word.
+
+‘It’s getting late, my dear,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and here’s Ham come
+fur to take you home. Theer! Go along with t’other loving art! What’
+Em’ly? Eh, my pretty?’
+
+The sound of her voice had not reached me, but he bent his head as if he
+listened to her, and then said:
+
+‘Let you stay with your uncle? Why, you doen’t mean to ask me that! Stay
+with your uncle, Moppet? When your husband that’ll be so soon, is here
+fur to take you home? Now a person wouldn’t think it, fur to see this
+little thing alongside a rough-weather chap like me,’ said Mr. Peggotty,
+looking round at both of us, with infinite pride; ‘but the sea ain’t
+more salt in it than she has fondness in her for her uncle--a foolish
+little Em’ly!’
+
+‘Em’ly’s in the right in that, Mas’r Davy!’ said Ham. ‘Lookee here! As
+Em’ly wishes of it, and as she’s hurried and frightened, like, besides,
+I’ll leave her till morning. Let me stay too!’
+
+‘No, no,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You doen’t ought--a married man like
+you--or what’s as good--to take and hull away a day’s work. And you
+doen’t ought to watch and work both. That won’t do. You go home and turn
+in. You ain’t afeerd of Em’ly not being took good care on, I know.’
+
+Ham yielded to this persuasion, and took his hat to go. Even when he
+kissed her--and I never saw him approach her, but I felt that nature
+had given him the soul of a gentleman--she seemed to cling closer to
+her uncle, even to the avoidance of her chosen husband. I shut the
+door after him, that it might cause no disturbance of the quiet that
+prevailed; and when I turned back, I found Mr. Peggotty still talking to
+her.
+
+‘Now, I’m a going upstairs to tell your aunt as Mas’r Davy’s here, and
+that’ll cheer her up a bit,’ he said. ‘Sit ye down by the fire, the
+while, my dear, and warm those mortal cold hands. You doen’t need to be
+so fearsome, and take on so much. What? You’ll go along with me?--Well!
+come along with me--come! If her uncle was turned out of house and home,
+and forced to lay down in a dyke, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with
+no less pride than before, ‘it’s my belief she’d go along with him, now!
+But there’ll be someone else, soon,--someone else, soon, Em’ly!’
+
+Afterwards, when I went upstairs, as I passed the door of my little
+chamber, which was dark, I had an indistinct impression of her being
+within it, cast down upon the floor. But, whether it was really she, or
+whether it was a confusion of the shadows in the room, I don’t know now.
+
+I had leisure to think, before the kitchen fire, of pretty little
+Emily’s dread of death--which, added to what Mr. Omer had told me, I
+took to be the cause of her being so unlike herself--and I had leisure,
+before Peggotty came down, even to think more leniently of the weakness
+of it: as I sat counting the ticking of the clock, and deepening my
+sense of the solemn hush around me. Peggotty took me in her arms, and
+blessed and thanked me over and over again for being such a comfort to
+her (that was what she said) in her distress. She then entreated me to
+come upstairs, sobbing that Mr. Barkis had always liked me and admired
+me; that he had often talked of me, before he fell into a stupor; and
+that she believed, in case of his coming to himself again, he would
+brighten up at sight of me, if he could brighten up at any earthly
+thing.
+
+The probability of his ever doing so, appeared to me, when I saw him, to
+be very small. He was lying with his head and shoulders out of bed, in
+an uncomfortable attitude, half resting on the box which had cost him so
+much pain and trouble. I learned, that, when he was past creeping out of
+bed to open it, and past assuring himself of its safety by means of the
+divining rod I had seen him use, he had required to have it placed on
+the chair at the bed-side, where he had ever since embraced it, night
+and day. His arm lay on it now. Time and the world were slipping from
+beneath him, but the box was there; and the last words he had uttered
+were (in an explanatory tone) ‘Old clothes!’
+
+‘Barkis, my dear!’ said Peggotty, almost cheerfully: bending over him,
+while her brother and I stood at the bed’s foot. ‘Here’s my dear boy--my
+dear boy, Master Davy, who brought us together, Barkis! That you sent
+messages by, you know! Won’t you speak to Master Davy?’
+
+He was as mute and senseless as the box, from which his form derived the
+only expression it had.
+
+‘He’s a going out with the tide,’ said Mr. Peggotty to me, behind his
+hand.
+
+My eyes were dim and so were Mr. Peggotty’s; but I repeated in a
+whisper, ‘With the tide?’
+
+‘People can’t die, along the coast,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘except when
+the tide’s pretty nigh out. They can’t be born, unless it’s pretty nigh
+in--not properly born, till flood. He’s a going out with the tide. It’s
+ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it
+turns, he’ll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next
+tide.’
+
+We remained there, watching him, a long time--hours. What mysterious
+influence my presence had upon him in that state of his senses, I shall
+not pretend to say; but when he at last began to wander feebly, it is
+certain he was muttering about driving me to school.
+
+‘He’s coming to himself,’ said Peggotty.
+
+Mr. Peggotty touched me, and whispered with much awe and reverence.
+‘They are both a-going out fast.’
+
+‘Barkis, my dear!’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘C. P. Barkis,’ he cried faintly. ‘No better woman anywhere!’
+
+‘Look! Here’s Master Davy!’ said Peggotty. For he now opened his eyes.
+
+I was on the point of asking him if he knew me, when he tried to stretch
+out his arm, and said to me, distinctly, with a pleasant smile:
+
+‘Barkis is willin’!’
+
+And, it being low water, he went out with the tide.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 31. A GREATER LOSS
+
+
+It was not difficult for me, on Peggotty’s solicitation, to resolve to
+stay where I was, until after the remains of the poor carrier should
+have made their last journey to Blunderstone. She had long ago bought,
+out of her own savings, a little piece of ground in our old churchyard
+near the grave of ‘her sweet girl’, as she always called my mother; and
+there they were to rest.
+
+In keeping Peggotty company, and doing all I could for her (little
+enough at the utmost), I was as grateful, I rejoice to think, as even
+now I could wish myself to have been. But I am afraid I had a supreme
+satisfaction, of a personal and professional nature, in taking charge of
+Mr. Barkis’s will, and expounding its contents.
+
+I may claim the merit of having originated the suggestion that the will
+should be looked for in the box. After some search, it was found in the
+box, at the bottom of a horse’s nose-bag; wherein (besides hay) there
+was discovered an old gold watch, with chain and seals, which Mr. Barkis
+had worn on his wedding-day, and which had never been seen before or
+since; a silver tobacco-stopper, in the form of a leg; an imitation
+lemon, full of minute cups and saucers, which I have some idea Mr.
+Barkis must have purchased to present to me when I was a child, and
+afterwards found himself unable to part with; eighty-seven guineas and
+a half, in guineas and half-guineas; two hundred and ten pounds, in
+perfectly clean Bank notes; certain receipts for Bank of England
+stock; an old horseshoe, a bad shilling, a piece of camphor, and an
+oyster-shell. From the circumstance of the latter article having
+been much polished, and displaying prismatic colours on the inside,
+I conclude that Mr. Barkis had some general ideas about pearls, which
+never resolved themselves into anything definite.
+
+For years and years, Mr. Barkis had carried this box, on all his
+journeys, every day. That it might the better escape notice, he had
+invented a fiction that it belonged to ‘Mr. Blackboy’, and was ‘to be
+left with Barkis till called for’; a fable he had elaborately written on
+the lid, in characters now scarcely legible.
+
+He had hoarded, all these years, I found, to good purpose. His property
+in money amounted to nearly three thousand pounds. Of this he bequeathed
+the interest of one thousand to Mr. Peggotty for his life; on his
+decease, the principal to be equally divided between Peggotty, little
+Emily, and me, or the survivor or survivors of us, share and share
+alike. All the rest he died possessed of, he bequeathed to Peggotty;
+whom he left residuary legatee, and sole executrix of that his last will
+and testament.
+
+I felt myself quite a proctor when I read this document aloud with all
+possible ceremony, and set forth its provisions, any number of times,
+to those whom they concerned. I began to think there was more in the
+Commons than I had supposed. I examined the will with the deepest
+attention, pronounced it perfectly formal in all respects, made a
+pencil-mark or so in the margin, and thought it rather extraordinary
+that I knew so much.
+
+In this abstruse pursuit; in making an account for Peggotty, of all the
+property into which she had come; in arranging all the affairs in an
+orderly manner; and in being her referee and adviser on every point, to
+our joint delight; I passed the week before the funeral. I did not see
+little Emily in that interval, but they told me she was to be quietly
+married in a fortnight.
+
+I did not attend the funeral in character, if I may venture to say so.
+I mean I was not dressed up in a black coat and a streamer, to frighten
+the birds; but I walked over to Blunderstone early in the morning, and
+was in the churchyard when it came, attended only by Peggotty and her
+brother. The mad gentleman looked on, out of my little window; Mr.
+Chillip’s baby wagged its heavy head, and rolled its goggle eyes, at
+the clergyman, over its nurse’s shoulder; Mr. Omer breathed short in
+the background; no one else was there; and it was very quiet. We walked
+about the churchyard for an hour, after all was over; and pulled some
+young leaves from the tree above my mother’s grave.
+
+A dread falls on me here. A cloud is lowering on the distant town,
+towards which I retraced my solitary steps. I fear to approach it. I
+cannot bear to think of what did come, upon that memorable night; of
+what must come again, if I go on.
+
+It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I
+stopped my most unwilling hand. It is done. Nothing can undo it; nothing
+can make it otherwise than as it was.
+
+My old nurse was to go to London with me next day, on the business of
+the will. Little Emily was passing that day at Mr. Omer’s. We were all
+to meet in the old boathouse that night. Ham would bring Emily at the
+usual hour. I would walk back at my leisure. The brother and sister
+would return as they had come, and be expecting us, when the day closed
+in, at the fireside.
+
+I parted from them at the wicket-gate, where visionary Strap had rested
+with Roderick Random’s knapsack in the days of yore; and, instead of
+going straight back, walked a little distance on the road to Lowestoft.
+Then I turned, and walked back towards Yarmouth. I stayed to dine at
+a decent alehouse, some mile or two from the Ferry I have mentioned
+before; and thus the day wore away, and it was evening when I reached
+it. Rain was falling heavily by that time, and it was a wild night; but
+there was a moon behind the clouds, and it was not dark.
+
+I was soon within sight of Mr. Peggotty’s house, and of the light within
+it shining through the window. A little floundering across the sand,
+which was heavy, brought me to the door, and I went in.
+
+It looked very comfortable indeed. Mr. Peggotty had smoked his evening
+pipe and there were preparations for some supper by and by. The fire was
+bright, the ashes were thrown up, the locker was ready for little Emily
+in her old place. In her own old place sat Peggotty, once more, looking
+(but for her dress) as if she had never left it. She had fallen back,
+already, on the society of the work-box with St. Paul’s upon the lid,
+the yard-measure in the cottage, and the bit of wax-candle; and there
+they all were, just as if they had never been disturbed. Mrs. Gummidge
+appeared to be fretting a little, in her old corner; and consequently
+looked quite natural, too.
+
+‘You’re first of the lot, Mas’r Davy!’ said Mr. Peggotty with a happy
+face. ‘Doen’t keep in that coat, sir, if it’s wet.’
+
+‘Thank you, Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, giving him my outer coat to hang up.
+‘It’s quite dry.’
+
+‘So ‘tis!’ said Mr. Peggotty, feeling my shoulders. ‘As a chip! Sit ye
+down, sir. It ain’t o’ no use saying welcome to you, but you’re welcome,
+kind and hearty.’
+
+‘Thank you, Mr. Peggotty, I am sure of that. Well, Peggotty!’ said I,
+giving her a kiss. ‘And how are you, old woman?’
+
+‘Ha, ha!’ laughed Mr. Peggotty, sitting down beside us, and rubbing his
+hands in his sense of relief from recent trouble, and in the genuine
+heartiness of his nature; ‘there’s not a woman in the wureld, sir--as I
+tell her--that need to feel more easy in her mind than her! She done her
+dooty by the departed, and the departed know’d it; and the departed
+done what was right by her, as she done what was right by the
+departed;--and--and--and it’s all right!’
+
+Mrs. Gummidge groaned.
+
+‘Cheer up, my pritty mawther!’ said Mr. Peggotty. (But he shook his head
+aside at us, evidently sensible of the tendency of the late occurrences
+to recall the memory of the old one.) ‘Doen’t be down! Cheer up, for
+your own self, on’y a little bit, and see if a good deal more doen’t
+come nat’ral!’
+
+‘Not to me, Dan’l,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge. ‘Nothink’s nat’ral to me but
+to be lone and lorn.’
+
+‘No, no,’ said Mr. Peggotty, soothing her sorrows.
+
+‘Yes, yes, Dan’l!’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I ain’t a person to live with
+them as has had money left. Things go too contrary with me. I had better
+be a riddance.’
+
+‘Why, how should I ever spend it without you?’ said Mr. Peggotty, with
+an air of serious remonstrance. ‘What are you a talking on? Doen’t I
+want you more now, than ever I did?’
+
+‘I know’d I was never wanted before!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, with a
+pitiable whimper, ‘and now I’m told so! How could I expect to be wanted,
+being so lone and lorn, and so contrary!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty seemed very much shocked at himself for having made a
+speech capable of this unfeeling construction, but was prevented from
+replying, by Peggotty’s pulling his sleeve, and shaking her head. After
+looking at Mrs. Gummidge for some moments, in sore distress of mind, he
+glanced at the Dutch clock, rose, snuffed the candle, and put it in the
+window.
+
+‘Theer!’ said Mr. Peggotty, cheerily. ‘Theer we are, Missis Gummidge!’
+Mrs. Gummidge slightly groaned. ‘Lighted up, accordin’ to custom! You’re
+a wonderin’ what that’s fur, sir! Well, it’s fur our little Em’ly. You
+see, the path ain’t over light or cheerful arter dark; and when I’m
+here at the hour as she’s a comin’ home, I puts the light in the winder.
+That, you see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, bending over me with great glee,
+‘meets two objects. She says, says Em’ly, “Theer’s home!” she says. And
+likewise, says Em’ly, “My uncle’s theer!” Fur if I ain’t theer, I never
+have no light showed.’
+
+‘You’re a baby!’ said Peggotty; very fond of him for it, if she thought
+so.
+
+‘Well,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, standing with his legs pretty wide apart,
+and rubbing his hands up and down them in his comfortable satisfaction,
+as he looked alternately at us and at the fire. ‘I doen’t know but I am.
+Not, you see, to look at.’
+
+‘Not azackly,’ observed Peggotty.
+
+‘No,’ laughed Mr. Peggotty, ‘not to look at, but to--to consider on, you
+know. I doen’t care, bless you! Now I tell you. When I go a looking and
+looking about that theer pritty house of our Em’ly’s, I’m--I’m Gormed,’
+said Mr. Peggotty, with sudden emphasis--‘theer! I can’t say more--if
+I doen’t feel as if the littlest things was her, a’most. I takes ‘em up
+and I put ‘em down, and I touches of ‘em as delicate as if they was our
+Em’ly. So ‘tis with her little bonnets and that. I couldn’t see one on
+‘em rough used a purpose--not fur the whole wureld. There’s a babby fur
+you, in the form of a great Sea Porkypine!’ said Mr. Peggotty, relieving
+his earnestness with a roar of laughter.
+
+Peggotty and I both laughed, but not so loud.
+
+‘It’s my opinion, you see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a delighted face,
+after some further rubbing of his legs, ‘as this is along of my havin’
+played with her so much, and made believe as we was Turks, and French,
+and sharks, and every wariety of forinners--bless you, yes; and lions
+and whales, and I doen’t know what all!--when she warn’t no higher than
+my knee. I’ve got into the way on it, you know. Why, this here candle,
+now!’ said Mr. Peggotty, gleefully holding out his hand towards it,
+‘I know wery well that arter she’s married and gone, I shall put that
+candle theer, just the same as now. I know wery well that when I’m
+here o’ nights (and where else should I live, bless your arts, whatever
+fortun’ I come into!) and she ain’t here or I ain’t theer, I shall
+put the candle in the winder, and sit afore the fire, pretending I’m
+expecting of her, like I’m a doing now. THERE’S a babby for you,’ said
+Mr. Peggotty, with another roar, ‘in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Why,
+at the present minute, when I see the candle sparkle up, I says to
+myself, “She’s a looking at it! Em’ly’s a coming!” THERE’S a babby
+for you, in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Right for all that,’ said Mr.
+Peggotty, stopping in his roar, and smiting his hands together; ‘fur
+here she is!’
+
+It was only Ham. The night should have turned more wet since I came in,
+for he had a large sou’wester hat on, slouched over his face.
+
+‘Wheer’s Em’ly?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+Ham made a motion with his head, as if she were outside. Mr. Peggotty
+took the light from the window, trimmed it, put it on the table, and was
+busily stirring the fire, when Ham, who had not moved, said:
+
+‘Mas’r Davy, will you come out a minute, and see what Em’ly and me has
+got to show you?’
+
+We went out. As I passed him at the door, I saw, to my astonishment and
+fright, that he was deadly pale. He pushed me hastily into the open air,
+and closed the door upon us. Only upon us two.
+
+‘Ham! what’s the matter?’
+
+‘Mas’r Davy!--’ Oh, for his broken heart, how dreadfully he wept!
+
+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.
+
+‘Read it, sir,’ he said, in a low shivering voice. ‘Slow, please. I
+doen’t know as I can understand.’
+
+In the midst of the silence of death, I read thus, from a blotted
+letter:
+
+
+‘“When you, who love me so much better than I ever have deserved, even
+when my mind was innocent, see this, I shall be far away.”’
+
+
+‘I shall be fur away,’ he repeated slowly. ‘Stop! Em’ly fur away. Well!’
+
+
+‘“When I leave my dear home--my dear home--oh, my dear home!--in the
+morning,”’
+
+the letter bore date on the previous night:
+
+
+’”--it will be never to come back, unless he brings me back a lady. This
+will be found at night, many hours after, instead of me. Oh, if you knew
+how my heart is torn. If even you, that I have wronged so much, that
+never can forgive me, could only know what I suffer! I am too wicked to
+write about myself! Oh, take comfort in thinking that I am so bad. Oh,
+for mercy’s sake, tell uncle that I never loved him half so dear as
+now. Oh, don’t remember how affectionate and kind you have all been to
+me--don’t remember we were ever to be married--but try to think as if I
+died when I was little, and was buried somewhere. Pray Heaven that I
+am going away from, have compassion on my uncle! Tell him that I never
+loved him half so dear. Be his comfort. Love some good girl that will
+be what I was once to uncle, and be true to you, and worthy of you, and
+know no shame but me. God bless all! I’ll pray for all, often, on my
+knees. If he don’t bring me back a lady, and I don’t pray for my own
+self, I’ll pray for all. My parting love to uncle. My last tears, and my
+last thanks, for uncle!”’
+
+That was all.
+
+He stood, long after I had ceased to read, still looking at me. At
+length I ventured to take his hand, and to entreat him, as well as
+I could, to endeavour to get some command of himself. He replied, ‘I
+thankee, sir, I thankee!’ without moving.
+
+Ham spoke to him. Mr. Peggotty was so far sensible of HIS affliction,
+that he wrung his hand; but, otherwise, he remained in the same state,
+and no one dared to disturb him.
+
+Slowly, at last, he moved his eyes from my face, as if he were waking
+from a vision, and cast them round the room. Then he said, in a low
+voice:
+
+‘Who’s the man? I want to know his name.’
+
+Ham glanced at me, and suddenly I felt a shock that struck me back.
+
+‘There’s a man suspected,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Who is it?’
+
+‘Mas’r Davy!’ implored Ham. ‘Go out a bit, and let me tell him what I
+must. You doen’t ought to hear it, sir.’
+
+I felt the shock again. I sank down in a chair, and tried to utter some
+reply; but my tongue was fettered, and my sight was weak.
+
+‘I want to know his name!’ I heard said once more.
+
+‘For some time past,’ Ham faltered, ‘there’s been a servant about here,
+at odd times. There’s been a gen’lm’n too. Both of ‘em belonged to one
+another.’
+
+Mr. Peggotty stood fixed as before, but now looking at him.
+
+‘The servant,’ pursued Ham, ‘was seen along with--our poor girl--last
+night. He’s been in hiding about here, this week or over. He was thought
+to have gone, but he was hiding. Doen’t stay, Mas’r Davy, doen’t!’
+
+I felt Peggotty’s arm round my neck, but I could not have moved if the
+house had been about to fall upon me.
+
+‘A strange chay and hosses was outside town, this morning, on the
+Norwich road, a’most afore the day broke,’ Ham went on. ‘The servant
+went to it, and come from it, and went to it again. When he went to it
+again, Em’ly was nigh him. The t’other was inside. He’s the man.’
+
+‘For the Lord’s love,’ said Mr. Peggotty, falling back, and putting out
+his hand, as if to keep off what he dreaded. ‘Doen’t tell me his name’s
+Steerforth!’
+
+‘Mas’r Davy,’ exclaimed Ham, in a broken voice, ‘it ain’t no fault
+of yourn--and I am far from laying of it to you--but his name is
+Steerforth, and he’s a damned villain!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty uttered no cry, and shed no tear, and moved no more, until
+he seemed to wake again, all at once, and pulled down his rough coat
+from its peg in a corner.
+
+‘Bear a hand with this! I’m struck of a heap, and can’t do it,’ he said,
+impatiently. ‘Bear a hand and help me. Well!’ when somebody had done so.
+‘Now give me that theer hat!’
+
+Ham asked him whither he was going.
+
+‘I’m a going to seek my niece. I’m a going to seek my Em’ly. I’m a
+going, first, to stave in that theer boat, and sink it where I would
+have drownded him, as I’m a living soul, if I had had one thought of
+what was in him! As he sat afore me,’ he said, wildly, holding out his
+clenched right hand, ‘as he sat afore me, face to face, strike me down
+dead, but I’d have drownded him, and thought it right!--I’m a going to
+seek my niece.’
+
+‘Where?’ cried Ham, interposing himself before the door.
+
+‘Anywhere! I’m a going to seek my niece through the wureld. I’m a going
+to find my poor niece in her shame, and bring her back. No one stop me!
+I tell you I’m a going to seek my niece!’
+
+‘No, no!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, coming between them, in a fit of crying.
+‘No, no, Dan’l, not as you are now. Seek her in a little while, my lone
+lorn Dan’l, and that’ll be but right! but not as you are now. Sit ye
+down, and give me your forgiveness for having ever been a worrit to you,
+Dan’l--what have my contraries ever been to this!--and let us speak a
+word about them times when she was first an orphan, and when Ham was
+too, and when I was a poor widder woman, and you took me in. It’ll
+soften your poor heart, Dan’l,’ laying her head upon his shoulder, ‘and
+you’ll bear your sorrow better; for you know the promise, Dan’l, “As
+you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto
+me”,--and that can never fail under this roof, that’s been our shelter
+for so many, many year!’
+
+He was quite passive now; and when I heard him crying, the impulse that
+had been upon me to go down upon my knees, and ask their pardon for the
+desolation I had caused, and curse Steerforth, yielded to a better
+feeling. My overcharged heart found the same relief, and I cried too.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 32. THE BEGINNING OF A LONG JOURNEY
+
+
+What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so
+I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than
+when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress
+of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was
+brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I
+did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a
+noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of
+my devotion to him. Deeply as I felt my own unconscious part in his
+pollution of an honest home, I believed that if I had been brought face
+to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach. I should have
+loved him so well still--though he fascinated me no longer--I should
+have held in so much tenderness the memory of my affection for him, that
+I think I should have been as weak as a spirit-wounded child, in all
+but the entertainment of a thought that we could ever be re-united.
+That thought I never had. I felt, as he had felt, that all was at an end
+between us. What his remembrances of me were, I have never known--they
+were light enough, perhaps, and easily dismissed--but mine of him were
+as the remembrances of a cherished friend, who was dead.
+
+Yes, Steerforth, long removed from the scenes of this poor history! My
+sorrow may bear involuntary witness against you at the judgement Throne;
+but my angry thoughts or my reproaches never will, I know!
+
+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 recall 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 tomorrow? I told him I had not gone today,
+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,
+tomorrow.’
+
+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--’
+
+‘Will you desert the old boat, Mr. Peggotty?’ I gently interposed.
+
+‘My station, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned, ‘ain’t there no longer; and if
+ever a boat foundered, since there was darkness on the face of the deep,
+that one’s gone down. But no, sir, no; I doen’t mean as it should be
+deserted. Fur from that.’
+
+We walked again for a while, as before, until he explained:
+
+‘My wishes is, sir, as it shall look, day and night, winter and summer,
+as it has always looked, since she fust know’d it. If ever she should
+come a wandering back, I wouldn’t have the old place seem to cast her
+off, you understand, but seem to tempt her to draw nigher to ‘t, and to
+peep in, maybe, like a ghost, out of the wind and rain, through the old
+winder, at the old seat by the fire. Then, maybe, Mas’r Davy, seein’
+none but Missis Gummidge there, she might take heart to creep in,
+trembling; and might come to be laid down in her old bed, and rest her
+weary head where it was once so gay.’
+
+I could not speak to him in reply, though I tried.
+
+‘Every night,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘as reg’lar as the night comes, the
+candle must be stood in its old pane of glass, that if ever she should
+see it, it may seem to say “Come back, my child, come back!” If ever
+there’s a knock, Ham (partic’ler a soft knock), arter dark, at your
+aunt’s door, doen’t you go nigh it. Let it be her--not you--that sees my
+fallen child!’
+
+He walked a little in front of us, and kept before us for some minutes.
+During this interval, I glanced at Ham again, and observing the same
+expression on his face, and his eyes still directed to the distant
+light, I touched his arm.
+
+Twice I called him by his name, in the tone in which I might have tried
+to rouse a sleeper, before he heeded me. When I at last inquired on what
+his thoughts were so bent, he replied:
+
+‘On what’s afore me, Mas’r Davy; and over yon.’ ‘On the life before you,
+do you mean?’ He had pointed confusedly out to sea.
+
+‘Ay, Mas’r Davy. I doen’t rightly know how ‘tis, but from over yon there
+seemed to me to come--the end of it like,’ looking at me as if he were
+waking, but with the same determined face.
+
+‘What end?’ I asked, possessed by my former fear.
+
+‘I doen’t know,’ he said, thoughtfully; ‘I was calling to mind that the
+beginning of it all did take place here--and then the end come. But it’s
+gone! Mas’r Davy,’ he added; answering, as I think, my look; ‘you han’t
+no call to be afeerd of me: but I’m kiender muddled; I don’t fare to
+feel no matters,’--which was as much as to say that he was not himself,
+and quite confounded.
+
+Mr. Peggotty stopping for us to join him: we did so, and said no more.
+The remembrance of this, in connexion with my former thought, however,
+haunted me at intervals, even until the inexorable end came at its
+appointed time.
+
+We insensibly approached the old boat, and entered. Mrs. Gummidge, no
+longer moping in her especial corner, was busy preparing breakfast.
+She took Mr. Peggotty’s hat, and placed his seat for him, and spoke so
+comfortably and softly, that I hardly knew her.
+
+‘Dan’l, my good man,’ said she, ‘you must eat and drink, and keep up
+your strength, for without it you’ll do nowt. Try, that’s a dear soul!
+An if I disturb you with my clicketten,’ she meant her chattering, ‘tell
+me so, Dan’l, and I won’t.’
+
+When she had served us all, she withdrew to the window, where she
+sedulously employed herself in repairing some shirts and other clothes
+belonging to Mr. Peggotty, and neatly folding and packing them in an old
+oilskin bag, such as sailors carry. Meanwhile, she continued talking, in
+the same quiet manner:
+
+‘All times and seasons, you know, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, ‘I shall
+be allus here, and everythink will look accordin’ to your wishes. I’m a
+poor scholar, but I shall write to you, odd times, when you’re away, and
+send my letters to Mas’r Davy. Maybe you’ll write to me too, Dan’l, odd
+times, and tell me how you fare to feel upon your lone lorn journies.’
+
+‘You’ll be a solitary woman heer, I’m afeerd!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘No, no, Dan’l,’ she returned, ‘I shan’t be that. Doen’t you mind me. I
+shall have enough to do to keep a Beein for you’ (Mrs. Gummidge meant a
+home), ‘again you come back--to keep a Beein here for any that may hap
+to come back, Dan’l. In the fine time, I shall set outside the door as I
+used to do. If any should come nigh, they shall see the old widder woman
+true to ‘em, a long way off.’
+
+What a change in Mrs. Gummidge in a little time! She was another woman.
+She was so devoted, she had such a quick perception of what it would
+be well to say, and what it would be well to leave unsaid; she was so
+forgetful of herself, and so regardful of the sorrow about her, that I
+held her in a sort of veneration. The work she did that day! There
+were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the
+outhouse--as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of
+ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance
+rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but
+would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being
+asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under
+weights that she was quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all
+sorts of unnecessary errands. As to deploring her misfortunes, she
+appeared to have entirely lost the recollection of ever having had any.
+She preserved an equable cheerfulness in the midst of her sympathy,
+which was not the least astonishing part of the change that had come
+over her. Querulousness was out of the question. I did not even observe
+her voice to falter, or a tear to escape from her eyes, the whole day
+through, until twilight; when she and I and Mr. Peggotty being alone
+together, and he having fallen asleep in perfect exhaustion, she broke
+into a half-suppressed fit of sobbing and crying, and taking me to the
+door, said, ‘Ever bless you, Mas’r Davy, be a friend to him, poor dear!’
+Then, she immediately ran out of the house to wash her face, in order
+that she might sit quietly beside him, and be found at work there, when
+he should awake. In short I left her, when I went away at night, the
+prop and staff of Mr. Peggotty’s affliction; and I could not meditate
+enough upon the lesson that I read in Mrs. Gummidge, and the new
+experience she unfolded to me.
+
+It was between nine and ten o’clock when, strolling in a melancholy
+manner through the town, I stopped at Mr. Omer’s door. Mr. Omer had
+taken it so much to heart, his daughter told me, that he had been very
+low and poorly all day, and had gone to bed without his pipe.
+
+‘A deceitful, bad-hearted girl,’ said Mrs. Joram. ‘There was no good in
+her, ever!’
+
+‘Don’t say so,’ I returned. ‘You don’t think so.’
+
+‘Yes, I do!’ cried Mrs. Joram, angrily.
+
+‘No, no,’ said I.
+
+Mrs. Joram tossed her head, endeavouring to be very stern and cross; but
+she could not command her softer self, and began to cry. I was young,
+to be sure; but I thought much the better of her for this sympathy, and
+fancied it became her, as a virtuous wife and mother, very well indeed.
+
+‘What will she ever do!’ sobbed Minnie. ‘Where will she go! What will
+become of her! Oh, how could she be so cruel, to herself and him!’
+
+I remembered the time when Minnie was a young and pretty girl; and I was
+glad she remembered it too, so feelingly.
+
+‘My little Minnie,’ said Mrs. Joram, ‘has only just now been got to
+sleep. Even in her sleep she is sobbing for Em’ly. All day long, little
+Minnie has cried for her, and asked me, over and over again, whether
+Em’ly was wicked? What can I say to her, when Em’ly tied a ribbon off
+her own neck round little Minnie’s the last night she was here, and laid
+her head down on the pillow beside her till she was fast asleep! The
+ribbon’s round my little Minnie’s neck now. It ought not to be, perhaps,
+but what can I do? Em’ly is very bad, but they were fond of one another.
+And the child knows nothing!’
+
+Mrs. Joram was so unhappy that her husband came out to take care of
+her. Leaving them together, I went home to Peggotty’s; more melancholy
+myself, if possible, than I had been yet.
+
+That good creature--I mean Peggotty--all untired by her late anxieties
+and sleepless nights, was at her brother’s, where she meant to stay till
+morning. An old woman, who had been employed about the house for some
+weeks past, while Peggotty had been unable to attend to it, was the
+house’s only other occupant besides myself. As I had no occasion for her
+services, I sent her to bed, by no means against her will, and sat down
+before the kitchen fire a little while, to think about all this.
+
+I was blending it with the deathbed of the late Mr. Barkis, and was
+driving out with the tide towards the distance at which Ham had looked
+so singularly in the morning, when I was recalled from my wanderings by
+a knock at the door. There was a knocker upon the door, but it was not
+that which made the sound. The tap was from a hand, and low down upon
+the door, as if it were given by a child.
+
+It made me start as much as if it had been the knock of a footman to a
+person of distinction. I opened the door; and at first looked down,
+to my amazement, on nothing but a great umbrella that appeared to be
+walking about of itself. But presently I discovered underneath it, Miss
+Mowcher.
+
+I might not have been prepared to give the little creature a very kind
+reception, if, on her removing the umbrella, which her utmost efforts
+were unable to shut up, she had shown me the ‘volatile’ expression of
+face which had made so great an impression on me at our first and last
+meeting. But her face, as she turned it up to mine, was so earnest;
+and when I relieved her of the umbrella (which would have been an
+inconvenient one for the Irish Giant), she wrung her little hands in
+such an afflicted manner; that I rather inclined towards her.
+
+‘Miss Mowcher!’ said I, after glancing up and down the empty street,
+without distinctly knowing what I expected to see besides; ‘how do you
+come here? What is the matter?’ She motioned to me with her short right
+arm, to shut the umbrella for her; and passing me hurriedly, went into
+the kitchen. When I had closed the door, and followed, with the umbrella
+in my hand, I found her sitting on the corner of the fender--it was a
+low iron one, with two flat bars at top to stand plates upon--in the
+shadow of the boiler, swaying herself backwards and forwards, and
+chafing her hands upon her knees like a person in pain.
+
+Quite alarmed at being the only recipient of this untimely visit, and
+the only spectator of this portentous behaviour, I exclaimed again,
+‘Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the matter! are you ill?’
+
+‘My dear young soul,’ returned Miss Mowcher, squeezing her hands upon
+her heart one over the other. ‘I am ill here, I am very ill. To think
+that it should come to this, when I might have known it and perhaps
+prevented it, if I hadn’t been a thoughtless fool!’
+
+Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to the figure) went
+backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her little body to and fro;
+while a most gigantic bonnet rocked, in unison with it, upon the wall.
+
+‘I am surprised,’ I began, ‘to see you so distressed and serious’--when
+she interrupted me.
+
+‘Yes, it’s always so!’ she said. ‘They are all surprised, these
+inconsiderate young people, fairly and full grown, to see any natural
+feeling in a little thing like me! They make a plaything of me, use me
+for their amusement, throw me away when they are tired, and wonder that
+I feel more than a toy horse or a wooden soldier! Yes, yes, that’s the
+way. The old way!’
+
+‘It may be, with others,’ I returned, ‘but I do assure you it is not
+with me. Perhaps I ought not to be at all surprised to see you as you
+are now: I know so little of you. I said, without consideration, what I
+thought.’
+
+‘What can I do?’ returned the little woman, standing up, and holding out
+her arms to show herself. ‘See! What I am, my father was; and my sister
+is; and my brother is. I have worked for sister and brother these many
+years--hard, Mr. Copperfield--all day. I must live. I do no harm. If
+there are people so unreflecting or so cruel, as to make a jest of
+me, what is left for me to do but to make a jest of myself, them, and
+everything? If I do so, for the time, whose fault is that? Mine?’
+
+No. Not Miss Mowcher’s, I perceived.
+
+‘If I had shown myself a sensitive dwarf to your false friend,’ pursued
+the little woman, shaking her head at me, with reproachful earnestness,
+‘how much of his help or good will do you think I should ever have had?
+If little Mowcher (who had no hand, young gentleman, in the making of
+herself) addressed herself to him, or the like of him, because of her
+misfortunes, when do you suppose her small voice would have been heard?
+Little Mowcher would have as much need to live, if she was the bitterest
+and dullest of pigmies; but she couldn’t do it. No. She might whistle
+for her bread and butter till she died of Air.’
+
+Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her
+handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.
+
+‘Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,’ she
+said, ‘that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it
+all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way
+through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return
+for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can
+throw bubbles back. If I don’t brood over all I want, it is the better
+for me, and not the worse for anyone. If I am a plaything for you
+giants, be gentle with me.’
+
+Miss Mowcher replaced her handkerchief in her pocket, looking at me with
+very intent expression all the while, and pursued:
+
+‘I saw you in the street just now. You may suppose I am not able to
+walk as fast as you, with my short legs and short breath, and I couldn’t
+overtake you; but I guessed where you came, and came after you. I have
+been here before, today, but the good woman wasn’t at home.’
+
+‘Do you know her?’ I demanded.
+
+‘I know of her, and about her,’ she replied, ‘from Omer and Joram. I
+was there at seven o’clock this morning. Do you remember what Steerforth
+said to me about this unfortunate girl, that time when I saw you both at
+the inn?’
+
+The great bonnet on Miss Mowcher’s head, and the greater bonnet on
+the wall, began to go backwards and forwards again when she asked this
+question.
+
+I remembered very well what she referred to, having had it in my
+thoughts many times that day. I told her so.
+
+‘May the Father of all Evil confound him,’ said the little woman,
+holding up her forefinger between me and her sparkling eyes, ‘and ten
+times more confound that wicked servant; but I believed it was YOU who
+had a boyish passion for her!’
+
+‘I?’ I repeated.
+
+‘Child, child! In the name of blind ill-fortune,’ cried Miss Mowcher,
+wringing her hands impatiently, as she went to and fro again upon the
+fender, ‘why did you praise her so, and blush, and look disturbed?’
+
+I could not conceal from myself that I had done this, though for a
+reason very different from her supposition.
+
+‘What did I know?’ said Miss Mowcher, taking out her handkerchief again,
+and giving one little stamp on the ground whenever, at short intervals,
+she applied it to her eyes with both hands at once. ‘He was crossing you
+and wheedling you, I saw; and you were soft wax in his hands, I saw. Had
+I left the room a minute, when his man told me that “Young Innocence”
+ (so he called you, and you may call him “Old Guilt” all the days of your
+life) had set his heart upon her, and she was giddy and liked him, but
+his master was resolved that no harm should come of it--more for your
+sake than for hers--and that that was their business here? How could I
+BUT believe him? I saw Steerforth soothe and please you by his praise
+of her! You were the first to mention her name. You owned to an old
+admiration of her. You were hot and cold, and red and white, all at once
+when I spoke to you of her. What could I think--what DID I think--but
+that you were a young libertine in everything but experience, and had
+fallen into hands that had experience enough, and could manage you
+(having the fancy) for your own good? Oh! oh! oh! They were afraid of my
+finding out the truth,’ exclaimed Miss Mowcher, getting off the
+fender, and trotting up and down the kitchen with her two short arms
+distressfully lifted up, ‘because I am a sharp little thing--I need be,
+to get through the world at all!--and they deceived me altogether, and
+I gave the poor unfortunate girl a letter, which I fully believe was
+the beginning of her ever speaking to Littimer, who was left behind on
+purpose!’
+
+I stood amazed at the revelation of all this perfidy, looking at Miss
+Mowcher as she walked up and down the kitchen until she was out of
+breath: when she sat upon the fender again, and, drying her face with
+her handkerchief, shook her head for a long time, without otherwise
+moving, and without breaking silence.
+
+‘My country rounds,’ she added at length, ‘brought me to Norwich, Mr.
+Copperfield, the night before last. What I happened to find there,
+about their secret way of coming and going, without you--which was
+strange--led to my suspecting something wrong. I got into the coach
+from London last night, as it came through Norwich, and was here this
+morning. Oh, oh, oh! too late!’
+
+Poor little Mowcher turned so chilly after all her crying and fretting,
+that she turned round on the fender, putting her poor little wet feet in
+among the ashes to warm them, and sat looking at the fire, like a large
+doll. I sat in a chair on the other side of the hearth, lost in unhappy
+reflections, and looking at the fire too, and sometimes at her.
+
+‘I must go,’ she said at last, rising as she spoke. ‘It’s late. You
+don’t mistrust me?’
+
+Meeting her sharp glance, which was as sharp as ever when she asked me,
+I could not on that short challenge answer no, quite frankly.
+
+‘Come!’ said she, accepting the offer of my hand to help her over the
+fender, and looking wistfully up into my face, ‘you know you wouldn’t
+mistrust me, if I was a full-sized woman!’
+
+I felt that there was much truth in this; and I felt rather ashamed of
+myself.
+
+‘You are a young man,’ she said, nodding. ‘Take a word of advice,
+even from three foot nothing. Try not to associate bodily defects with
+mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason.’
+
+She had got over the fender now, and I had got over my suspicion. I told
+her that I believed she had given me a faithful account of herself,
+and that we had both been hapless instruments in designing hands. She
+thanked me, and said I was a good fellow.
+
+‘Now, mind!’ she exclaimed, turning back on her way to the door, and
+looking shrewdly at me, with her forefinger up again.--‘I have some
+reason to suspect, from what I have heard--my ears are always open; I
+can’t afford to spare what powers I have--that they are gone abroad. But
+if ever they return, if ever any one of them returns, while I am alive,
+I am more likely than another, going about as I do, to find it out soon.
+Whatever I know, you shall know. If ever I can do anything to serve the
+poor betrayed girl, I will do it faithfully, please Heaven! And Littimer
+had better have a bloodhound at his back, than little Mowcher!’
+
+I placed implicit faith in this last statement, when I marked the look
+with which it was accompanied.
+
+‘Trust me no more, but trust me no less, than you would trust a
+full-sized woman,’ said the little creature, touching me appealingly
+on the wrist. ‘If ever you see me again, unlike what I am now, and like
+what I was when you first saw me, observe what company I am in. Call to
+mind that I am a very helpless and defenceless little thing. Think of
+me at home with my brother like myself and sister like myself, when my
+day’s work is done. Perhaps you won’t, then, be very hard upon me, or
+surprised if I can be distressed and serious. Good night!’
+
+I gave Miss Mowcher my hand, with a very different opinion of her from
+that which I had hitherto entertained, and opened the door to let her
+out. It was not a trifling business to get the great umbrella up, and
+properly balanced in her grasp; but at last I successfully accomplished
+this, and saw it go bobbing down the street through the rain, without
+the least appearance of having anybody underneath it, except when a
+heavier fall than usual from some over-charged water-spout sent it
+toppling over, on one side, and discovered Miss Mowcher struggling
+violently to get it right. After making one or two sallies to her
+relief, which were rendered futile by the umbrella’s hopping on again,
+like an immense bird, before I could reach it, I came in, went to bed,
+and slept till morning.
+
+In the morning I was joined by Mr. Peggotty and by my old nurse, and we
+went at an early hour to the coach office, where Mrs. Gummidge and Ham
+were waiting to take leave of us.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy,’ Ham whispered, drawing me aside, while Mr. Peggotty was
+stowing his bag among the luggage, ‘his life is quite broke up. He
+doen’t know wheer he’s going; he doen’t know--what’s afore him; he’s
+bound upon a voyage that’ll last, on and off, all the rest of his days,
+take my wured for ‘t, unless he finds what he’s a seeking of. I am sure
+you’ll be a friend to him, Mas’r Davy?’
+
+‘Trust me, I will indeed,’ said I, shaking hands with Ham earnestly.
+
+‘Thankee. Thankee, very kind, sir. One thing furder. I’m in good employ,
+you know, Mas’r Davy, and I han’t no way now of spending what I gets.
+Money’s of no use to me no more, except to live. If you can lay it out
+for him, I shall do my work with a better art. Though as to that, sir,’
+and he spoke very steadily and mildly, ‘you’re not to think but I shall
+work at all times, like a man, and act the best that lays in my power!’
+
+I told him I was well convinced of it; and I hinted that I hoped the
+time might even come, when he would cease to lead the lonely life he
+naturally contemplated now.
+
+‘No, sir,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘all that’s past and over with me,
+sir. No one can never fill the place that’s empty. But you’ll bear in
+mind about the money, as theer’s at all times some laying by for him?’
+
+Reminding him of the fact, that Mr. Peggotty derived a steady,
+though certainly a very moderate income from the bequest of his late
+brother-in-law, I promised to do so. We then took leave of each other. I
+cannot leave him even now, without remembering with a pang, at once his
+modest fortitude and his great sorrow.
+
+As to Mrs. Gummidge, if I were to endeavour to describe how she ran down
+the street by the side of the coach, seeing nothing but Mr. Peggotty on
+the roof, through the tears she tried to repress, and dashing herself
+against the people who were coming in the opposite direction, I should
+enter on a task of some difficulty. Therefore I had better leave her
+sitting on a baker’s door-step, out of breath, with no shape at all
+remaining in her bonnet, and one of her shoes off, lying on the pavement
+at a considerable distance.
+
+When we got to our journey’s end, our first pursuit was to look about
+for a little lodging for Peggotty, where her brother could have a
+bed. We were so fortunate as to find one, of a very clean and cheap
+description, over a chandler’s shop, only two streets removed from
+me. When we had engaged this domicile, I bought some cold meat at an
+eating-house, and took my fellow-travellers home to tea; a proceeding,
+I regret to state, which did not meet with Mrs. Crupp’s approval, but
+quite the contrary. I ought to observe, however, in explanation of that
+lady’s state of mind, that she was much offended by Peggotty’s tucking
+up her widow’s gown before she had been ten minutes in the place, and
+setting to work to dust my bedroom. This Mrs. Crupp regarded in the
+light of a liberty, and a liberty, she said, was a thing she never
+allowed.
+
+Mr. Peggotty had made a communication to me on the way to London for
+which I was not unprepared. It was, that he purposed first seeing Mrs.
+Steerforth. As I felt bound to assist him in this, and also to mediate
+between them; with the view of sparing the mother’s feelings as much
+as possible, I wrote to her that night. I told her as mildly as I could
+what his wrong was, and what my own share in his injury. I said he was a
+man in very common life, but of a most gentle and upright character; and
+that I ventured to express a hope that she would not refuse to see him
+in his heavy trouble. I mentioned two o’clock in the afternoon as the
+hour of our coming, and I sent the letter myself by the first coach in
+the morning.
+
+At the appointed time, we stood at the door--the door of that house
+where I had been, a few days since, so happy: where my youthful
+confidence and warmth of heart had been yielded up so freely: which was
+closed against me henceforth: which was now a waste, a ruin.
+
+No Littimer appeared. The pleasanter face which had replaced his, on the
+occasion of my last visit, answered to our summons, and went before
+us to the drawing-room. Mrs. Steerforth was sitting there. Rosa Dartle
+glided, as we went in, from another part of the room and stood behind
+her chair.
+
+I saw, directly, in his mother’s face, that she knew from himself what
+he had done. It was very pale; and bore the traces of deeper emotion
+than my letter alone, weakened by the doubts her fondness would have
+raised upon it, would have been likely to create. I thought her more
+like him than ever I had thought her; and I felt, rather than saw, that
+the resemblance was not lost on my companion.
+
+She sat upright in her arm-chair, with a stately, immovable, passionless
+air, that it seemed as if nothing could disturb. She looked very
+steadfastly at Mr. Peggotty when he stood before her; and he looked
+quite as steadfastly at her. Rosa Dartle’s keen glance comprehended all
+of us. For some moments not a word was spoken.
+
+She motioned to Mr. Peggotty to be seated. He said, in a low voice, ‘I
+shouldn’t feel it nat’ral, ma’am, to sit down in this house. I’d sooner
+stand.’ And this was succeeded by another silence, which she broke thus:
+
+‘I know, with deep regret, what has brought you here. What do you want
+of me? What do you ask me to do?’
+
+He put his hat under his arm, and feeling in his breast for Emily’s
+letter, took it out, unfolded it, and gave it to her. ‘Please to read
+that, ma’am. That’s my niece’s hand!’
+
+She read it, in the same stately and impassive way,--untouched by its
+contents, as far as I could see,--and returned it to him.
+
+‘“Unless he brings me back a lady,”’ said Mr. Peggotty, tracing out that
+part with his finger. ‘I come to know, ma’am, whether he will keep his
+wured?’
+
+‘No,’ she returned.
+
+‘Why not?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘It is impossible. He would disgrace himself. You cannot fail to know
+that she is far below him.’
+
+‘Raise her up!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘She is uneducated and ignorant.’
+
+‘Maybe she’s not; maybe she is,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I think not, ma’am;
+but I’m no judge of them things. Teach her better!’
+
+‘Since you oblige me to speak more plainly, which I am very unwilling
+to do, her humble connexions would render such a thing impossible, if
+nothing else did.’
+
+‘Hark to this, ma’am,’ he returned, slowly and quietly. ‘You know what
+it is to love your child. So do I. If she was a hundred times my child,
+I couldn’t love her more. You doen’t know what it is to lose your child.
+I do. All the heaps of riches in the wureld would be nowt to me (if they
+was mine) to buy her back! But, save her from this disgrace, and she
+shall never be disgraced by us. Not one of us that she’s growed up
+among, not one of us that’s lived along with her and had her for their
+all in all, these many year, will ever look upon her pritty face again.
+We’ll be content to let her be; we’ll be content to think of her, far
+off, as if she was underneath another sun and sky; we’ll be content to
+trust her to her husband,--to her little children, p’raps,--and bide the
+time when all of us shall be alike in quality afore our God!’
+
+The rugged eloquence with which he spoke, was not devoid of all effect.
+She still preserved her proud manner, but there was a touch of softness
+in her voice, as she answered:
+
+‘I justify nothing. I make no counter-accusations. But I am sorry to
+repeat, it is impossible. Such a marriage would irretrievably blight my
+son’s career, and ruin his prospects. Nothing is more certain than
+that it never can take place, and never will. If there is any other
+compensation--’
+
+‘I am looking at the likeness of the face,’ interrupted Mr. Peggotty,
+with a steady but a kindling eye, ‘that has looked at me, in my home, at
+my fireside, in my boat--wheer not?---smiling and friendly, when it was
+so treacherous, that I go half wild when I think of it. If the likeness
+of that face don’t turn to burning fire, at the thought of offering
+money to me for my child’s blight and ruin, it’s as bad. I doen’t know,
+being a lady’s, but what it’s worse.’
+
+She changed now, in a moment. An angry flush overspread her features;
+and she said, in an intolerant manner, grasping the arm-chair tightly
+with her hands:
+
+‘What compensation can you make to ME for opening such a pit between me
+and my son? What is your love to mine? What is your separation to ours?’
+
+Miss Dartle softly touched her, and bent down her head to whisper, but
+she would not hear a word.
+
+‘No, Rosa, not a word! Let the man listen to what I say! My son, who has
+been the object of my life, to whom its every thought has been devoted,
+whom I have gratified from a child in every wish, from whom I have had
+no separate existence since his birth,--to take up in a moment with a
+miserable girl, and avoid me! To repay my confidence with systematic
+deception, for her sake, and quit me for her! To set this wretched
+fancy, against his mother’s claims upon his duty, love, respect,
+gratitude--claims that every day and hour of his life should have
+strengthened into ties that nothing could be proof against! Is this no
+injury?’
+
+Again Rosa Dartle tried to soothe her; again ineffectually.
+
+‘I say, Rosa, not a word! If he can stake his all upon the lightest
+object, I can stake my all upon a greater purpose. Let him go where he
+will, with the means that my love has secured to him! Does he think to
+reduce me by long absence? He knows his mother very little if he does.
+Let him put away his whim now, and he is welcome back. Let him not put
+her away now, and he never shall come near me, living or dying, while
+I can raise my hand to make a sign against it, unless, being rid of her
+for ever, he comes humbly to me and begs for my forgiveness. This is my
+right. This is the acknowledgement I WILL HAVE. This is the separation
+that there is between us! And is this,’ she added, looking at her
+visitor with the proud intolerant air with which she had begun, ‘no
+injury?’
+
+While I heard and saw the mother as she said these words, I seemed to
+hear and see the son, defying them. All that I had ever seen in him of
+an unyielding, wilful spirit, I saw in her. All the understanding that
+I had now of his misdirected energy, became an understanding of her
+character too, and a perception that it was, in its strongest springs,
+the same.
+
+She now observed to me, aloud, resuming her former restraint, that it
+was useless to hear more, or to say more, and that she begged to put an
+end to the interview. She rose with an air of dignity to leave the room,
+when Mr. Peggotty signified that it was needless.
+
+‘Doen’t fear me being any hindrance to you, I have no more to say,
+ma’am,’ he remarked, as he moved towards the door. ‘I come heer with no
+hope, and I take away no hope. I have done what I thowt should be done,
+but I never looked fur any good to come of my stan’ning where I do.
+This has been too evil a house fur me and mine, fur me to be in my right
+senses and expect it.’
+
+With this, we departed; leaving her standing by her elbow-chair, a
+picture of a noble presence and a handsome face.
+
+We had, on our way out, to cross a paved hall, with glass sides and
+roof, over which a vine was trained. Its leaves and shoots were green
+then, and the day being sunny, a pair of glass doors leading to the
+garden were thrown open. Rosa Dartle, entering this way with a noiseless
+step, when we were close to them, addressed herself to me:
+
+‘You do well,’ she said, ‘indeed, to bring this fellow here!’
+
+Such a concentration of rage and scorn as darkened her face, and flashed
+in her jet-black eyes, I could not have thought compressible even into
+that face. The scar made by the hammer was, as usual in this excited
+state of her features, strongly marked. When the throbbing I had seen
+before, came into it as I looked at her, she absolutely lifted up her
+hand, and struck it.
+
+‘This is a fellow,’ she said, ‘to champion and bring here, is he not?
+You are a true man!’
+
+‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘you are surely not so unjust as to condemn
+ME!’
+
+‘Why do you bring division between these two mad creatures?’ she
+returned. ‘Don’t you know that they are both mad with their own
+self-will and pride?’
+
+‘Is it my doing?’ I returned.
+
+‘Is it your doing!’ she retorted. ‘Why do you bring this man here?’
+
+‘He is a deeply-injured man, Miss Dartle,’ I replied. ‘You may not know
+it.’
+
+‘I know that James Steerforth,’ she said, with her hand on her bosom, as
+if to prevent the storm that was raging there, from being loud, ‘has
+a false, corrupt heart, and is a traitor. But what need I know or care
+about this fellow, and his common niece?’
+
+‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘you deepen the injury. It is sufficient
+already. I will only say, at parting, that you do him a great wrong.’
+
+‘I do him no wrong,’ she returned. ‘They are a depraved, worthless set.
+I would have her whipped!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty passed on, without a word, and went out at the door.
+
+‘Oh, shame, Miss Dartle! shame!’ I said indignantly. ‘How can you bear
+to trample on his undeserved affliction!’
+
+‘I would trample on them all,’ she answered. ‘I would have his house
+pulled down. I would have her branded on the face, dressed in rags,
+and cast out in the streets to starve. If I had the power to sit in
+judgement on her, I would see it done. See it done? I would do it! I
+detest her. If I ever could reproach her with her infamous condition, I
+would go anywhere to do so. If I could hunt her to her grave, I would.
+If there was any word of comfort that would be a solace to her in her
+dying hour, and only I possessed it, I wouldn’t part with it for Life
+itself.’
+
+The mere vehemence of her words can convey, I am sensible, but a weak
+impression of the passion by which she was possessed, and which made
+itself articulate in her whole figure, though her voice, instead of
+being raised, was lower than usual. No description I could give of her
+would do justice to my recollection of her, or to her entire deliverance
+of herself to her anger. I have seen passion in many forms, but I have
+never seen it in such a form as that.
+
+When I joined Mr. Peggotty, he was walking slowly and thoughtfully down
+the hill. He told me, as soon as I came up with him, that having now
+discharged his mind of what he had purposed doing in London, he meant
+‘to set out on his travels’, that night. I asked him where he meant to
+go? He only answered, ‘I’m a going, sir, to seek my niece.’
+
+We went back to the little lodging over the chandler’s shop, and there
+I found an opportunity of repeating to Peggotty what he had said to
+me. She informed me, in return, that he had said the same to her that
+morning. She knew no more than I did, where he was going, but she
+thought he had some project shaped out in his mind.
+
+I did not like to leave him, under such circumstances, and we all three
+dined together off a beefsteak pie--which was one of the many good
+things for which Peggotty was famous--and which was curiously flavoured
+on this occasion, I recollect well, by a miscellaneous taste of tea,
+coffee, butter, bacon, cheese, new loaves, firewood, candles, and walnut
+ketchup, continually ascending from the shop. After dinner we sat for an
+hour or so near the window, without talking much; and then Mr. Peggotty
+got up, and brought his oilskin bag and his stout stick, and laid them
+on the table.
+
+He accepted, from his sister’s stock of ready money, a small sum on
+account of his legacy; barely enough, I should have thought, to keep him
+for a month. He promised to communicate with me, when anything befell
+him; and he slung his bag about him, took his hat and stick, and bade us
+both ‘Good-bye!’
+
+‘All good attend you, dear old woman,’ he said, embracing Peggotty, ‘and
+you too, Mas’r Davy!’ shaking hands with me. ‘I’m a-going to seek her,
+fur and wide. If she should come home while I’m away--but ah, that ain’t
+like to be!--or if I should bring her back, my meaning is, that she
+and me shall live and die where no one can’t reproach her. If any hurt
+should come to me, remember that the last words I left for her was, “My
+unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!”’
+
+He said this solemnly, bare-headed; then, putting on his hat, he went
+down the stairs, and away. We followed to the door. It was a warm, dusty
+evening, just the time when, in the great main thoroughfare out of which
+that by-way turned, there was a temporary lull in the eternal tread of
+feet upon the pavement, and a strong red sunshine. He turned, alone, at
+the corner of our shady street, into a glow of light, in which we lost
+him.
+
+Rarely did that hour of the evening come, rarely did I wake at night,
+rarely did I look up at the moon, or stars, or watch the falling rain,
+or hear the wind, but I thought of his solitary figure toiling on, poor
+pilgrim, and recalled the words:
+
+‘I’m a going to seek her, fur and wide. If any hurt should come to me,
+remember that the last words I left for her was, “My unchanged love is
+with my darling child, and I forgive her!”’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 33. BLISSFUL
+
+
+All this time, I had gone on loving Dora, harder than ever. Her idea was
+my refuge in disappointment and distress, and made some amends to me,
+even for the loss of my friend. The more I pitied myself, or pitied
+others, the more I sought for consolation in the image of Dora. The
+greater the accumulation of deceit and trouble in the world, the
+brighter and the purer shone the star of Dora high above the world. I
+don’t think I had any definite idea where Dora came from, or in what
+degree she was related to a higher order of beings; but I am quite sure
+I should have scouted the notion of her being simply human, like any
+other young lady, with indignation and contempt.
+
+If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over
+head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through.
+Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking,
+to drown anybody in; and yet there would have remained enough within me,
+and all over me, to pervade my entire existence.
+
+The first thing I did, on my own account, when I came back, was to take
+a night-walk to Norwood, and, like the subject of a venerable riddle of
+my childhood, to go ‘round and round the house, without ever
+touching the house’, thinking about Dora. I believe the theme of this
+incomprehensible conundrum was the moon. No matter what it was, I, the
+moon-struck slave of Dora, perambulated round and round the house and
+garden for two hours, looking through crevices in the palings, getting
+my chin by dint of violent exertion above the rusty nails on the top,
+blowing kisses at the lights in the windows, and romantically calling
+on the night, at intervals, to shield my Dora--I don’t exactly know what
+from, I suppose from fire. Perhaps from mice, to which she had a great
+objection.
+
+My love was so much in my mind and it was so natural to me to confide in
+Peggotty, when I found her again by my side of an evening with the old
+set of industrial implements, busily making the tour of my wardrobe,
+that I imparted to her, in a sufficiently roundabout way, my great
+secret. Peggotty was strongly interested, but I could not get her into
+my view of the case at all. She was audaciously prejudiced in my favour,
+and quite unable to understand why I should have any misgivings, or be
+low-spirited about it. ‘The young lady might think herself well off,’
+she observed, ‘to have such a beau. And as to her Pa,’ she said, ‘what
+did the gentleman expect, for gracious sake!’
+
+I observed, however, that Mr. Spenlow’s proctorial gown and stiff cravat
+took Peggotty down a little, and inspired her with a greater reverence
+for the man who was gradually becoming more and more etherealized in my
+eyes every day, and about whom a reflected radiance seemed to me to beam
+when he sat erect in Court among his papers, like a little lighthouse in
+a sea of stationery. And by the by, it used to be uncommonly strange
+to me to consider, I remember, as I sat in Court too, how those dim old
+judges and doctors wouldn’t have cared for Dora, if they had known
+her; how they wouldn’t have gone out of their senses with rapture, if
+marriage with Dora had been proposed to them; how Dora might have sung,
+and played upon that glorified guitar, until she led me to the verge of
+madness, yet not have tempted one of those slow-goers an inch out of his
+road!
+
+I despised them, to a man. Frozen-out old gardeners in the flower-beds
+of the heart, I took a personal offence against them all. The Bench
+was nothing to me but an insensible blunderer. The Bar had no more
+tenderness or poetry in it, than the bar of a public-house.
+
+Taking the management of Peggotty’s affairs into my own hands, with
+no little pride, I proved the will, and came to a settlement with the
+Legacy Duty-office, and took her to the Bank, and soon got everything
+into an orderly train. We varied the legal character of these
+proceedings by going to see some perspiring Wax-work, in Fleet Street
+(melted, I should hope, these twenty years); and by visiting Miss
+Linwood’s Exhibition, which I remember as a Mausoleum of needlework,
+favourable to self-examination and repentance; and by inspecting the
+Tower of London; and going to the top of St. Paul’s. All these wonders
+afforded Peggotty as much pleasure as she was able to enjoy, under
+existing circumstances: except, I think, St. Paul’s, which, from her
+long attachment to her work-box, became a rival of the picture on the
+lid, and was, in some particulars, vanquished, she considered, by that
+work of art.
+
+Peggotty’s business, which was what we used to call ‘common-form
+business’ in the Commons (and very light and lucrative the common-form
+business was), being settled, I took her down to the office one morning
+to pay her bill. Mr. Spenlow had stepped out, old Tiffey said, to get a
+gentleman sworn for a marriage licence; but as I knew he would be
+back directly, our place lying close to the Surrogate’s, and to the
+Vicar-General’s office too, I told Peggotty to wait.
+
+We were a little like undertakers, in the Commons, as regarded Probate
+transactions; generally making it a rule to look more or less cut up,
+when we had to deal with clients in mourning. In a similar feeling
+of delicacy, we were always blithe and light-hearted with the licence
+clients. Therefore I hinted to Peggotty that she would find Mr. Spenlow
+much recovered from the shock of Mr. Barkis’s decease; and indeed he
+came in like a bridegroom.
+
+But neither Peggotty nor I had eyes for him, when we saw, in company
+with him, Mr. Murdstone. He was very little changed. His hair looked as
+thick, and was certainly as black, as ever; and his glance was as little
+to be trusted as of old.
+
+‘Ah, Copperfield?’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘You know this gentleman, I
+believe?’
+
+I made my gentleman a distant bow, and Peggotty barely recognized him.
+He was, at first, somewhat disconcerted to meet us two together; but
+quickly decided what to do, and came up to me.
+
+‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that you are doing well?’
+
+‘It can hardly be interesting to you,’ said I. ‘Yes, if you wish to
+know.’
+
+We looked at each other, and he addressed himself to Peggotty.
+
+‘And you,’ said he. ‘I am sorry to observe that you have lost your
+husband.’
+
+‘It’s not the first loss I have had in my life, Mr. Murdstone,’ replied
+Peggotty, trembling from head to foot. ‘I am glad to hope that there is
+nobody to blame for this one,--nobody to answer for it.’
+
+‘Ha!’ said he; ‘that’s a comfortable reflection. You have done your
+duty?’
+
+‘I have not worn anybody’s life away,’ said Peggotty, ‘I am thankful to
+think! No, Mr. Murdstone, I have not worrited and frightened any sweet
+creetur to an early grave!’
+
+He eyed her gloomily--remorsefully I thought--for an instant; and said,
+turning his head towards me, but looking at my feet instead of my face:
+
+‘We are not likely to encounter soon again;--a source of satisfaction to
+us both, no doubt, for such meetings as this can never be agreeable. I
+do not expect that you, who always rebelled against my just authority,
+exerted for your benefit and reformation, should owe me any good-will
+now. There is an antipathy between us--’
+
+‘An old one, I believe?’ said I, interrupting him.
+
+He smiled, and shot as evil a glance at me as could come from his dark
+eyes.
+
+‘It rankled in your baby breast,’ he said. ‘It embittered the life of
+your poor mother. You are right. I hope you may do better, yet; I hope
+you may correct yourself.’
+
+Here he ended the dialogue, which had been carried on in a low voice,
+in a corner of the outer office, by passing into Mr. Spenlow’s room, and
+saying aloud, in his smoothest manner:
+
+‘Gentlemen of Mr. Spenlow’s profession are accustomed to family
+differences, and know how complicated and difficult they always are!’
+With that, he paid the money for his licence; and, receiving it neatly
+folded from Mr. Spenlow, together with a shake of the hand, and a polite
+wish for his happiness and the lady’s, went out of the office.
+
+I might have had more difficulty in constraining myself to be silent
+under his words, if I had had less difficulty in impressing upon
+Peggotty (who was only angry on my account, good creature!) that we were
+not in a place for recrimination, and that I besought her to hold her
+peace. She was so unusually roused, that I was glad to compound for
+an affectionate hug, elicited by this revival in her mind of our old
+injuries, and to make the best I could of it, before Mr. Spenlow and the
+clerks.
+
+Mr. Spenlow did not appear to know what the connexion between Mr.
+Murdstone and myself was; which I was glad of, for I could not bear to
+acknowledge him, even in my own breast, remembering what I did of the
+history of my poor mother. Mr. Spenlow seemed to think, if he thought
+anything about the matter, that my aunt was the leader of the state
+party in our family, and that there was a rebel party commanded by
+somebody else--so I gathered at least from what he said, while we were
+waiting for Mr. Tiffey to make out Peggotty’s bill of costs.
+
+‘Miss Trotwood,’ he remarked, ‘is very firm, no doubt, and not likely
+to give way to opposition. I have an admiration for her character, and
+I may congratulate you, Copperfield, on being on the right side.
+Differences between relations are much to be deplored--but they are
+extremely general--and the great thing is, to be on the right side’:
+meaning, I take it, on the side of the moneyed interest.
+
+‘Rather a good marriage this, I believe?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
+
+I explained that I knew nothing about it.
+
+‘Indeed!’ he said. ‘Speaking from the few words Mr. Murdstone
+dropped--as a man frequently does on these occasions--and from what Miss
+Murdstone let fall, I should say it was rather a good marriage.’
+
+‘Do you mean that there is money, sir?’ I asked.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘I understand there’s money. Beauty too, I am
+told.’
+
+‘Indeed! Is his new wife young?’
+
+‘Just of age,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘So lately, that I should think they
+had been waiting for that.’
+
+‘Lord deliver her!’ said Peggotty. So very emphatically and
+unexpectedly, that we were all three discomposed; until Tiffey came in
+with the bill.
+
+Old Tiffey soon appeared, however, and handed it to Mr. Spenlow, to
+look over. Mr. Spenlow, settling his chin in his cravat and rubbing it
+softly, went over the items with a deprecatory air--as if it were all
+Jorkins’s doing--and handed it back to Tiffey with a bland sigh.
+
+‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s right. Quite right. I should have been extremely
+happy, Copperfield, to have limited these charges to the actual
+expenditure out of pocket, but it is an irksome incident in my
+professional life, that I am not at liberty to consult my own wishes. I
+have a partner--Mr. Jorkins.’
+
+As he said this with a gentle melancholy, which was the next thing to
+making no charge at all, I expressed my acknowledgements on Peggotty’s
+behalf, and paid Tiffey in banknotes. Peggotty then retired to
+her lodging, and Mr. Spenlow and I went into Court, where we had a
+divorce-suit coming on, under an ingenious little statute (repealed
+now, I believe, but in virtue of which I have seen several marriages
+annulled), of which the merits were these. The husband, whose name was
+Thomas Benjamin, had taken out his marriage licence as Thomas only;
+suppressing the Benjamin, in case he should not find himself as
+comfortable as he expected. NOT finding himself as comfortable as he
+expected, or being a little fatigued with his wife, poor fellow, he
+now came forward, by a friend, after being married a year or two, and
+declared that his name was Thomas Benjamin, and therefore he was not
+married at all. Which the Court confirmed, to his great satisfaction.
+
+I must say that I had my doubts about the strict justice of this,
+and was not even frightened out of them by the bushel of wheat which
+reconciles all anomalies. But Mr. Spenlow argued the matter with me. He
+said, Look at the world, there was good and evil in that; look at the
+ecclesiastical law, there was good and evil in THAT. It was all part of
+a system. Very good. There you were!
+
+I had not the hardihood to suggest to Dora’s father that possibly
+we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the
+morning, and took off our coats to the work; but I confessed that I
+thought we might improve the Commons. Mr. Spenlow replied that he would
+particularly advise me to dismiss that idea from my mind, as not being
+worthy of my gentlemanly character; but that he would be glad to hear
+from me of what improvement I thought the Commons susceptible?
+
+Taking that part of the Commons which happened to be nearest to us--for
+our man was unmarried by this time, and we were out of Court, and
+strolling past the Prerogative Office--I submitted that I thought the
+Prerogative Office rather a queerly managed institution. Mr. Spenlow
+inquired in what respect? I replied, with all due deference to his
+experience (but with more deference, I am afraid, to his being Dora’s
+father), that perhaps it was a little nonsensical that the Registry of
+that Court, containing the original wills of all persons leaving effects
+within the immense province of Canterbury, for three whole centuries,
+should be an accidental building, never designed for the purpose, leased
+by the registrars for their Own private emolument, unsafe, not even
+ascertained to be fire-proof, choked with the important documents
+it held, and positively, from the roof to the basement, a mercenary
+speculation of the registrars, who took great fees from the public, and
+crammed the public’s wills away anyhow and anywhere, having no other
+object than to get rid of them cheaply. That, perhaps, it was a little
+unreasonable that these registrars in the receipt of profits amounting
+to eight or nine thousand pounds a year (to say nothing of the profits
+of the deputy registrars, and clerks of seats), should not be obliged to
+spend a little of that money, in finding a reasonably safe place for the
+important documents which all classes of people were compelled to hand
+over to them, whether they would or no. That, perhaps, it was a little
+unjust, that all the great offices in this great office should be
+magnificent sinecures, while the unfortunate working-clerks in the cold
+dark room upstairs were the worst rewarded, and the least considered
+men, doing important services, in London. That perhaps it was a little
+indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to
+find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all needful
+accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post
+(and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the holder of a
+staff in a cathedral, and what not),--while the public was put to the
+inconvenience of which we had a specimen every afternoon when the office
+was busy, and which we knew to be quite monstrous. That, perhaps,
+in short, this Prerogative Office of the diocese of Canterbury was
+altogether such a pestilent job, and such a pernicious absurdity, that
+but for its being squeezed away in a corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard,
+which few people knew, it must have been turned completely inside out,
+and upside down, long ago.
+
+Mr. Spenlow smiled as I became modestly warm on the subject, and then
+argued this question with me as he had argued the other. He said, what
+was it after all? It was a question of feeling. If the public felt
+that their wills were in safe keeping, and took it for granted that the
+office was not to be made better, who was the worse for it? Nobody. Who
+was the better for it? All the Sinecurists. Very well. Then the good
+predominated. It might not be a perfect system; nothing was perfect;
+but what he objected to, was, the insertion of the wedge. Under the
+Prerogative Office, the country had been glorious. Insert the wedge into
+the Prerogative Office, and the country would cease to be glorious. He
+considered it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found
+them; and he had no doubt the Prerogative Office would last our time. I
+deferred to his opinion, though I had great doubts of it myself. I find
+he was right, however; for it has not only lasted to the present moment,
+but has done so in the teeth of a great parliamentary report made (not
+too willingly) eighteen years ago, when all these objections of mine
+were set forth in detail, and when the existing stowage for wills was
+described as equal to the accumulation of only two years and a half
+more. What they have done with them since; whether they have lost many,
+or whether they sell any, now and then, to the butter shops; I don’t
+know. I am glad mine is not there, and I hope it may not go there, yet
+awhile.
+
+I have set all this down, in my present blissful chapter, because here
+it comes into its natural place. Mr. Spenlow and I falling into this
+conversation, prolonged it and our saunter to and fro, until we diverged
+into general topics. And so it came about, in the end, that Mr. Spenlow
+told me this day week was Dora’s birthday, and he would be glad if I
+would come down and join a little picnic on the occasion. I went out of
+my senses immediately; became a mere driveller next day, on receipt of
+a little lace-edged sheet of note-paper, ‘Favoured by papa. To remind’;
+and passed the intervening period in a state of dotage.
+
+I think I committed every possible absurdity in the way of preparation
+for this blessed event. I turn hot when I remember the cravat I bought.
+My boots might be placed in any collection of instruments of torture.
+I provided, and sent down by the Norwood coach the night before, a
+delicate little hamper, amounting in itself, I thought, almost to a
+declaration. There were crackers in it with the tenderest mottoes that
+could be got for money. At six in the morning, I was in Covent Garden
+Market, buying a bouquet for Dora. At ten I was on horseback (I hired a
+gallant grey, for the occasion), with the bouquet in my hat, to keep it
+fresh, trotting down to Norwood.
+
+I suppose that when I saw Dora in the garden and pretended not to see
+her, and rode past the house pretending to be anxiously looking for
+it, I committed two small fooleries which other young gentlemen in my
+circumstances might have committed--because they came so very natural
+to me. But oh! when I DID find the house, and DID dismount at the
+garden-gate, and drag those stony-hearted boots across the lawn to Dora
+sitting on a garden-seat under a lilac tree, what a spectacle she was,
+upon that beautiful morning, among the butterflies, in a white chip
+bonnet and a dress of celestial blue! There was a young lady with
+her--comparatively stricken in years--almost twenty, I should say. Her
+name was Miss Mills. And Dora called her Julia. She was the bosom friend
+of Dora. Happy Miss Mills!
+
+Jip was there, and Jip WOULD bark at me again. When I presented my
+bouquet, he gnashed his teeth with jealousy. Well he might. If he had
+the least idea how I adored his mistress, well he might!
+
+‘Oh, thank you, Mr. Copperfield! What dear flowers!’ said Dora.
+
+I had had an intention of saying (and had been studying the best form of
+words for three miles) that I thought them beautiful before I saw them
+so near HER. But I couldn’t manage it. She was too bewildering. To see
+her lay the flowers against her little dimpled chin, was to lose all
+presence of mind and power of language in a feeble ecstasy. I wonder I
+didn’t say, ‘Kill me, if you have a heart, Miss Mills. Let me die here!’
+
+Then Dora held my flowers to Jip to smell. Then Jip growled, and
+wouldn’t smell them. Then Dora laughed, and held them a little closer
+to Jip, to make him. Then Jip laid hold of a bit of geranium with his
+teeth, and worried imaginary cats in it. Then Dora beat him, and pouted,
+and said, ‘My poor beautiful flowers!’ as compassionately, I thought, as
+if Jip had laid hold of me. I wished he had!
+
+‘You’ll be so glad to hear, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Dora, ‘that that
+cross Miss Murdstone is not here. She has gone to her brother’s
+marriage, and will be away at least three weeks. Isn’t that delightful?’
+
+I said I was sure it must be delightful to her, and all that was
+delightful to her was delightful to me. Miss Mills, with an air of
+superior wisdom and benevolence, smiled upon us.
+
+‘She is the most disagreeable thing I ever saw,’ said Dora. ‘You can’t
+believe how ill-tempered and shocking she is, Julia.’
+
+‘Yes, I can, my dear!’ said Julia.
+
+‘YOU can, perhaps, love,’ returned Dora, with her hand on Julia’s.
+‘Forgive my not excepting you, my dear, at first.’
+
+I learnt, from this, that Miss Mills had had her trials in the course
+of a chequered existence; and that to these, perhaps, I might refer that
+wise benignity of manner which I had already noticed. I found, in
+the course of the day, that this was the case: Miss Mills having been
+unhappy in a misplaced affection, and being understood to have retired
+from the world on her awful stock of experience, but still to take a
+calm interest in the unblighted hopes and loves of youth.
+
+But now Mr. Spenlow came out of the house, and Dora went to him,
+saying, ‘Look, papa, what beautiful flowers!’ And Miss Mills smiled
+thoughtfully, as who should say, ‘Ye Mayflies, enjoy your brief
+existence in the bright morning of life!’ And we all walked from the
+lawn towards the carriage, which was getting ready.
+
+I shall never have such a ride again. I have never had such another.
+There were only those three, their hamper, my hamper, and the
+guitar-case, in the phaeton; and, of course, the phaeton was open; and
+I rode behind it, and Dora sat with her back to the horses, looking
+towards me. She kept the bouquet close to her on the cushion, and
+wouldn’t allow Jip to sit on that side of her at all, for fear he should
+crush it. She often carried it in her hand, often refreshed herself
+with its fragrance. Our eyes at those times often met; and my great
+astonishment is that I didn’t go over the head of my gallant grey into
+the carriage.
+
+There was dust, I believe. There was a good deal of dust, I believe. I
+have a faint impression that Mr. Spenlow remonstrated with me for riding
+in it; but I knew of none. I was sensible of a mist of love and beauty
+about Dora, but of nothing else. He stood up sometimes, and asked me
+what I thought of the prospect. I said it was delightful, and I dare
+say it was; but it was all Dora to me. The sun shone Dora, and the birds
+sang Dora. The south wind blew Dora, and the wild flowers in the hedges
+were all Doras, to a bud. My comfort is, Miss Mills understood me. Miss
+Mills alone could enter into my feelings thoroughly.
+
+I don’t know how long we were going, and to this hour I know as little
+where we went. Perhaps it was near Guildford. Perhaps some Arabian-night
+magician, opened up the place for the day, and shut it up for ever when
+we came away. It was a green spot, on a hill, carpeted with soft turf.
+There were shady trees, and heather, and, as far as the eye could see, a
+rich landscape.
+
+It was a trying thing to find people here, waiting for us; and my
+jealousy, even of the ladies, knew no bounds. But all of my own
+sex--especially one impostor, three or four years my elder, with a red
+whisker, on which he established an amount of presumption not to be
+endured--were my mortal foes.
+
+We all unpacked our baskets, and employed ourselves in getting dinner
+ready. Red Whisker pretended he could make a salad (which I don’t
+believe), and obtruded himself on public notice. Some of the young
+ladies washed the lettuces for him, and sliced them under his
+directions. Dora was among these. I felt that fate had pitted me against
+this man, and one of us must fall.
+
+Red Whisker made his salad (I wondered how they could eat it. Nothing
+should have induced ME to touch it!) and voted himself into the charge
+of the wine-cellar, which he constructed, being an ingenious beast, in
+the hollow trunk of a tree. By and by, I saw him, with the majority of a
+lobster on his plate, eating his dinner at the feet of Dora!
+
+I have but an indistinct idea of what happened for some time after this
+baleful object presented itself to my view. I was very merry, I know;
+but it was hollow merriment. I attached myself to a young creature in
+pink, with little eyes, and flirted with her desperately. She received
+my attentions with favour; but whether on my account solely, or because
+she had any designs on Red Whisker, I can’t say. Dora’s health was
+drunk. When I drank it, I affected to interrupt my conversation for that
+purpose, and to resume it immediately afterwards. I caught Dora’s eye as
+I bowed to her, and I thought it looked appealing. But it looked at me
+over the head of Red Whisker, and I was adamant.
+
+The young creature in pink had a mother in green; and I rather think the
+latter separated us from motives of policy. Howbeit, there was a general
+breaking up of the party, while the remnants of the dinner were being
+put away; and I strolled off by myself among the trees, in a raging and
+remorseful state. I was debating whether I should pretend that I was not
+well, and fly--I don’t know where--upon my gallant grey, when Dora and
+Miss Mills met me.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Miss Mills, ‘you are dull.’
+
+I begged her pardon. Not at all.
+
+‘And Dora,’ said Miss Mills, ‘YOU are dull.’
+
+Oh dear no! Not in the least.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield and Dora,’ said Miss Mills, with an almost venerable
+air. ‘Enough of this. Do not allow a trivial misunderstanding to wither
+the blossoms of spring, which, once put forth and blighted, cannot be
+renewed. I speak,’ said Miss Mills, ‘from experience of the past--the
+remote, irrevocable past. The gushing fountains which sparkle in the
+sun, must not be stopped in mere caprice; the oasis in the desert of
+Sahara must not be plucked up idly.’
+
+I hardly knew what I did, I was burning all over to that extraordinary
+extent; but I took Dora’s little hand and kissed it--and she let me!
+I kissed Miss Mills’s hand; and we all seemed, to my thinking, to go
+straight up to the seventh heaven. We did not come down again. We stayed
+up there all the evening. At first we strayed to and fro among the
+trees: I with Dora’s shy arm drawn through mine: and Heaven knows,
+folly as it all was, it would have been a happy fate to have been struck
+immortal with those foolish feelings, and have stayed among the trees
+for ever!
+
+But, much too soon, we heard the others laughing and talking, and
+calling ‘where’s Dora?’ So we went back, and they wanted Dora to sing.
+Red Whisker would have got the guitar-case out of the carriage, but Dora
+told him nobody knew where it was, but I. So Red Whisker was done for
+in a moment; and I got it, and I unlocked it, and I took the guitar out,
+and I sat by her, and I held her handkerchief and gloves, and I drank in
+every note of her dear voice, and she sang to ME who loved her, and all
+the others might applaud as much as they liked, but they had nothing to
+do with it!
+
+I was intoxicated with joy. I was afraid it was too happy to be real,
+and that I should wake in Buckingham Street presently, and hear Mrs.
+Crupp clinking the teacups in getting breakfast ready. But Dora sang,
+and others sang, and Miss Mills sang--about the slumbering echoes in the
+caverns of Memory; as if she were a hundred years old--and the evening
+came on; and we had tea, with the kettle boiling gipsy-fashion; and I
+was still as happy as ever.
+
+I was happier than ever when the party broke up, and the other people,
+defeated Red Whisker and all, went their several ways, and we went ours
+through the still evening and the dying light, with sweet scents
+rising up around us. Mr. Spenlow being a little drowsy after the
+champagne--honour to the soil that grew the grape, to the grape that
+made the wine, to the sun that ripened it, and to the merchant who
+adulterated it!--and being fast asleep in a corner of the carriage, I
+rode by the side and talked to Dora. She admired my horse and patted
+him--oh, what a dear little hand it looked upon a horse!--and her shawl
+would not keep right, and now and then I drew it round her with my arm;
+and I even fancied that Jip began to see how it was, and to understand
+that he must make up his mind to be friends with me.
+
+That sagacious Miss Mills, too; that amiable, though quite used up,
+recluse; that little patriarch of something less than twenty, who had
+done with the world, and mustn’t on any account have the slumbering
+echoes in the caverns of Memory awakened; what a kind thing she did!
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Miss Mills, ‘come to this side of the carriage a
+moment--if you can spare a moment. I want to speak to you.’
+
+Behold me, on my gallant grey, bending at the side of Miss Mills, with
+my hand upon the carriage door!
+
+‘Dora is coming to stay with me. She is coming home with me the day
+after tomorrow. If you would like to call, I am sure papa would be
+happy to see you.’ What could I do but invoke a silent blessing on Miss
+Mills’s head, and store Miss Mills’s address in the securest corner of
+my memory! What could I do but tell Miss Mills, with grateful looks
+and fervent words, how much I appreciated her good offices, and what an
+inestimable value I set upon her friendship!
+
+Then Miss Mills benignantly dismissed me, saying, ‘Go back to Dora!’ and
+I went; and Dora leaned out of the carriage to talk to me, and we talked
+all the rest of the way; and I rode my gallant grey so close to the
+wheel that I grazed his near fore leg against it, and ‘took the bark
+off’, as his owner told me, ‘to the tune of three pun’ sivin’--which I
+paid, and thought extremely cheap for so much joy. What time Miss Mills
+sat looking at the moon, murmuring verses--and recalling, I suppose, the
+ancient days when she and earth had anything in common.
+
+Norwood was many miles too near, and we reached it many hours too soon;
+but Mr. Spenlow came to himself a little short of it, and said,
+‘You must come in, Copperfield, and rest!’ and I consenting, we had
+sandwiches and wine-and-water. In the light room, Dora blushing looked
+so lovely, that I could not tear myself away, but sat there staring, in
+a dream, until the snoring of Mr. Spenlow inspired me with sufficient
+consciousness to take my leave. So we parted; I riding all the way
+to London with the farewell touch of Dora’s hand still light on mine,
+recalling every incident and word ten thousand times; lying down in my
+own bed at last, as enraptured a young noodle as ever was carried out of
+his five wits by love.
+
+When I awoke next morning, I was resolute to declare my passion to Dora,
+and know my fate. Happiness or misery was now the question. There was no
+other question that I knew of in the world, and only Dora could give the
+answer to it. I passed three days in a luxury of wretchedness, torturing
+myself by putting every conceivable variety of discouraging construction
+on all that ever had taken place between Dora and me. At last, arrayed
+for the purpose at a vast expense, I went to Miss Mills’s, fraught with
+a declaration.
+
+How many times I went up and down the street, and round the
+square--painfully aware of being a much better answer to the old riddle
+than the original one--before I could persuade myself to go up the steps
+and knock, is no matter now. Even when, at last, I had knocked, and was
+waiting at the door, I had some flurried thought of asking if that
+were Mr. Blackboy’s (in imitation of poor Barkis), begging pardon, and
+retreating. But I kept my ground.
+
+Mr. Mills was not at home. I did not expect he would be. Nobody wanted
+HIM. Miss Mills was at home. Miss Mills would do.
+
+I was shown into a room upstairs, where Miss Mills and Dora were. Jip
+was there. Miss Mills was copying music (I recollect, it was a new song,
+called ‘Affection’s Dirge’), and Dora was painting flowers. What were my
+feelings, when I recognized my own flowers; the identical Covent Garden
+Market purchase! I cannot say that they were very like, or that
+they particularly resembled any flowers that have ever come under my
+observation; but I knew from the paper round them which was accurately
+copied, what the composition was.
+
+Miss Mills was very glad to see me, and very sorry her papa was not at
+home: though I thought we all bore that with fortitude. Miss Mills was
+conversational for a few minutes, and then, laying down her pen upon
+‘Affection’s Dirge’, got up, and left the room.
+
+I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.
+
+‘I hope your poor horse was not tired, when he got home at night,’ said
+Dora, lifting up her beautiful eyes. ‘It was a long way for him.’
+
+I began to think I would do it today.
+
+‘It was a long way for him,’ said I, ‘for he had nothing to uphold him
+on the journey.’
+
+‘Wasn’t he fed, poor thing?’ asked Dora.
+
+I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.
+
+‘Ye-yes,’ I said, ‘he was well taken care of. I mean he had not the
+unutterable happiness that I had in being so near you.’
+
+Dora bent her head over her drawing and said, after a little while--I
+had sat, in the interval, in a burning fever, and with my legs in a very
+rigid state--
+
+‘You didn’t seem to be sensible of that happiness yourself, at one time
+of the day.’
+
+I saw now that I was in for it, and it must be done on the spot.
+
+‘You didn’t care for that happiness in the least,’ said Dora, slightly
+raising her eyebrows, and shaking her head, ‘when you were sitting by
+Miss Kitt.’
+
+Kitt, I should observe, was the name of the creature in pink, with the
+little eyes.
+
+‘Though certainly I don’t know why you should,’ said Dora, ‘or why you
+should call it a happiness at all. But of course you don’t mean what you
+say. And I am sure no one doubts your being at liberty to do whatever
+you like. Jip, you naughty boy, come here!’
+
+I don’t know how I did it. I did it in a moment. I intercepted Jip.
+I had Dora in my arms. I was full of eloquence. I never stopped for a
+word. I told her how I loved her. I told her I should die without her.
+I told her that I idolized and worshipped her. Jip barked madly all the
+time.
+
+When Dora hung her head and cried, and trembled, my eloquence increased
+so much the more. If she would like me to die for her, she had but to
+say the word, and I was ready. Life without Dora’s love was not a thing
+to have on any terms. I couldn’t bear it, and I wouldn’t. I had loved
+her every minute, day and night, since I first saw her. I loved her at
+that minute to distraction. I should always love her, every minute, to
+distraction. Lovers had loved before, and lovers would love again; but
+no lover had loved, might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved
+Dora. The more I raved, the more Jip barked. Each of us, in his own way,
+got more mad every moment.
+
+Well, well! Dora and I were sitting on the sofa by and by, quiet enough,
+and Jip was lying in her lap, winking peacefully at me. It was off my
+mind. I was in a state of perfect rapture. Dora and I were engaged.
+
+I suppose we had some notion that this was to end in marriage. We must
+have had some, because Dora stipulated that we were never to be married
+without her papa’s consent. But, in our youthful ecstasy, I don’t think
+that we really looked before us or behind us; or had any aspiration
+beyond the ignorant present. We were to keep our secret from Mr.
+Spenlow; but I am sure the idea never entered my head, then, that there
+was anything dishonourable in that.
+
+Miss Mills was more than usually pensive when Dora, going to find her,
+brought her back;--I apprehend, because there was a tendency in what had
+passed to awaken the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory. But she
+gave us her blessing, and the assurance of her lasting friendship, and
+spoke to us, generally, as became a Voice from the Cloister.
+
+What an idle time it was! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time it
+was!
+
+When I measured Dora’s finger for a ring that was to be made of
+Forget-me-nots, and when the jeweller, to whom I took the measure, found
+me out, and laughed over his order-book, and charged me anything he
+liked for the pretty little toy, with its blue stones--so associated
+in my remembrance with Dora’s hand, that yesterday, when I saw such
+another, by chance, on the finger of my own daughter, there was a
+momentary stirring in my heart, like pain!
+
+When I walked about, exalted with my secret, and full of my own
+interest, and felt the dignity of loving Dora, and of being beloved, so
+much, that if I had walked the air, I could not have been more above the
+people not so situated, who were creeping on the earth!
+
+When we had those meetings in the garden of the square, and sat within
+the dingy summer-house, so happy, that I love the London sparrows to
+this hour, for nothing else, and see the plumage of the tropics in their
+smoky feathers! When we had our first great quarrel (within a week
+of our betrothal), and when Dora sent me back the ring, enclosed in a
+despairing cocked-hat note, wherein she used the terrible expression
+that ‘our love had begun in folly, and ended in madness!’ which dreadful
+words occasioned me to tear my hair, and cry that all was over!
+
+When, under cover of the night, I flew to Miss Mills, whom I saw by
+stealth in a back kitchen where there was a mangle, and implored Miss
+Mills to interpose between us and avert insanity. When Miss Mills
+undertook the office and returned with Dora, exhorting us, from the
+pulpit of her own bitter youth, to mutual concession, and the avoidance
+of the Desert of Sahara!
+
+When we cried, and made it up, and were so blest again, that the back
+kitchen, mangle and all, changed to Love’s own temple, where we arranged
+a plan of correspondence through Miss Mills, always to comprehend at
+least one letter on each side every day!
+
+What an idle time! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time! Of all
+the times of mine that Time has in his grip, there is none that in one
+retrospect I can smile at half so much, and think of half so tenderly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 34. MY AUNT ASTONISHES ME
+
+
+I wrote to Agnes as soon as Dora and I were engaged. I wrote her a long
+letter, in which I tried to make her comprehend how blest I was, and
+what a darling Dora was. I entreated Agnes not to regard this as a
+thoughtless passion which could ever yield to any other, or had the
+least resemblance to the boyish fancies that we used to joke about. I
+assured her that its profundity was quite unfathomable, and expressed my
+belief that nothing like it had ever been known.
+
+Somehow, as I wrote to Agnes on a fine evening by my open window, and
+the remembrance of her clear calm eyes and gentle face came stealing
+over me, it shed such a peaceful influence upon the hurry and agitation
+in which I had been living lately, and of which my very happiness
+partook in some degree, that it soothed me into tears. I remember that
+I sat resting my head upon my hand, when the letter was half done,
+cherishing a general fancy as if Agnes were one of the elements of my
+natural home. As if, in the retirement of the house made almost sacred
+to me by her presence, Dora and I must be happier than anywhere. As if,
+in love, joy, sorrow, hope, or disappointment; in all emotions; my heart
+turned naturally there, and found its refuge and best friend.
+
+Of Steerforth I said nothing. I only told her there had been sad grief
+at Yarmouth, on account of Emily’s flight; and that on me it made a
+double wound, by reason of the circumstances attending it. I knew how
+quick she always was to divine the truth, and that she would never be
+the first to breathe his name.
+
+To this letter, I received an answer by return of post. As I read it, I
+seemed to hear Agnes speaking to me. It was like her cordial voice in my
+ears. What can I say more!
+
+While I had been away from home lately, Traddles had called twice or
+thrice. Finding Peggotty within, and being informed by Peggotty (who
+always volunteered that information to whomsoever would receive
+it), that she was my old nurse, he had established a good-humoured
+acquaintance with her, and had stayed to have a little chat with her
+about me. So Peggotty said; but I am afraid the chat was all on her
+own side, and of immoderate length, as she was very difficult indeed to
+stop, God bless her! when she had me for her theme.
+
+This reminds me, not only that I expected Traddles on a certain
+afternoon of his own appointing, which was now come, but that Mrs. Crupp
+had resigned everything appertaining to her office (the salary excepted)
+until Peggotty should cease to present herself. Mrs. Crupp, after
+holding divers conversations respecting Peggotty, in a very high-pitched
+voice, on the staircase--with some invisible Familiar it would appear,
+for corporeally speaking she was quite alone at those times--addressed a
+letter to me, developing her views. Beginning it with that statement
+of universal application, which fitted every occurrence of her life,
+namely, that she was a mother herself, she went on to inform me that
+she had once seen very different days, but that at all periods of her
+existence she had had a constitutional objection to spies, intruders,
+and informers. She named no names, she said; let them the cap fitted,
+wear it; but spies, intruders, and informers, especially in widders’
+weeds (this clause was underlined), she had ever accustomed herself to
+look down upon. If a gentleman was the victim of spies, intruders, and
+informers (but still naming no names), that was his own pleasure. He
+had a right to please himself; so let him do. All that she, Mrs. Crupp,
+stipulated for, was, that she should not be ‘brought in contract’
+with such persons. Therefore she begged to be excused from any further
+attendance on the top set, until things were as they formerly was, and
+as they could be wished to be; and further mentioned that her little
+book would be found upon the breakfast-table every Saturday morning,
+when she requested an immediate settlement of the same, with the
+benevolent view of saving trouble ‘and an ill-conwenience’ to all
+parties.
+
+After this, Mrs. Crupp confined herself to making pitfalls on the
+stairs, principally with pitchers, and endeavouring to delude Peggotty
+into breaking her legs. I found it rather harassing to live in this
+state of siege, but was too much afraid of Mrs. Crupp to see any way out
+of it.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ cried Traddles, punctually appearing at my door,
+in spite of all these obstacles, ‘how do you do?’
+
+‘My dear Traddles,’ said I, ‘I am delighted to see you at last, and very
+sorry I have not been at home before. But I have been so much engaged--’
+
+‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Traddles, ‘of course. Yours lives in London, I
+think.’
+
+‘What did you say?’
+
+‘She--excuse me--Miss D., you know,’ said Traddles, colouring in his
+great delicacy, ‘lives in London, I believe?’
+
+‘Oh yes. Near London.’
+
+‘Mine, perhaps you recollect,’ said Traddles, with a serious look,
+‘lives down in Devonshire--one of ten. Consequently, I am not so much
+engaged as you--in that sense.’
+
+‘I wonder you can bear,’ I returned, ‘to see her so seldom.’
+
+‘Hah!’ said Traddles, thoughtfully. ‘It does seem a wonder. I suppose it
+is, Copperfield, because there is no help for it?’
+
+‘I suppose so,’ I replied with a smile, and not without a blush. ‘And
+because you have so much constancy and patience, Traddles.’
+
+‘Dear me!’ said Traddles, considering about it, ‘do I strike you in that
+way, Copperfield? Really I didn’t know that I had. But she is such
+an extraordinarily dear girl herself, that it’s possible she may
+have imparted something of those virtues to me. Now you mention it,
+Copperfield, I shouldn’t wonder at all. I assure you she is always
+forgetting herself, and taking care of the other nine.’
+
+‘Is she the eldest?’ I inquired.
+
+‘Oh dear, no,’ said Traddles. ‘The eldest is a Beauty.’
+
+He saw, I suppose, that I could not help smiling at the simplicity of
+this reply; and added, with a smile upon his own ingenuous face:
+
+‘Not, of course, but that my Sophy--pretty name, Copperfield, I always
+think?’
+
+‘Very pretty!’ said I.
+
+‘Not, of course, but that Sophy is beautiful too in my eyes, and would
+be one of the dearest girls that ever was, in anybody’s eyes (I should
+think). But when I say the eldest is a Beauty, I mean she really is
+a--’ he seemed to be describing clouds about himself, with both hands:
+‘Splendid, you know,’ said Traddles, energetically. ‘Indeed!’ said I.
+
+‘Oh, I assure you,’ said Traddles, ‘something very uncommon, indeed!
+Then, you know, being formed for society and admiration, and not being
+able to enjoy much of it in consequence of their limited means, she
+naturally gets a little irritable and exacting, sometimes. Sophy puts
+her in good humour!’
+
+‘Is Sophy the youngest?’ I hazarded.
+
+‘Oh dear, no!’ said Traddles, stroking his chin. ‘The two youngest are
+only nine and ten. Sophy educates ‘em.’
+
+‘The second daughter, perhaps?’ I hazarded.
+
+‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Sarah’s the second. Sarah has something the matter
+with her spine, poor girl. The malady will wear out by and by, the
+doctors say, but in the meantime she has to lie down for a twelvemonth.
+Sophy nurses her. Sophy’s the fourth.’
+
+‘Is the mother living?’ I inquired.
+
+‘Oh yes,’ said Traddles, ‘she is alive. She is a very superior woman
+indeed, but the damp country is not adapted to her constitution, and--in
+fact, she has lost the use of her limbs.’
+
+‘Dear me!’ said I.
+
+‘Very sad, is it not?’ returned Traddles. ‘But in a merely domestic view
+it is not so bad as it might be, because Sophy takes her place. She is
+quite as much a mother to her mother, as she is to the other nine.’
+
+I felt the greatest admiration for the virtues of this young lady; and,
+honestly with the view of doing my best to prevent the good-nature
+of Traddles from being imposed upon, to the detriment of their joint
+prospects in life, inquired how Mr. Micawber was?
+
+‘He is quite well, Copperfield, thank you,’ said Traddles. ‘I am not
+living with him at present.’
+
+‘No?’
+
+‘No. You see the truth is,’ said Traddles, in a whisper, ‘he had changed
+his name to Mortimer, in consequence of his temporary embarrassments;
+and he don’t come out till after dark--and then in spectacles. There was
+an execution put into our house, for rent. Mrs. Micawber was in such
+a dreadful state that I really couldn’t resist giving my name to that
+second bill we spoke of here. You may imagine how delightful it was to
+my feelings, Copperfield, to see the matter settled with it, and Mrs.
+Micawber recover her spirits.’
+
+‘Hum!’ said I. ‘Not that her happiness was of long duration,’ pursued
+Traddles, ‘for, unfortunately, within a week another execution came
+in. It broke up the establishment. I have been living in a furnished
+apartment since then, and the Mortimers have been very private indeed.
+I hope you won’t think it selfish, Copperfield, if I mention that
+the broker carried off my little round table with the marble top, and
+Sophy’s flower-pot and stand?’
+
+‘What a hard thing!’ I exclaimed indignantly.
+
+‘It was a--it was a pull,’ said Traddles, with his usual wince at that
+expression. ‘I don’t mention it reproachfully, however, but with a
+motive. The fact is, Copperfield, I was unable to repurchase them at the
+time of their seizure; in the first place, because the broker, having an
+idea that I wanted them, ran the price up to an extravagant extent; and,
+in the second place, because I--hadn’t any money. Now, I have kept
+my eye since, upon the broker’s shop,’ said Traddles, with a great
+enjoyment of his mystery, ‘which is up at the top of Tottenham Court
+Road, and, at last, today I find them put out for sale. I have only
+noticed them from over the way, because if the broker saw me, bless you,
+he’d ask any price for them! What has occurred to me, having now the
+money, is, that perhaps you wouldn’t object to ask that good nurse of
+yours to come with me to the shop--I can show it her from round the
+corner of the next street--and make the best bargain for them, as if
+they were for herself, that she can!’
+
+The delight with which Traddles propounded this plan to me, and the
+sense he had of its uncommon artfulness, are among the freshest things
+in my remembrance.
+
+I told him that my old nurse would be delighted to assist him, and that
+we would all three take the field together, but on one condition. That
+condition was, that he should make a solemn resolution to grant no more
+loans of his name, or anything else, to Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, ‘I have already done so, because
+I begin to feel that I have not only been inconsiderate, but that I have
+been positively unjust to Sophy. My word being passed to myself, there
+is no longer any apprehension; but I pledge it to you, too, with the
+greatest readiness. That first unlucky obligation, I have paid. I have
+no doubt Mr. Micawber would have paid it if he could, but he could not.
+One thing I ought to mention, which I like very much in Mr. Micawber,
+Copperfield. It refers to the second obligation, which is not yet due.
+He don’t tell me that it is provided for, but he says it WILL BE. Now, I
+think there is something very fair and honest about that!’
+
+I was unwilling to damp my good friend’s confidence, and therefore
+assented. After a little further conversation, we went round to the
+chandler’s shop, to enlist Peggotty; Traddles declining to pass the
+evening with me, both because he endured the liveliest apprehensions
+that his property would be bought by somebody else before he could
+re-purchase it, and because it was the evening he always devoted to
+writing to the dearest girl in the world.
+
+I never shall forget him peeping round the corner of the street in
+Tottenham Court Road, while Peggotty was bargaining for the precious
+articles; or his agitation when she came slowly towards us after vainly
+offering a price, and was hailed by the relenting broker, and went back
+again. The end of the negotiation was, that she bought the property on
+tolerably easy terms, and Traddles was transported with pleasure.
+
+‘I am very much obliged to you, indeed,’ said Traddles, on hearing it
+was to be sent to where he lived, that night. ‘If I might ask one other
+favour, I hope you would not think it absurd, Copperfield?’
+
+I said beforehand, certainly not.
+
+‘Then if you WOULD be good enough,’ said Traddles to Peggotty, ‘to
+get the flower-pot now, I think I should like (it being Sophy’s,
+Copperfield) to carry it home myself!’
+
+Peggotty was glad to get it for him, and he overwhelmed her with thanks,
+and went his way up Tottenham Court Road, carrying the flower-pot
+affectionately in his arms, with one of the most delighted expressions
+of countenance I ever saw.
+
+We then turned back towards my chambers. As the shops had charms for
+Peggotty which I never knew them possess in the same degree for anybody
+else, I sauntered easily along, amused by her staring in at the windows,
+and waiting for her as often as she chose. We were thus a good while in
+getting to the Adelphi.
+
+On our way upstairs, I called her attention to the sudden disappearance
+of Mrs. Crupp’s pitfalls, and also to the prints of recent footsteps. We
+were both very much surprised, coming higher up, to find my outer door
+standing open (which I had shut) and to hear voices inside.
+
+We looked at one another, without knowing what to make of this, and went
+into the sitting-room. What was my amazement to find, of all people upon
+earth, my aunt there, and Mr. Dick! My aunt sitting on a quantity of
+luggage, with her two birds before her, and her cat on her knee, like a
+female Robinson Crusoe, drinking tea. Mr. Dick leaning thoughtfully on
+a great kite, such as we had often been out together to fly, with more
+luggage piled about him!
+
+‘My dear aunt!’ cried I. ‘Why, what an unexpected pleasure!’
+
+We cordially embraced; and Mr. Dick and I cordially shook hands; and
+Mrs. Crupp, who was busy making tea, and could not be too attentive,
+cordially said she had knowed well as Mr. Copperfull would have his
+heart in his mouth, when he see his dear relations.
+
+‘Holloa!’ said my aunt to Peggotty, who quailed before her awful
+presence. ‘How are YOU?’
+
+‘You remember my aunt, Peggotty?’ said I.
+
+‘For the love of goodness, child,’ exclaimed my aunt, ‘don’t call the
+woman by that South Sea Island name! If she married and got rid of
+it, which was the best thing she could do, why don’t you give her the
+benefit of the change? What’s your name now,--P?’ said my aunt, as a
+compromise for the obnoxious appellation.
+
+‘Barkis, ma’am,’ said Peggotty, with a curtsey.
+
+‘Well! That’s human,’ said my aunt. ‘It sounds less as if you wanted a
+missionary. How d’ye do, Barkis? I hope you’re well?’
+
+Encouraged by these gracious words, and by my aunt’s extending her
+hand, Barkis came forward, and took the hand, and curtseyed her
+acknowledgements.
+
+‘We are older than we were, I see,’ said my aunt. ‘We have only met each
+other once before, you know. A nice business we made of it then! Trot,
+my dear, another cup.’
+
+I handed it dutifully to my aunt, who was in her usual inflexible state
+of figure; and ventured a remonstrance with her on the subject of her
+sitting on a box.
+
+‘Let me draw the sofa here, or the easy-chair, aunt,’ said I. ‘Why
+should you be so uncomfortable?’
+
+‘Thank you, Trot,’ replied my aunt, ‘I prefer to sit upon my property.’
+Here my aunt looked hard at Mrs. Crupp, and observed, ‘We needn’t
+trouble you to wait, ma’am.’
+
+‘Shall I put a little more tea in the pot afore I go, ma’am?’ said Mrs.
+Crupp.
+
+‘No, I thank you, ma’am,’ replied my aunt.
+
+‘Would you let me fetch another pat of butter, ma’am?’ said Mrs. Crupp.
+‘Or would you be persuaded to try a new-laid hegg? or should I brile
+a rasher? Ain’t there nothing I could do for your dear aunt, Mr.
+Copperfull?’
+
+‘Nothing, ma’am,’ returned my aunt. ‘I shall do very well, I thank you.’
+
+Mrs. Crupp, who had been incessantly smiling to express sweet temper,
+and incessantly holding her head on one side, to express a general
+feebleness of constitution, and incessantly rubbing her hands, to
+express a desire to be of service to all deserving objects, gradually
+smiled herself, one-sided herself, and rubbed herself, out of the room.
+‘Dick!’ said my aunt. ‘You know what I told you about time-servers and
+wealth-worshippers?’
+
+Mr. Dick--with rather a scared look, as if he had forgotten it--returned
+a hasty answer in the affirmative.
+
+‘Mrs. Crupp is one of them,’ said my aunt. ‘Barkis, I’ll trouble you to
+look after the tea, and let me have another cup, for I don’t fancy that
+woman’s pouring-out!’
+
+I knew my aunt sufficiently well to know that she had something of
+importance on her mind, and that there was far more matter in this
+arrival than a stranger might have supposed. I noticed how her eye
+lighted on me, when she thought my attention otherwise occupied; and
+what a curious process of hesitation appeared to be going on within
+her, while she preserved her outward stiffness and composure. I began
+to reflect whether I had done anything to offend her; and my conscience
+whispered me that I had not yet told her about Dora. Could it by any
+means be that, I wondered!
+
+As I knew she would only speak in her own good time, I sat down near
+her, and spoke to the birds, and played with the cat, and was as easy
+as I could be. But I was very far from being really easy; and I should
+still have been so, even if Mr. Dick, leaning over the great kite behind
+my aunt, had not taken every secret opportunity of shaking his head
+darkly at me, and pointing at her.
+
+‘Trot,’ said my aunt at last, when she had finished her tea, and
+carefully smoothed down her dress, and wiped her lips--‘you needn’t go,
+Barkis!--Trot, have you got to be firm and self-reliant?’
+
+‘I hope so, aunt.’
+
+‘What do you think?’ inquired Miss Betsey.
+
+‘I think so, aunt.’
+
+‘Then why, my love,’ said my aunt, looking earnestly at me, ‘why do you
+think I prefer to sit upon this property of mine tonight?’
+
+I shook my head, unable to guess.
+
+‘Because,’ said my aunt, ‘it’s all I have. Because I’m ruined, my dear!’
+
+If the house, and every one of us, had tumbled out into the river
+together, I could hardly have received a greater shock.
+
+‘Dick knows it,’ said my aunt, laying her hand calmly on my shoulder. ‘I
+am ruined, my dear Trot! All I have in the world is in this room, except
+the cottage; and that I have left Janet to let. Barkis, I want to get a
+bed for this gentleman tonight. To save expense, perhaps you can make
+up something here for myself. Anything will do. It’s only for tonight.
+We’ll talk about this, more, tomorrow.’
+
+I was roused from my amazement, and concern for her--I am sure, for
+her--by her falling on my neck, for a moment, and crying that she only
+grieved for me. In another moment she suppressed this emotion; and said
+with an aspect more triumphant than dejected:
+
+‘We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my
+dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down,
+Trot!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 35. DEPRESSION
+
+
+As soon as I could recover my presence of mind, which quite deserted me
+in the first overpowering shock of my aunt’s intelligence, I proposed
+to Mr. Dick to come round to the chandler’s shop, and take possession of
+the bed which Mr. Peggotty had lately vacated. The chandler’s shop being
+in Hungerford Market, and Hungerford Market being a very different place
+in those days, there was a low wooden colonnade before the door (not
+very unlike that before the house where the little man and woman used
+to live, in the old weather-glass), which pleased Mr. Dick mightily. The
+glory of lodging over this structure would have compensated him, I dare
+say, for many inconveniences; but, as there were really few to bear,
+beyond the compound of flavours I have already mentioned, and perhaps
+the want of a little more elbow-room, he was perfectly charmed with his
+accommodation. Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn’t
+room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr. Dick justly observed to me,
+sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, ‘You know,
+Trotwood, I don’t want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat.
+Therefore, what does that signify to ME!’
+
+I tried to ascertain whether Mr. Dick had any understanding of the
+causes of this sudden and great change in my aunt’s affairs. As I might
+have expected, he had none at all. The only account he could give of it
+was, that my aunt had said to him, the day before yesterday, ‘Now, Dick,
+are you really and truly the philosopher I take you for?’ That then
+he had said, Yes, he hoped so. That then my aunt had said, ‘Dick, I
+am ruined.’ That then he had said, ‘Oh, indeed!’ That then my aunt had
+praised him highly, which he was glad of. And that then they had come to
+me, and had had bottled porter and sandwiches on the road.
+
+Mr. Dick was so very complacent, sitting on the foot of the bed, nursing
+his leg, and telling me this, with his eyes wide open and a surprised
+smile, that I am sorry to say I was provoked into explaining to him
+that ruin meant distress, want, and starvation; but I was soon bitterly
+reproved for this harshness, by seeing his face turn pale, and tears
+course down his lengthened cheeks, while he fixed upon me a look of such
+unutterable woe, that it might have softened a far harder heart than
+mine. I took infinitely greater pains to cheer him up again than I had
+taken to depress him; and I soon understood (as I ought to have known at
+first) that he had been so confident, merely because of his faith in
+the wisest and most wonderful of women, and his unbounded reliance on my
+intellectual resources. The latter, I believe, he considered a match for
+any kind of disaster not absolutely mortal.
+
+‘What can we do, Trotwood?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘There’s the Memorial-’
+
+‘To be sure there is,’ said I. ‘But all we can do just now, Mr. Dick,
+is to keep a cheerful countenance, and not let my aunt see that we are
+thinking about it.’
+
+He assented to this in the most earnest manner; and implored me, if I
+should see him wandering an inch out of the right course, to recall him
+by some of those superior methods which were always at my command. But I
+regret to state that the fright I had given him proved too much for his
+best attempts at concealment. All the evening his eyes wandered to my
+aunt’s face, with an expression of the most dismal apprehension, as if
+he saw her growing thin on the spot. He was conscious of this, and put
+a constraint upon his head; but his keeping that immovable, and sitting
+rolling his eyes like a piece of machinery, did not mend the matter at
+all. I saw him look at the loaf at supper (which happened to be a small
+one), as if nothing else stood between us and famine; and when my aunt
+insisted on his making his customary repast, I detected him in the act
+of pocketing fragments of his bread and cheese; I have no doubt for the
+purpose of reviving us with those savings, when we should have reached
+an advanced stage of attenuation.
+
+My aunt, on the other hand, was in a composed frame of mind, which was
+a lesson to all of us--to me, I am sure. She was extremely gracious
+to Peggotty, except when I inadvertently called her by that name; and,
+strange as I knew she felt in London, appeared quite at home. She was
+to have my bed, and I was to lie in the sitting-room, to keep guard over
+her. She made a great point of being so near the river, in case of a
+conflagration; and I suppose really did find some satisfaction in that
+circumstance.
+
+‘Trot, my dear,’ said my aunt, when she saw me making preparations for
+compounding her usual night-draught, ‘No!’
+
+‘Nothing, aunt?’
+
+‘Not wine, my dear. Ale.’
+
+‘But there is wine here, aunt. And you always have it made of wine.’
+
+‘Keep that, in case of sickness,’ said my aunt. ‘We mustn’t use it
+carelessly, Trot. Ale for me. Half a pint.’
+
+I thought Mr. Dick would have fallen, insensible. My aunt being
+resolute, I went out and got the ale myself. As it was growing late,
+Peggotty and Mr. Dick took that opportunity of repairing to the
+chandler’s shop together. I parted from him, poor fellow, at the corner
+of the street, with his great kite at his back, a very monument of human
+misery.
+
+My aunt was walking up and down the room when I returned, crimping the
+borders of her nightcap with her fingers. I warmed the ale and made the
+toast on the usual infallible principles. When it was ready for her, she
+was ready for it, with her nightcap on, and the skirt of her gown turned
+back on her knees.
+
+‘My dear,’ said my aunt, after taking a spoonful of it; ‘it’s a great
+deal better than wine. Not half so bilious.’
+
+I suppose I looked doubtful, for she added:
+
+‘Tut, tut, child. If nothing worse than Ale happens to us, we are well
+off.’
+
+‘I should think so myself, aunt, I am sure,’ said I.
+
+‘Well, then, why DON’T you think so?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Because you and I are very different people,’ I returned.
+
+‘Stuff and nonsense, Trot!’ replied my aunt.
+
+My aunt went on with a quiet enjoyment, in which there was very little
+affectation, if any; drinking the warm ale with a tea-spoon, and soaking
+her strips of toast in it.
+
+‘Trot,’ said she, ‘I don’t care for strange faces in general, but I
+rather like that Barkis of yours, do you know!’
+
+‘It’s better than a hundred pounds to hear you say so!’ said I.
+
+‘It’s a most extraordinary world,’ observed my aunt, rubbing her nose;
+‘how that woman ever got into it with that name, is unaccountable to me.
+It would be much more easy to be born a Jackson, or something of that
+sort, one would think.’
+
+‘Perhaps she thinks so, too; it’s not her fault,’ said I.
+
+‘I suppose not,’ returned my aunt, rather grudging the admission; ‘but
+it’s very aggravating. However, she’s Barkis now. That’s some comfort.
+Barkis is uncommonly fond of you, Trot.’
+
+‘There is nothing she would leave undone to prove it,’ said I.
+
+‘Nothing, I believe,’ returned my aunt. ‘Here, the poor fool has been
+begging and praying about handing over some of her money--because she
+has got too much of it. A simpleton!’
+
+My aunt’s tears of pleasure were positively trickling down into the warm
+ale.
+
+‘She’s the most ridiculous creature that ever was born,’ said my aunt.
+‘I knew, from the first moment when I saw her with that poor dear
+blessed baby of a mother of yours, that she was the most ridiculous of
+mortals. But there are good points in Barkis!’
+
+Affecting to laugh, she got an opportunity of putting her hand to
+her eyes. Having availed herself of it, she resumed her toast and her
+discourse together.
+
+‘Ah! Mercy upon us!’ sighed my aunt. ‘I know all about it, Trot! Barkis
+and myself had quite a gossip while you were out with Dick. I know all
+about it. I don’t know where these wretched girls expect to go to, for
+my part. I wonder they don’t knock out their brains against--against
+mantelpieces,’ said my aunt; an idea which was probably suggested to her
+by her contemplation of mine.
+
+‘Poor Emily!’ said I.
+
+‘Oh, don’t talk to me about poor,’ returned my aunt. ‘She should have
+thought of that, before she caused so much misery! Give me a kiss, Trot.
+I am sorry for your early experience.’
+
+As I bent forward, she put her tumbler on my knee to detain me, and
+said:
+
+‘Oh, Trot, Trot! And so you fancy yourself in love! Do you?’
+
+‘Fancy, aunt!’ I exclaimed, as red as I could be. ‘I adore her with my
+whole soul!’
+
+‘Dora, indeed!’ returned my aunt. ‘And you mean to say the little thing
+is very fascinating, I suppose?’
+
+‘My dear aunt,’ I replied, ‘no one can form the least idea what she is!’
+
+‘Ah! And not silly?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Silly, aunt!’
+
+I seriously believe it had never once entered my head for a single
+moment, to consider whether she was or not. I resented the idea, of
+course; but I was in a manner struck by it, as a new one altogether.
+
+‘Not light-headed?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Light-headed, aunt!’ I could only repeat this daring speculation
+with the same kind of feeling with which I had repeated the preceding
+question.
+
+‘Well, well!’ said my aunt. ‘I only ask. I don’t depreciate her. Poor
+little couple! And so you think you were formed for one another, and are
+to go through a party-supper-table kind of life, like two pretty pieces
+of confectionery, do you, Trot?’
+
+She asked me this so kindly, and with such a gentle air, half playful
+and half sorrowful, that I was quite touched.
+
+‘We are young and inexperienced, aunt, I know,’ I replied; ‘and I dare
+say we say and think a good deal that is rather foolish. But we love
+one another truly, I am sure. If I thought Dora could ever love anybody
+else, or cease to love me; or that I could ever love anybody else, or
+cease to love her; I don’t know what I should do--go out of my mind, I
+think!’
+
+‘Ah, Trot!’ said my aunt, shaking her head, and smiling gravely; ‘blind,
+blind, blind!’
+
+‘Someone that I know, Trot,’ my aunt pursued, after a pause, ‘though of
+a very pliant disposition, has an earnestness of affection in him that
+reminds me of poor Baby. Earnestness is what that Somebody must look
+for, to sustain him and improve him, Trot. Deep, downright, faithful
+earnestness.’
+
+‘If you only knew the earnestness of Dora, aunt!’ I cried.
+
+‘Oh, Trot!’ she said again; ‘blind, blind!’ and without knowing why,
+I felt a vague unhappy loss or want of something overshadow me like a
+cloud.
+
+‘However,’ said my aunt, ‘I don’t want to put two young creatures out
+of conceit with themselves, or to make them unhappy; so, though it is a
+girl and boy attachment, and girl and boy attachments very often--mind!
+I don’t say always!--come to nothing, still we’ll be serious about it,
+and hope for a prosperous issue one of these days. There’s time enough
+for it to come to anything!’
+
+This was not upon the whole very comforting to a rapturous lover; but
+I was glad to have my aunt in my confidence, and I was mindful of
+her being fatigued. So I thanked her ardently for this mark of her
+affection, and for all her other kindnesses towards me; and after a
+tender good night, she took her nightcap into my bedroom.
+
+How miserable I was, when I lay down! How I thought and thought about my
+being poor, in Mr. Spenlow’s eyes; about my not being what I thought I
+was, when I proposed to Dora; about the chivalrous necessity of
+telling Dora what my worldly condition was, and releasing her from her
+engagement if she thought fit; about how I should contrive to live,
+during the long term of my articles, when I was earning nothing; about
+doing something to assist my aunt, and seeing no way of doing anything;
+about coming down to have no money in my pocket, and to wear a shabby
+coat, and to be able to carry Dora no little presents, and to ride no
+gallant greys, and to show myself in no agreeable light! Sordid and
+selfish as I knew it was, and as I tortured myself by knowing that it
+was, to let my mind run on my own distress so much, I was so devoted
+to Dora that I could not help it. I knew that it was base in me not to
+think more of my aunt, and less of myself; but, so far, selfishness
+was inseparable from Dora, and I could not put Dora on one side for any
+mortal creature. How exceedingly miserable I was, that night!
+
+As to sleep, I had dreams of poverty in all sorts of shapes, but I
+seemed to dream without the previous ceremony of going to sleep. Now I
+was ragged, wanting to sell Dora matches, six bundles for a halfpenny;
+now I was at the office in a nightgown and boots, remonstrated with by
+Mr. Spenlow on appearing before the clients in that airy attire; now
+I was hungrily picking up the crumbs that fell from old Tiffey’s
+daily biscuit, regularly eaten when St. Paul’s struck one; now I was
+hopelessly endeavouring to get a licence to marry Dora, having nothing
+but one of Uriah Heep’s gloves to offer in exchange, which the whole
+Commons rejected; and still, more or less conscious of my own room, I
+was always tossing about like a distressed ship in a sea of bed-clothes.
+
+My aunt was restless, too, for I frequently heard her walking to and
+fro. Two or three times in the course of the night, attired in a long
+flannel wrapper in which she looked seven feet high, she appeared, like
+a disturbed ghost, in my room, and came to the side of the sofa on which
+I lay. On the first occasion I started up in alarm, to learn that she
+inferred from a particular light in the sky, that Westminster Abbey
+was on fire; and to be consulted in reference to the probability of its
+igniting Buckingham Street, in case the wind changed. Lying still, after
+that, I found that she sat down near me, whispering to herself ‘Poor
+boy!’ And then it made me twenty times more wretched, to know how
+unselfishly mindful she was of me, and how selfishly mindful I was of
+myself.
+
+It was difficult to believe that a night so long to me, could be short
+to anybody else. This consideration set me thinking and thinking of an
+imaginary party where people were dancing the hours away, until that
+became a dream too, and I heard the music incessantly playing one tune,
+and saw Dora incessantly dancing one dance, without taking the least
+notice of me. The man who had been playing the harp all night, was
+trying in vain to cover it with an ordinary-sized nightcap, when I
+awoke; or I should rather say, when I left off trying to go to sleep,
+and saw the sun shining in through the window at last.
+
+There was an old Roman bath in those days at the bottom of one of the
+streets out of the Strand--it may be there still--in which I have had
+many a cold plunge. Dressing myself as quietly as I could, and leaving
+Peggotty to look after my aunt, I tumbled head foremost into it,
+and then went for a walk to Hampstead. I had a hope that this brisk
+treatment might freshen my wits a little; and I think it did them good,
+for I soon came to the conclusion that the first step I ought to take
+was, to try if my articles could be cancelled and the premium recovered.
+I got some breakfast on the Heath, and walked back to Doctors’ Commons,
+along the watered roads and through a pleasant smell of summer flowers,
+growing in gardens and carried into town on hucksters’ heads, intent on
+this first effort to meet our altered circumstances.
+
+I arrived at the office so soon, after all, that I had half an hour’s
+loitering about the Commons, before old Tiffey, who was always first,
+appeared with his key. Then I sat down in my shady corner, looking up
+at the sunlight on the opposite chimney-pots, and thinking about Dora;
+until Mr. Spenlow came in, crisp and curly.
+
+‘How are you, Copperfield?’ said he. ‘Fine morning!’
+
+‘Beautiful morning, sir,’ said I. ‘Could I say a word to you before you
+go into Court?’
+
+‘By all means,’ said he. ‘Come into my room.’
+
+I followed him into his room, and he began putting on his gown, and
+touching himself up before a little glass he had, hanging inside a
+closet door.
+
+‘I am sorry to say,’ said I, ‘that I have some rather disheartening
+intelligence from my aunt.’
+
+‘No!’ said he. ‘Dear me! Not paralysis, I hope?’
+
+‘It has no reference to her health, sir,’ I replied. ‘She has met with
+some large losses. In fact, she has very little left, indeed.’
+
+‘You as-tound me, Copperfield!’ cried Mr. Spenlow.
+
+I shook my head. ‘Indeed, sir,’ said I, ‘her affairs are so changed,
+that I wished to ask you whether it would be possible--at a sacrifice on
+our part of some portion of the premium, of course,’ I put in this, on
+the spur of the moment, warned by the blank expression of his face--‘to
+cancel my articles?’
+
+What it cost me to make this proposal, nobody knows. It was like asking,
+as a favour, to be sentenced to transportation from Dora.
+
+‘To cancel your articles, Copperfield? Cancel?’
+
+I explained with tolerable firmness, that I really did not know where
+my means of subsistence were to come from, unless I could earn them for
+myself. I had no fear for the future, I said--and I laid great emphasis
+on that, as if to imply that I should still be decidedly eligible for a
+son-in-law one of these days--but, for the present, I was thrown upon
+my own resources. ‘I am extremely sorry to hear this, Copperfield,’ said
+Mr. Spenlow. ‘Extremely sorry. It is not usual to cancel articles for
+any such reason. It is not a professional course of proceeding. It is
+not a convenient precedent at all. Far from it. At the same time--’
+
+‘You are very good, sir,’ I murmured, anticipating a concession.
+
+‘Not at all. Don’t mention it,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘At the same time, I
+was going to say, if it had been my lot to have my hands unfettered--if
+I had not a partner--Mr. Jorkins--’
+
+My hopes were dashed in a moment, but I made another effort.
+
+‘Do you think, sir,’ said I, ‘if I were to mention it to Mr. Jorkins--’
+
+Mr. Spenlow shook his head discouragingly. ‘Heaven forbid, Copperfield,’
+he replied, ‘that I should do any man an injustice: still less, Mr.
+Jorkins. But I know my partner, Copperfield. Mr. Jorkins is not a man
+to respond to a proposition of this peculiar nature. Mr. Jorkins is very
+difficult to move from the beaten track. You know what he is!’
+
+I am sure I knew nothing about him, except that he had originally been
+alone in the business, and now lived by himself in a house near Montagu
+Square, which was fearfully in want of painting; that he came very
+late of a day, and went away very early; that he never appeared to be
+consulted about anything; and that he had a dingy little black-hole of
+his own upstairs, where no business was ever done, and where there was
+a yellow old cartridge-paper pad upon his desk, unsoiled by ink, and
+reported to be twenty years of age.
+
+‘Would you object to my mentioning it to him, sir?’ I asked.
+
+‘By no means,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘But I have some experience of Mr.
+Jorkins, Copperfield. I wish it were otherwise, for I should be happy
+to meet your views in any respect. I cannot have the objection to your
+mentioning it to Mr. Jorkins, Copperfield, if you think it worth while.’
+
+Availing myself of this permission, which was given with a warm shake
+of the hand, I sat thinking about Dora, and looking at the sunlight
+stealing from the chimney-pots down the wall of the opposite house,
+until Mr. Jorkins came. I then went up to Mr. Jorkins’s room, and
+evidently astonished Mr. Jorkins very much by making my appearance
+there.
+
+‘Come in, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Jorkins. ‘Come in!’
+
+I went in, and sat down; and stated my case to Mr. Jorkins pretty much
+as I had stated it to Mr. Spenlow. Mr. Jorkins was not by any means the
+awful creature one might have expected, but a large, mild, smooth-faced
+man of sixty, who took so much snuff that there was a tradition in the
+Commons that he lived principally on that stimulant, having little room
+in his system for any other article of diet.
+
+‘You have mentioned this to Mr. Spenlow, I suppose?’ said Mr. Jorkins;
+when he had heard me, very restlessly, to an end.
+
+I answered Yes, and told him that Mr. Spenlow had introduced his name.
+
+‘He said I should object?’ asked Mr. Jorkins.
+
+I was obliged to admit that Mr. Spenlow had considered it probable.
+
+‘I am sorry to say, Mr. Copperfield, I can’t advance your object,’ said
+Mr. Jorkins, nervously. ‘The fact is--but I have an appointment at the
+Bank, if you’ll have the goodness to excuse me.’
+
+With that he rose in a great hurry, and was going out of the room, when
+I made bold to say that I feared, then, there was no way of arranging
+the matter?
+
+‘No!’ said Mr. Jorkins, stopping at the door to shake his head. ‘Oh, no!
+I object, you know,’ which he said very rapidly, and went out. ‘You must
+be aware, Mr. Copperfield,’ he added, looking restlessly in at the door
+again, ‘if Mr. Spenlow objects--’
+
+‘Personally, he does not object, sir,’ said I.
+
+‘Oh! Personally!’ repeated Mr. Jorkins, in an impatient manner. ‘I
+assure you there’s an objection, Mr. Copperfield. Hopeless! What you
+wish to be done, can’t be done. I--I really have got an appointment
+at the Bank.’ With that he fairly ran away; and to the best of my
+knowledge, it was three days before he showed himself in the Commons
+again.
+
+Being very anxious to leave no stone unturned, I waited until Mr.
+Spenlow came in, and then described what had passed; giving him to
+understand that I was not hopeless of his being able to soften the
+adamantine Jorkins, if he would undertake the task.
+
+‘Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Spenlow, with a gracious smile, ‘you have
+not known my partner, Mr. Jorkins, as long as I have. Nothing is
+farther from my thoughts than to attribute any degree of artifice to Mr.
+Jorkins. But Mr. Jorkins has a way of stating his objections which often
+deceives people. No, Copperfield!’ shaking his head. ‘Mr. Jorkins is not
+to be moved, believe me!’
+
+I was completely bewildered between Mr. Spenlow and Mr. Jorkins, as
+to which of them really was the objecting partner; but I saw with
+sufficient clearness that there was obduracy somewhere in the firm, and
+that the recovery of my aunt’s thousand pounds was out of the
+question. In a state of despondency, which I remember with anything
+but satisfaction, for I know it still had too much reference to myself
+(though always in connexion with Dora), I left the office, and went
+homeward.
+
+I was trying to familiarize my mind with the worst, and to present to
+myself the arrangements we should have to make for the future in their
+sternest aspect, when a hackney-chariot coming after me, and stopping at
+my very feet, occasioned me to look up. A fair hand was stretched forth
+to me from the window; and the face I had never seen without a feeling
+of serenity and happiness, from the moment when it first turned back
+on the old oak staircase with the great broad balustrade, and when I
+associated its softened beauty with the stained-glass window in the
+church, was smiling on me.
+
+‘Agnes!’ I joyfully exclaimed. ‘Oh, my dear Agnes, of all people in the
+world, what a pleasure to see you!’
+
+‘Is it, indeed?’ she said, in her cordial voice.
+
+‘I want to talk to you so much!’ said I. ‘It’s such a lightening of my
+heart, only to look at you! If I had had a conjuror’s cap, there is no
+one I should have wished for but you!’
+
+‘What?’ returned Agnes.
+
+‘Well! perhaps Dora first,’ I admitted, with a blush.
+
+‘Certainly, Dora first, I hope,’ said Agnes, laughing.
+
+‘But you next!’ said I. ‘Where are you going?’
+
+She was going to my rooms to see my aunt. The day being very fine, she
+was glad to come out of the chariot, which smelt (I had my head in it
+all this time) like a stable put under a cucumber-frame. I dismissed the
+coachman, and she took my arm, and we walked on together. She was like
+Hope embodied, to me. How different I felt in one short minute, having
+Agnes at my side!
+
+My aunt had written her one of the odd, abrupt notes--very little longer
+than a Bank note--to which her epistolary efforts were usually limited.
+She had stated therein that she had fallen into adversity, and was
+leaving Dover for good, but had quite made up her mind to it, and was
+so well that nobody need be uncomfortable about her. Agnes had come to
+London to see my aunt, between whom and herself there had been a mutual
+liking these many years: indeed, it dated from the time of my taking up
+my residence in Mr. Wickfield’s house. She was not alone, she said. Her
+papa was with her--and Uriah Heep.
+
+‘And now they are partners,’ said I. ‘Confound him!’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Agnes. ‘They have some business here; and I took advantage
+of their coming, to come too. You must not think my visit all friendly
+and disinterested, Trotwood, for--I am afraid I may be cruelly
+prejudiced--I do not like to let papa go away alone, with him.’ ‘Does he
+exercise the same influence over Mr. Wickfield still, Agnes?’
+
+Agnes shook her head. ‘There is such a change at home,’ said she, ‘that
+you would scarcely know the dear old house. They live with us now.’
+
+‘They?’ said I.
+
+‘Mr. Heep and his mother. He sleeps in your old room,’ said Agnes,
+looking up into my face.
+
+‘I wish I had the ordering of his dreams,’ said I. ‘He wouldn’t sleep
+there long.’
+
+‘I keep my own little room,’ said Agnes, ‘where I used to learn my
+lessons. How the time goes! You remember? The little panelled room that
+opens from the drawing-room?’
+
+‘Remember, Agnes? When I saw you, for the first time, coming out at the
+door, with your quaint little basket of keys hanging at your side?’
+
+‘It is just the same,’ said Agnes, smiling. ‘I am glad you think of it
+so pleasantly. We were very happy.’
+
+‘We were, indeed,’ said I.
+
+‘I keep that room to myself still; but I cannot always desert Mrs. Heep,
+you know. And so,’ said Agnes, quietly, ‘I feel obliged to bear her
+company, when I might prefer to be alone. But I have no other reason to
+complain of her. If she tires me, sometimes, by her praises of her son,
+it is only natural in a mother. He is a very good son to her.’
+
+I looked at Agnes when she said these words, without detecting in her
+any consciousness of Uriah’s design. Her mild but earnest eyes met
+mine with their own beautiful frankness, and there was no change in her
+gentle face.
+
+‘The chief evil of their presence in the house,’ said Agnes, ‘is that I
+cannot be as near papa as I could wish--Uriah Heep being so much between
+us--and cannot watch over him, if that is not too bold a thing to say,
+as closely as I would. But if any fraud or treachery is practising
+against him, I hope that simple love and truth will be strong in the
+end. I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any
+evil or misfortune in the world.’
+
+A certain bright smile, which I never saw on any other face, died away,
+even while I thought how good it was, and how familiar it had once been
+to me; and she asked me, with a quick change of expression (we were
+drawing very near my street), if I knew how the reverse in my aunt’s
+circumstances had been brought about. On my replying no, she had not
+told me yet, Agnes became thoughtful, and I fancied I felt her arm
+tremble in mine.
+
+We found my aunt alone, in a state of some excitement. A difference
+of opinion had arisen between herself and Mrs. Crupp, on an abstract
+question (the propriety of chambers being inhabited by the gentler sex);
+and my aunt, utterly indifferent to spasms on the part of Mrs. Crupp,
+had cut the dispute short, by informing that lady that she smelt of
+my brandy, and that she would trouble her to walk out. Both of these
+expressions Mrs. Crupp considered actionable, and had expressed her
+intention of bringing before a ‘British Judy’--meaning, it was supposed,
+the bulwark of our national liberties.
+
+My aunt, however, having had time to cool, while Peggotty was out
+showing Mr. Dick the soldiers at the Horse Guards--and being, besides,
+greatly pleased to see Agnes--rather plumed herself on the affair than
+otherwise, and received us with unimpaired good humour. When Agnes laid
+her bonnet on the table, and sat down beside her, I could not but think,
+looking on her mild eyes and her radiant forehead, how natural it
+seemed to have her there; how trustfully, although she was so young and
+inexperienced, my aunt confided in her; how strong she was, indeed, in
+simple love and truth.
+
+We began to talk about my aunt’s losses, and I told them what I had
+tried to do that morning.
+
+‘Which was injudicious, Trot,’ said my aunt, ‘but well meant. You are
+a generous boy--I suppose I must say, young man, now--and I am proud of
+you, my dear. So far, so good. Now, Trot and Agnes, let us look the case
+of Betsey Trotwood in the face, and see how it stands.’
+
+I observed Agnes turn pale, as she looked very attentively at my aunt.
+My aunt, patting her cat, looked very attentively at Agnes.
+
+‘Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt, who had always kept her money matters
+to herself. ‘--I don’t mean your sister, Trot, my dear, but myself--had
+a certain property. It don’t matter how much; enough to live on. More;
+for she had saved a little, and added to it. Betsey funded her property
+for some time, and then, by the advice of her man of business, laid
+it out on landed security. That did very well, and returned very good
+interest, till Betsey was paid off. I am talking of Betsey as if she
+was a man-of-war. Well! Then, Betsey had to look about her, for a new
+investment. She thought she was wiser, now, than her man of business,
+who was not such a good man of business by this time, as he used to
+be--I am alluding to your father, Agnes--and she took it into her head
+to lay it out for herself. So she took her pigs,’ said my aunt, ‘to a
+foreign market; and a very bad market it turned out to be. First, she
+lost in the mining way, and then she lost in the diving way--fishing up
+treasure, or some such Tom Tiddler nonsense,’ explained my aunt, rubbing
+her nose; ‘and then she lost in the mining way again, and, last of all,
+to set the thing entirely to rights, she lost in the banking way. I
+don’t know what the Bank shares were worth for a little while,’ said my
+aunt; ‘cent per cent was the lowest of it, I believe; but the Bank was
+at the other end of the world, and tumbled into space, for what I know;
+anyhow, it fell to pieces, and never will and never can pay sixpence;
+and Betsey’s sixpences were all there, and there’s an end of them. Least
+said, soonest mended!’
+
+My aunt concluded this philosophical summary, by fixing her eyes with a
+kind of triumph on Agnes, whose colour was gradually returning.
+
+‘Dear Miss Trotwood, is that all the history?’ said Agnes.
+
+‘I hope it’s enough, child,’ said my aunt. ‘If there had been more
+money to lose, it wouldn’t have been all, I dare say. Betsey would have
+contrived to throw that after the rest, and make another chapter, I have
+little doubt. But there was no more money, and there’s no more story.’
+
+Agnes had listened at first with suspended breath. Her colour still came
+and went, but she breathed more freely. I thought I knew why. I thought
+she had had some fear that her unhappy father might be in some way to
+blame for what had happened. My aunt took her hand in hers, and laughed.
+
+‘Is that all?’ repeated my aunt. ‘Why, yes, that’s all, except, “And she
+lived happy ever afterwards.” Perhaps I may add that of Betsey yet, one
+of these days. Now, Agnes, you have a wise head. So have you, Trot, in
+some things, though I can’t compliment you always’; and here my aunt
+shook her own at me, with an energy peculiar to herself. ‘What’s to be
+done? Here’s the cottage, taking one time with another, will produce
+say seventy pounds a year. I think we may safely put it down at
+that. Well!--That’s all we’ve got,’ said my aunt; with whom it was an
+idiosyncrasy, as it is with some horses, to stop very short when she
+appeared to be in a fair way of going on for a long while.
+
+‘Then,’ said my aunt, after a rest, ‘there’s Dick. He’s good for a
+hundred a-year, but of course that must be expended on himself. I would
+sooner send him away, though I know I am the only person who appreciates
+him, than have him, and not spend his money on himself. How can Trot and
+I do best, upon our means? What do you say, Agnes?’
+
+‘I say, aunt,’ I interposed, ‘that I must do something!’
+
+‘Go for a soldier, do you mean?’ returned my aunt, alarmed; ‘or go to
+sea? I won’t hear of it. You are to be a proctor. We’re not going to
+have any knockings on the head in THIS family, if you please, sir.’
+
+I was about to explain that I was not desirous of introducing that mode
+of provision into the family, when Agnes inquired if my rooms were held
+for any long term?
+
+‘You come to the point, my dear,’ said my aunt. ‘They are not to be got
+rid of, for six months at least, unless they could be underlet, and that
+I don’t believe. The last man died here. Five people out of six would
+die--of course--of that woman in nankeen with the flannel petticoat. I
+have a little ready money; and I agree with you, the best thing we can
+do, is, to live the term out here, and get a bedroom hard by.’
+
+I thought it my duty to hint at the discomfort my aunt would sustain,
+from living in a continual state of guerilla warfare with Mrs. Crupp;
+but she disposed of that objection summarily by declaring that, on the
+first demonstration of hostilities, she was prepared to astonish Mrs.
+Crupp for the whole remainder of her natural life.
+
+‘I have been thinking, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, diffidently, ‘that if you
+had time--’
+
+‘I have a good deal of time, Agnes. I am always disengaged after four
+or five o’clock, and I have time early in the morning. In one way and
+another,’ said I, conscious of reddening a little as I thought of the
+hours and hours I had devoted to fagging about town, and to and fro upon
+the Norwood Road, ‘I have abundance of time.’
+
+‘I know you would not mind,’ said Agnes, coming to me, and speaking in
+a low voice, so full of sweet and hopeful consideration that I hear it
+now, ‘the duties of a secretary.’
+
+‘Mind, my dear Agnes?’
+
+‘Because,’ continued Agnes, ‘Doctor Strong has acted on his intention of
+retiring, and has come to live in London; and he asked papa, I know,
+if he could recommend him one. Don’t you think he would rather have his
+favourite old pupil near him, than anybody else?’
+
+‘Dear Agnes!’ said I. ‘What should I do without you! You are always my
+good angel. I told you so. I never think of you in any other light.’
+
+Agnes answered with her pleasant laugh, that one good Angel (meaning
+Dora) was enough; and went on to remind me that the Doctor had been
+used to occupy himself in his study, early in the morning, and in the
+evening--and that probably my leisure would suit his requirements very
+well. I was scarcely more delighted with the prospect of earning my own
+bread, than with the hope of earning it under my old master; in short,
+acting on the advice of Agnes, I sat down and wrote a letter to the
+Doctor, stating my object, and appointing to call on him next day at
+ten in the forenoon. This I addressed to Highgate--for in that place, so
+memorable to me, he lived--and went and posted, myself, without losing a
+minute.
+
+Wherever Agnes was, some agreeable token of her noiseless presence
+seemed inseparable from the place. When I came back, I found my aunt’s
+birds hanging, just as they had hung so long in the parlour window of
+the cottage; and my easy-chair imitating my aunt’s much easier chair in
+its position at the open window; and even the round green fan, which my
+aunt had brought away with her, screwed on to the window-sill. I knew
+who had done all this, by its seeming to have quietly done itself; and I
+should have known in a moment who had arranged my neglected books in the
+old order of my school days, even if I had supposed Agnes to be miles
+away, instead of seeing her busy with them, and smiling at the disorder
+into which they had fallen.
+
+My aunt was quite gracious on the subject of the Thames (it really did
+look very well with the sun upon it, though not like the sea before the
+cottage), but she could not relent towards the London smoke, which, she
+said, ‘peppered everything’. A complete revolution, in which Peggotty
+bore a prominent part, was being effected in every corner of my rooms,
+in regard of this pepper; and I was looking on, thinking how little even
+Peggotty seemed to do with a good deal of bustle, and how much Agnes did
+without any bustle at all, when a knock came at the door.
+
+‘I think,’ said Agnes, turning pale, ‘it’s papa. He promised me that he
+would come.’
+
+I opened the door, and admitted, not only Mr. Wickfield, but Uriah Heep.
+I had not seen Mr. Wickfield for some time. I was prepared for a great
+change in him, after what I had heard from Agnes, but his appearance
+shocked me.
+
+It was not that he looked many years older, though still dressed
+with the old scrupulous cleanliness; or that there was an unwholesome
+ruddiness upon his face; or that his eyes were full and bloodshot; or
+that there was a nervous trembling in his hand, the cause of which I
+knew, and had for some years seen at work. It was not that he had lost
+his good looks, or his old bearing of a gentleman--for that he had
+not--but the thing that struck me most, was, that with the evidences of
+his native superiority still upon him, he should submit himself to that
+crawling impersonation of meanness, Uriah Heep. The reversal of the
+two natures, in their relative positions, Uriah’s of power and Mr.
+Wickfield’s of dependence, was a sight more painful to me than I can
+express. If I had seen an Ape taking command of a Man, I should hardly
+have thought it a more degrading spectacle.
+
+He appeared to be only too conscious of it himself. When he came in, he
+stood still; and with his head bowed, as if he felt it. This was
+only for a moment; for Agnes softly said to him, ‘Papa! Here is Miss
+Trotwood--and Trotwood, whom you have not seen for a long while!’ and
+then he approached, and constrainedly gave my aunt his hand, and shook
+hands more cordially with me. In the moment’s pause I speak of, I saw
+Uriah’s countenance form itself into a most ill-favoured smile. Agnes
+saw it too, I think, for she shrank from him.
+
+What my aunt saw, or did not see, I defy the science of physiognomy
+to have made out, without her own consent. I believe there never was
+anybody with such an imperturbable countenance when she chose. Her face
+might have been a dead-wall on the occasion in question, for any light
+it threw upon her thoughts; until she broke silence with her usual
+abruptness.
+
+‘Well, Wickfield!’ said my aunt; and he looked up at her for the first
+time. ‘I have been telling your daughter how well I have been disposing
+of my money for myself, because I couldn’t trust it to you, as you were
+growing rusty in business matters. We have been taking counsel together,
+and getting on very well, all things considered. Agnes is worth the
+whole firm, in my opinion.’
+
+‘If I may umbly make the remark,’ said Uriah Heep, with a writhe, ‘I
+fully agree with Miss Betsey Trotwood, and should be only too appy if
+Miss Agnes was a partner.’
+
+‘You’re a partner yourself, you know,’ returned my aunt, ‘and that’s
+about enough for you, I expect. How do you find yourself, sir?’
+
+In acknowledgement of this question, addressed to him with extraordinary
+curtness, Mr. Heep, uncomfortably clutching the blue bag he carried,
+replied that he was pretty well, he thanked my aunt, and hoped she was
+the same.
+
+‘And you, Master--I should say, Mister Copperfield,’ pursued Uriah. ‘I
+hope I see you well! I am rejoiced to see you, Mister Copperfield, even
+under present circumstances.’ I believed that; for he seemed to relish
+them very much. ‘Present circumstances is not what your friends would
+wish for you, Mister Copperfield, but it isn’t money makes the man:
+it’s--I am really unequal with my umble powers to express what it is,’
+said Uriah, with a fawning jerk, ‘but it isn’t money!’
+
+Here he shook hands with me: not in the common way, but standing at
+a good distance from me, and lifting my hand up and down like a pump
+handle, that he was a little afraid of.
+
+‘And how do you think we are looking, Master Copperfield,--I should
+say, Mister?’ fawned Uriah. ‘Don’t you find Mr. Wickfield blooming, sir?
+Years don’t tell much in our firm, Master Copperfield, except in raising
+up the umble, namely, mother and self--and in developing,’ he added, as
+an afterthought, ‘the beautiful, namely, Miss Agnes.’
+
+He jerked himself about, after this compliment, in such an intolerable
+manner, that my aunt, who had sat looking straight at him, lost all
+patience.
+
+‘Deuce take the man!’ said my aunt, sternly, ‘what’s he about? Don’t be
+galvanic, sir!’
+
+‘I ask your pardon, Miss Trotwood,’ returned Uriah; ‘I’m aware you’re
+nervous.’
+
+‘Go along with you, sir!’ said my aunt, anything but appeased. ‘Don’t
+presume to say so! I am nothing of the sort. If you’re an eel, sir,
+conduct yourself like one. If you’re a man, control your limbs, sir!
+Good God!’ said my aunt, with great indignation, ‘I am not going to be
+serpentined and corkscrewed out of my senses!’
+
+Mr. Heep was rather abashed, as most people might have been, by this
+explosion; which derived great additional force from the indignant
+manner in which my aunt afterwards moved in her chair, and shook her
+head as if she were making snaps or bounces at him. But he said to me
+aside in a meek voice:
+
+‘I am well aware, Master Copperfield, that Miss Trotwood, though an
+excellent lady, has a quick temper (indeed I think I had the pleasure
+of knowing her, when I was a numble clerk, before you did, Master
+Copperfield), and it’s only natural, I am sure, that it should be made
+quicker by present circumstances. The wonder is, that it isn’t much
+worse! I only called to say that if there was anything we could do, in
+present circumstances, mother or self, or Wickfield and Heep,--we should
+be really glad. I may go so far?’ said Uriah, with a sickly smile at his
+partner.
+
+‘Uriah Heep,’ said Mr. Wickfield, in a monotonous forced way, ‘is active
+in the business, Trotwood. What he says, I quite concur in. You know
+I had an old interest in you. Apart from that, what Uriah says I quite
+concur in!’
+
+‘Oh, what a reward it is,’ said Uriah, drawing up one leg, at the risk
+of bringing down upon himself another visitation from my aunt, ‘to be so
+trusted in! But I hope I am able to do something to relieve him from the
+fatigues of business, Master Copperfield!’
+
+‘Uriah Heep is a great relief to me,’ said Mr. Wickfield, in the same
+dull voice. ‘It’s a load off my mind, Trotwood, to have such a partner.’
+
+The red fox made him say all this, I knew, to exhibit him to me in the
+light he had indicated on the night when he poisoned my rest. I saw the
+same ill-favoured smile upon his face again, and saw how he watched me.
+
+‘You are not going, papa?’ said Agnes, anxiously. ‘Will you not walk
+back with Trotwood and me?’
+
+He would have looked to Uriah, I believe, before replying, if that
+worthy had not anticipated him.
+
+‘I am bespoke myself,’ said Uriah, ‘on business; otherwise I should
+have been appy to have kept with my friends. But I leave my partner to
+represent the firm. Miss Agnes, ever yours! I wish you good-day, Master
+Copperfield, and leave my umble respects for Miss Betsey Trotwood.’
+
+With those words, he retired, kissing his great hand, and leering at us
+like a mask.
+
+We sat there, talking about our pleasant old Canterbury days, an hour
+or two. Mr. Wickfield, left to Agnes, soon became more like his former
+self; though there was a settled depression upon him, which he never
+shook off. For all that, he brightened; and had an evident pleasure in
+hearing us recall the little incidents of our old life, many of which he
+remembered very well. He said it was like those times, to be alone with
+Agnes and me again; and he wished to Heaven they had never changed. I am
+sure there was an influence in the placid face of Agnes, and in the very
+touch of her hand upon his arm, that did wonders for him.
+
+My aunt (who was busy nearly all this while with Peggotty, in the inner
+room) would not accompany us to the place where they were staying, but
+insisted on my going; and I went. We dined together. After dinner, Agnes
+sat beside him, as of old, and poured out his wine. He took what she
+gave him, and no more--like a child--and we all three sat together at a
+window as the evening gathered in. When it was almost dark, he lay down
+on a sofa, Agnes pillowing his head and bending over him a little while;
+and when she came back to the window, it was not so dark but I could see
+tears glittering in her eyes.
+
+I pray Heaven that I never may forget the dear girl in her love and
+truth, at that time of my life; for if I should, I must be drawing near
+the end, and then I would desire to remember her best! She filled my
+heart with such good resolutions, strengthened my weakness so, by her
+example, so directed--I know not how, she was too modest and gentle
+to advise me in many words--the wandering ardour and unsettled purpose
+within me, that all the little good I have done, and all the harm I have
+forborne, I solemnly believe I may refer to her.
+
+And how she spoke to me of Dora, sitting at the window in the dark;
+listened to my praises of her; praised again; and round the little
+fairy-figure shed some glimpses of her own pure light, that made it yet
+more precious and more innocent to me! Oh, Agnes, sister of my boyhood,
+if I had known then, what I knew long afterwards--!
+
+There was a beggar in the street, when I went down; and as I turned my
+head towards the window, thinking of her calm seraphic eyes, he made me
+start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the morning: ‘Blind! Blind!
+Blind!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 36. ENTHUSIASM
+
+I began the next day with another dive into the Roman bath, and then
+started for Highgate. I was not dispirited now. I was not afraid of the
+shabby coat, and had no yearnings after gallant greys. My whole manner
+of thinking of our late misfortune was changed. What I had to do, was,
+to show my aunt that her past goodness to me had not been thrown away
+on an insensible, ungrateful object. What I had to do, was, to turn the
+painful discipline of my younger days to account, by going to work with
+a resolute and steady heart. What I had to do, was, to take my woodman’s
+axe in my hand, and clear my own way through the forest of difficulty,
+by cutting down the trees until I came to Dora. And I went on at a
+mighty rate, as if it could be done by walking.
+
+When I found myself on the familiar Highgate road, pursuing such a
+different errand from that old one of pleasure, with which it was
+associated, it seemed as if a complete change had come on my whole life.
+But that did not discourage me. With the new life, came new purpose,
+new intention. Great was the labour; priceless the reward. Dora was the
+reward, and Dora must be won.
+
+I got into such a transport, that I felt quite sorry my coat was not
+a little shabby already. I wanted to be cutting at those trees in the
+forest of difficulty, under circumstances that should prove my strength.
+I had a good mind to ask an old man, in wire spectacles, who was
+breaking stones upon the road, to lend me his hammer for a little while,
+and let me begin to beat a path to Dora out of granite. I stimulated
+myself into such a heat, and got so out of breath, that I felt as if I
+had been earning I don’t know how much.
+
+In this state, I went into a cottage that I saw was to let, and examined
+it narrowly,--for I felt it necessary to be practical. It would do for
+me and Dora admirably: with a little front garden for Jip to run about
+in, and bark at the tradespeople through the railings, and a capital
+room upstairs for my aunt. I came out again, hotter and faster than
+ever, and dashed up to Highgate, at such a rate that I was there an
+hour too early; and, though I had not been, should have been obliged to
+stroll about to cool myself, before I was at all presentable.
+
+My first care, after putting myself under this necessary course of
+preparation, was to find the Doctor’s house. It was not in that part of
+Highgate where Mrs. Steerforth lived, but quite on the opposite side
+of the little town. When I had made this discovery, I went back, in
+an attraction I could not resist, to a lane by Mrs. Steerforth’s, and
+looked over the corner of the garden wall. His room was shut up close.
+The conservatory doors were standing open, and Rosa Dartle was walking,
+bareheaded, with a quick, impetuous step, up and down a gravel walk on
+one side of the lawn. She gave me the idea of some fierce thing, that
+was dragging the length of its chain to and fro upon a beaten track, and
+wearing its heart out.
+
+I came softly away from my place of observation, and avoiding that part
+of the neighbourhood, and wishing I had not gone near it, strolled about
+until it was ten o’clock. The church with the slender spire, that stands
+on the top of the hill now, was not there then to tell me the time. An
+old red-brick mansion, used as a school, was in its place; and a fine
+old house it must have been to go to school at, as I recollect it.
+
+When I approached the Doctor’s cottage--a pretty old place, on which
+he seemed to have expended some money, if I might judge from the
+embellishments and repairs that had the look of being just completed--I
+saw him walking in the garden at the side, gaiters and all, as if he
+had never left off walking since the days of my pupilage. He had his old
+companions about him, too; for there were plenty of high trees in the
+neighbourhood, and two or three rooks were on the grass, looking after
+him, as if they had been written to about him by the Canterbury rooks,
+and were observing him closely in consequence.
+
+Knowing the utter hopelessness of attracting his attention from that
+distance, I made bold to open the gate, and walk after him, so as to
+meet him when he should turn round. When he did, and came towards me, he
+looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments, evidently without thinking
+about me at all; and then his benevolent face expressed extraordinary
+pleasure, and he took me by both hands.
+
+‘Why, my dear Copperfield,’ said the Doctor, ‘you are a man! How do you
+do? I am delighted to see you. My dear Copperfield, how very much you
+have improved! You are quite--yes--dear me!’
+
+I hoped he was well, and Mrs. Strong too.
+
+‘Oh dear, yes!’ said the Doctor; ‘Annie’s quite well, and she’ll be
+delighted to see you. You were always her favourite. She said so,
+last night, when I showed her your letter. And--yes, to be sure--you
+recollect Mr. Jack Maldon, Copperfield?’
+
+‘Perfectly, sir.’
+
+‘Of course,’ said the Doctor. ‘To be sure. He’s pretty well, too.’
+
+‘Has he come home, sir?’ I inquired.
+
+‘From India?’ said the Doctor. ‘Yes. Mr. Jack Maldon couldn’t bear
+the climate, my dear. Mrs. Markleham--you have not forgotten Mrs.
+Markleham?’
+
+Forgotten the Old Soldier! And in that short time!
+
+‘Mrs. Markleham,’ said the Doctor, ‘was quite vexed about him, poor
+thing; so we have got him at home again; and we have bought him a little
+Patent place, which agrees with him much better.’ I knew enough of Mr.
+Jack Maldon to suspect from this account that it was a place where there
+was not much to do, and which was pretty well paid. The Doctor, walking
+up and down with his hand on my shoulder, and his kind face turned
+encouragingly to mine, went on:
+
+‘Now, my dear Copperfield, in reference to this proposal of yours. It’s
+very gratifying and agreeable to me, I am sure; but don’t you think you
+could do better? You achieved distinction, you know, when you were with
+us. You are qualified for many good things. You have laid a foundation
+that any edifice may be raised upon; and is it not a pity that you
+should devote the spring-time of your life to such a poor pursuit as I
+can offer?’
+
+I became very glowing again, and, expressing myself in a rhapsodical
+style, I am afraid, urged my request strongly; reminding the Doctor that
+I had already a profession.
+
+‘Well, well,’ said the Doctor, ‘that’s true. Certainly, your having
+a profession, and being actually engaged in studying it, makes a
+difference. But, my good young friend, what’s seventy pounds a year?’
+
+‘It doubles our income, Doctor Strong,’ said I.
+
+‘Dear me!’ replied the Doctor. ‘To think of that! Not that I mean to
+say it’s rigidly limited to seventy pounds a-year, because I have always
+contemplated making any young friend I might thus employ, a present too.
+Undoubtedly,’ said the Doctor, still walking me up and down with
+his hand on my shoulder. ‘I have always taken an annual present into
+account.’
+
+‘My dear tutor,’ said I (now, really, without any nonsense), ‘to whom I
+owe more obligations already than I ever can acknowledge--’
+
+‘No, no,’ interposed the Doctor. ‘Pardon me!’
+
+‘If you will take such time as I have, and that is my mornings and
+evenings, and can think it worth seventy pounds a year, you will do me
+such a service as I cannot express.’
+
+‘Dear me!’ said the Doctor, innocently. ‘To think that so little should
+go for so much! Dear, dear! And when you can do better, you will? On
+your word, now?’ said the Doctor,--which he had always made a very grave
+appeal to the honour of us boys.
+
+‘On my word, sir!’ I returned, answering in our old school manner.
+
+‘Then be it so,’ said the Doctor, clapping me on the shoulder, and still
+keeping his hand there, as we still walked up and down.
+
+‘And I shall be twenty times happier, sir,’ said I, with a little--I
+hope innocent--flattery, ‘if my employment is to be on the Dictionary.’
+
+The Doctor stopped, smilingly clapped me on the shoulder again, and
+exclaimed, with a triumph most delightful to behold, as if I had
+penetrated to the profoundest depths of mortal sagacity, ‘My dear young
+friend, you have hit it. It IS the Dictionary!’
+
+How could it be anything else! His pockets were as full of it as his
+head. It was sticking out of him in all directions. He told me that
+since his retirement from scholastic life, he had been advancing with
+it wonderfully; and that nothing could suit him better than the proposed
+arrangements for morning and evening work, as it was his custom to walk
+about in the daytime with his considering cap on. His papers were in
+a little confusion, in consequence of Mr. Jack Maldon having lately
+proffered his occasional services as an amanuensis, and not being
+accustomed to that occupation; but we should soon put right what was
+amiss, and go on swimmingly. Afterwards, when we were fairly at our
+work, I found Mr. Jack Maldon’s efforts more troublesome to me than
+I had expected, as he had not confined himself to making numerous
+mistakes, but had sketched so many soldiers, and ladies’ heads, over
+the Doctor’s manuscript, that I often became involved in labyrinths of
+obscurity.
+
+The Doctor was quite happy in the prospect of our going to work together
+on that wonderful performance, and we settled to begin next morning at
+seven o’clock. We were to work two hours every morning, and two or three
+hours every night, except on Saturdays, when I was to rest. On Sundays,
+of course, I was to rest also, and I considered these very easy terms.
+
+Our plans being thus arranged to our mutual satisfaction, the Doctor
+took me into the house to present me to Mrs. Strong, whom we found in
+the Doctor’s new study, dusting his books,--a freedom which he never
+permitted anybody else to take with those sacred favourites.
+
+They had postponed their breakfast on my account, and we sat down to
+table together. We had not been seated long, when I saw an approaching
+arrival in Mrs. Strong’s face, before I heard any sound of it. A
+gentleman on horseback came to the gate, and leading his horse into the
+little court, with the bridle over his arm, as if he were quite at home,
+tied him to a ring in the empty coach-house wall, and came into the
+breakfast parlour, whip in hand. It was Mr. Jack Maldon; and Mr. Jack
+Maldon was not at all improved by India, I thought. I was in a state
+of ferocious virtue, however, as to young men who were not cutting down
+trees in the forest of difficulty; and my impression must be received
+with due allowance.
+
+‘Mr. Jack!’ said the Doctor. ‘Copperfield!’
+
+Mr. Jack Maldon shook hands with me; but not very warmly, I believed;
+and with an air of languid patronage, at which I secretly took great
+umbrage. But his languor altogether was quite a wonderful sight; except
+when he addressed himself to his cousin Annie. ‘Have you breakfasted
+this morning, Mr. Jack?’ said the Doctor.
+
+‘I hardly ever take breakfast, sir,’ he replied, with his head thrown
+back in an easy-chair. ‘I find it bores me.’
+
+‘Is there any news today?’ inquired the Doctor.
+
+‘Nothing at all, sir,’ replied Mr. Maldon. ‘There’s an account about
+the people being hungry and discontented down in the North, but they are
+always being hungry and discontented somewhere.’
+
+The Doctor looked grave, and said, as though he wished to change the
+subject, ‘Then there’s no news at all; and no news, they say, is good
+news.’
+
+‘There’s a long statement in the papers, sir, about a murder,’ observed
+Mr. Maldon. ‘But somebody is always being murdered, and I didn’t read
+it.’
+
+A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was
+not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think,
+as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very
+fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success, that I
+have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have
+been born caterpillars. Perhaps it impressed me the more then, because
+it was new to me, but it certainly did not tend to exalt my opinion of,
+or to strengthen my confidence in, Mr. Jack Maldon.
+
+‘I came out to inquire whether Annie would like to go to the opera
+tonight,’ said Mr. Maldon, turning to her. ‘It’s the last good night
+there will be, this season; and there’s a singer there, whom she really
+ought to hear. She is perfectly exquisite. Besides which, she is so
+charmingly ugly,’ relapsing into languor.
+
+The Doctor, ever pleased with what was likely to please his young wife,
+turned to her and said:
+
+‘You must go, Annie. You must go.’
+
+‘I would rather not,’ she said to the Doctor. ‘I prefer to remain at
+home. I would much rather remain at home.’
+
+Without looking at her cousin, she then addressed me, and asked me about
+Agnes, and whether she should see her, and whether she was not likely to
+come that day; and was so much disturbed, that I wondered how even the
+Doctor, buttering his toast, could be blind to what was so obvious.
+
+But he saw nothing. He told her, good-naturedly, that she was young and
+ought to be amused and entertained, and must not allow herself to be
+made dull by a dull old fellow. Moreover, he said, he wanted to hear her
+sing all the new singer’s songs to him; and how could she do that well,
+unless she went? So the Doctor persisted in making the engagement for
+her, and Mr. Jack Maldon was to come back to dinner. This concluded, he
+went to his Patent place, I suppose; but at all events went away on his
+horse, looking very idle.
+
+I was curious to find out next morning, whether she had been. She had
+not, but had sent into London to put her cousin off; and had gone out in
+the afternoon to see Agnes, and had prevailed upon the Doctor to go with
+her; and they had walked home by the fields, the Doctor told me, the
+evening being delightful. I wondered then, whether she would have gone
+if Agnes had not been in town, and whether Agnes had some good influence
+over her too!
+
+She did not look very happy, I thought; but it was a good face, or a
+very false one. I often glanced at it, for she sat in the window all the
+time we were at work; and made our breakfast, which we took by snatches
+as we were employed. When I left, at nine o’clock, she was kneeling on
+the ground at the Doctor’s feet, putting on his shoes and gaiters for
+him. There was a softened shade upon her face, thrown from some green
+leaves overhanging the open window of the low room; and I thought all
+the way to Doctors’ Commons, of the night when I had seen it looking at
+him as he read.
+
+I was pretty busy now; up at five in the morning, and home at nine
+or ten at night. But I had infinite satisfaction in being so
+closely engaged, and never walked slowly on any account, and felt
+enthusiastically that the more I tired myself, the more I was doing to
+deserve Dora. I had not revealed myself in my altered character to
+Dora yet, because she was coming to see Miss Mills in a few days, and
+I deferred all I had to tell her until then; merely informing her in
+my letters (all our communications were secretly forwarded through Miss
+Mills), that I had much to tell her. In the meantime, I put myself on
+a short allowance of bear’s grease, wholly abandoned scented soap and
+lavender water, and sold off three waistcoats at a prodigious sacrifice,
+as being too luxurious for my stern career.
+
+Not satisfied with all these proceedings, but burning with impatience
+to do something more, I went to see Traddles, now lodging up behind the
+parapet of a house in Castle Street, Holborn. Mr. Dick, who had been
+with me to Highgate twice already, and had resumed his companionship
+with the Doctor, I took with me.
+
+I took Mr. Dick with me, because, acutely sensitive to my aunt’s
+reverses, and sincerely believing that no galley-slave or convict worked
+as I did, he had begun to fret and worry himself out of spirits and
+appetite, as having nothing useful to do. In this condition, he felt
+more incapable of finishing the Memorial than ever; and the harder he
+worked at it, the oftener that unlucky head of King Charles the First
+got into it. Seriously apprehending that his malady would increase,
+unless we put some innocent deception upon him and caused him to believe
+that he was useful, or unless we could put him in the way of being
+really useful (which would be better), I made up my mind to try
+if Traddles could help us. Before we went, I wrote Traddles a full
+statement of all that had happened, and Traddles wrote me back a capital
+answer, expressive of his sympathy and friendship.
+
+We found him hard at work with his inkstand and papers, refreshed by the
+sight of the flower-pot stand and the little round table in a corner of
+the small apartment. He received us cordially, and made friends with
+Mr. Dick in a moment. Mr. Dick professed an absolute certainty of having
+seen him before, and we both said, ‘Very likely.’
+
+The first subject on which I had to consult Traddles was this,--I had
+heard that many men distinguished in various pursuits had begun life
+by reporting the debates in Parliament. Traddles having mentioned
+newspapers to me, as one of his hopes, I had put the two things
+together, and told Traddles in my letter that I wished to know how I
+could qualify myself for this pursuit. Traddles now informed me, as the
+result of his inquiries, that the mere mechanical acquisition necessary,
+except in rare cases, for thorough excellence in it, that is to say,
+a perfect and entire command of the mystery of short-hand writing and
+reading, was about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages;
+and that it might perhaps be attained, by dint of perseverance, in the
+course of a few years. Traddles reasonably supposed that this would
+settle the business; but I, only feeling that here indeed were a few
+tall trees to be hewn down, immediately resolved to work my way on to
+Dora through this thicket, axe in hand.
+
+‘I am very much obliged to you, my dear Traddles!’ said I. ‘I’ll begin
+tomorrow.’
+
+Traddles looked astonished, as he well might; but he had no notion as
+yet of my rapturous condition.
+
+‘I’ll buy a book,’ said I, ‘with a good scheme of this art in it; I’ll
+work at it at the Commons, where I haven’t half enough to do; I’ll take
+down the speeches in our court for practice--Traddles, my dear fellow,
+I’ll master it!’
+
+‘Dear me,’ said Traddles, opening his eyes, ‘I had no idea you were such
+a determined character, Copperfield!’
+
+I don’t know how he should have had, for it was new enough to me. I
+passed that off, and brought Mr. Dick on the carpet.
+
+‘You see,’ said Mr. Dick, wistfully, ‘if I could exert myself, Mr.
+Traddles--if I could beat a drum--or blow anything!’
+
+Poor fellow! I have little doubt he would have preferred such an
+employment in his heart to all others. Traddles, who would not have
+smiled for the world, replied composedly:
+
+‘But you are a very good penman, sir. You told me so, Copperfield?’
+‘Excellent!’ said I. And indeed he was. He wrote with extraordinary
+neatness.
+
+‘Don’t you think,’ said Traddles, ‘you could copy writings, sir, if I
+got them for you?’
+
+Mr. Dick looked doubtfully at me. ‘Eh, Trotwood?’
+
+I shook my head. Mr. Dick shook his, and sighed. ‘Tell him about the
+Memorial,’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+I explained to Traddles that there was a difficulty in keeping King
+Charles the First out of Mr. Dick’s manuscripts; Mr. Dick in the
+meanwhile looking very deferentially and seriously at Traddles, and
+sucking his thumb.
+
+‘But these writings, you know, that I speak of, are already drawn up
+and finished,’ said Traddles after a little consideration. ‘Mr. Dick has
+nothing to do with them. Wouldn’t that make a difference, Copperfield?
+At all events, wouldn’t it be well to try?’
+
+This gave us new hope. Traddles and I laying our heads together apart,
+while Mr. Dick anxiously watched us from his chair, we concocted a
+scheme in virtue of which we got him to work next day, with triumphant
+success.
+
+On a table by the window in Buckingham Street, we set out the work
+Traddles procured for him--which was to make, I forget how many copies
+of a legal document about some right of way--and on another table
+we spread the last unfinished original of the great Memorial. Our
+instructions to Mr. Dick were that he should copy exactly what he had
+before him, without the least departure from the original; and that when
+he felt it necessary to make the slightest allusion to King Charles the
+First, he should fly to the Memorial. We exhorted him to be resolute
+in this, and left my aunt to observe him. My aunt reported to us,
+afterwards, that, at first, he was like a man playing the kettle-drums,
+and constantly divided his attentions between the two; but that, finding
+this confuse and fatigue him, and having his copy there, plainly before
+his eyes, he soon sat at it in an orderly business-like manner, and
+postponed the Memorial to a more convenient time. In a word, although we
+took great care that he should have no more to do than was good for him,
+and although he did not begin with the beginning of a week, he earned
+by the following Saturday night ten shillings and nine-pence; and never,
+while I live, shall I forget his going about to all the shops in the
+neighbourhood to change this treasure into sixpences, or his bringing
+them to my aunt arranged in the form of a heart upon a waiter, with
+tears of joy and pride in his eyes. He was like one under the propitious
+influence of a charm, from the moment of his being usefully employed;
+and if there were a happy man in the world, that Saturday night, it was
+the grateful creature who thought my aunt the most wonderful woman in
+existence, and me the most wonderful young man.
+
+‘No starving now, Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, shaking hands with me in a
+corner. ‘I’ll provide for her, Sir!’ and he flourished his ten fingers
+in the air, as if they were ten banks.
+
+I hardly know which was the better pleased, Traddles or I. ‘It really,’
+said Traddles, suddenly, taking a letter out of his pocket, and giving
+it to me, ‘put Mr. Micawber quite out of my head!’
+
+The letter (Mr. Micawber never missed any possible opportunity of
+writing a letter) was addressed to me, ‘By the kindness of T. Traddles,
+Esquire, of the Inner Temple.’ It ran thus:--
+
+
+‘MY DEAR COPPERFIELD,
+
+‘You may possibly not be unprepared to receive the intimation that
+something has turned up. I may have mentioned to you on a former
+occasion that I was in expectation of such an event.
+
+‘I am about to establish myself in one of the provincial towns of our
+favoured island (where the society may be described as a happy admixture
+of the agricultural and the clerical), in immediate connexion with
+one of the learned professions. Mrs. Micawber and our offspring will
+accompany me. Our ashes, at a future period, will probably be found
+commingled in the cemetery attached to a venerable pile, for which the
+spot to which I refer has acquired a reputation, shall I say from China
+to Peru?
+
+‘In bidding adieu to the modern Babylon, where we have undergone many
+vicissitudes, I trust not ignobly, Mrs. Micawber and myself cannot
+disguise from our minds that we part, it may be for years and it may be
+for ever, with an individual linked by strong associations to the altar
+of our domestic life. If, on the eve of such a departure, you will
+accompany our mutual friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles, to our present abode,
+and there reciprocate the wishes natural to the occasion, you will
+confer a Boon
+
+ ‘On
+ ‘One
+ ‘Who
+ ‘Is
+ ‘Ever yours,
+ ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
+
+
+I was glad to find that Mr. Micawber had got rid of his dust and ashes,
+and that something really had turned up at last. Learning from Traddles
+that the invitation referred to the evening then wearing away, I
+expressed my readiness to do honour to it; and we went off together to
+the lodging which Mr. Micawber occupied as Mr. Mortimer, and which was
+situated near the top of the Gray’s Inn Road.
+
+The resources of this lodging were so limited, that we found the twins,
+now some eight or nine years old, reposing in a turn-up bedstead in
+the family sitting-room, where Mr. Micawber had prepared, in a
+wash-hand-stand jug, what he called ‘a Brew’ of the agreeable beverage
+for which he was famous. I had the pleasure, on this occasion, of
+renewing the acquaintance of Master Micawber, whom I found a promising
+boy of about twelve or thirteen, very subject to that restlessness of
+limb which is not an unfrequent phenomenon in youths of his age. I also
+became once more known to his sister, Miss Micawber, in whom, as Mr.
+Micawber told us, ‘her mother renewed her youth, like the Phoenix’.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘yourself and Mr. Traddles
+find us on the brink of migration, and will excuse any little
+discomforts incidental to that position.’
+
+Glancing round as I made a suitable reply, I observed that the family
+effects were already packed, and that the amount of luggage was by no
+means overwhelming. I congratulated Mrs. Micawber on the approaching
+change.
+
+‘My dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘of your friendly
+interest in all our affairs, I am well assured. My family may consider
+it banishment, if they please; but I am a wife and mother, and I never
+will desert Mr. Micawber.’
+
+Traddles, appealed to by Mrs. Micawber’s eye, feelingly acquiesced.
+
+‘That,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘that, at least, is my view, my dear Mr.
+Copperfield and Mr. Traddles, of the obligation which I took upon myself
+when I repeated the irrevocable words, “I, Emma, take thee, Wilkins.” I
+read the service over with a flat-candle on the previous night, and
+the conclusion I derived from it was, that I never could desert Mr.
+Micawber. And,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘though it is possible I may be
+mistaken in my view of the ceremony, I never will!’
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, a little impatiently, ‘I am not conscious
+that you are expected to do anything of the sort.’
+
+‘I am aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ pursued Mrs. Micawber, ‘that I am
+now about to cast my lot among strangers; and I am also aware that the
+various members of my family, to whom Mr. Micawber has written in the
+most gentlemanly terms, announcing that fact, have not taken the least
+notice of Mr. Micawber’s communication. Indeed I may be superstitious,’
+said Mrs. Micawber, ‘but it appears to me that Mr. Micawber is destined
+never to receive any answers whatever to the great majority of the
+communications he writes. I may augur, from the silence of my family,
+that they object to the resolution I have taken; but I should not allow
+myself to be swerved from the path of duty, Mr. Copperfield, even by my
+papa and mama, were they still living.’
+
+I expressed my opinion that this was going in the right direction. ‘It
+may be a sacrifice,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘to immure one’s-self in a
+Cathedral town; but surely, Mr. Copperfield, if it is a sacrifice in me,
+it is much more a sacrifice in a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities.’
+
+‘Oh! You are going to a Cathedral town?’ said I.
+
+Mr. Micawber, who had been helping us all, out of the wash-hand-stand
+jug, replied:
+
+‘To Canterbury. In fact, my dear Copperfield, I have entered into
+arrangements, by virtue of which I stand pledged and contracted to our
+friend Heep, to assist and serve him in the capacity of--and to be--his
+confidential clerk.’
+
+I stared at Mr. Micawber, who greatly enjoyed my surprise.
+
+‘I am bound to state to you,’ he said, with an official air, ‘that the
+business habits, and the prudent suggestions, of Mrs. Micawber, have
+in a great measure conduced to this result. The gauntlet, to which Mrs.
+Micawber referred upon a former occasion, being thrown down in the form
+of an advertisement, was taken up by my friend Heep, and led to a mutual
+recognition. Of my friend Heep,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘who is a man of
+remarkable shrewdness, I desire to speak with all possible respect.
+My friend Heep has not fixed the positive remuneration at too high a
+figure, but he has made a great deal, in the way of extrication from
+the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, contingent on the value of
+my services; and on the value of those services I pin my faith. Such
+address and intelligence as I chance to possess,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+boastfully disparaging himself, with the old genteel air, ‘will be
+devoted to my friend Heep’s service. I have already some acquaintance
+with the law--as a defendant on civil process--and I shall immediately
+apply myself to the Commentaries of one of the most eminent and
+remarkable of our English jurists. I believe it is unnecessary to add
+that I allude to Mr. justice Blackstone.’
+
+These observations, and indeed the greater part of the observations
+made that evening, were interrupted by Mrs. Micawber’s discovering that
+Master Micawber was sitting on his boots, or holding his head on with
+both arms as if he felt it loose, or accidentally kicking Traddles under
+the table, or shuffling his feet over one another, or producing them
+at distances from himself apparently outrageous to nature, or lying
+sideways with his hair among the wine-glasses, or developing his
+restlessness of limb in some other form incompatible with the general
+interests of society; and by Master Micawber’s receiving those
+discoveries in a resentful spirit. I sat all the while, amazed by Mr.
+Micawber’s disclosure, and wondering what it meant; until Mrs. Micawber
+resumed the thread of the discourse, and claimed my attention.
+
+‘What I particularly request Mr. Micawber to be careful of, is,’ said
+Mrs. Micawber, ‘that he does not, my dear Mr. Copperfield, in applying
+himself to this subordinate branch of the law, place it out of his power
+to rise, ultimately, to the top of the tree. I am convinced that Mr.
+Micawber, giving his mind to a profession so adapted to his fertile
+resources, and his flow of language, must distinguish himself. Now, for
+example, Mr. Traddles,’ said Mrs. Micawber, assuming a profound air, ‘a
+judge, or even say a Chancellor. Does an individual place himself beyond
+the pale of those preferments by entering on such an office as Mr.
+Micawber has accepted?’
+
+‘My dear,’ observed Mr. Micawber--but glancing inquisitively at
+Traddles, too; ‘we have time enough before us, for the consideration of
+those questions.’
+
+‘Micawber,’ she returned, ‘no! Your mistake in life is, that you do not
+look forward far enough. You are bound, in justice to your family, if
+not to yourself, to take in at a comprehensive glance the extremest
+point in the horizon to which your abilities may lead you.’
+
+Mr. Micawber coughed, and drank his punch with an air of exceeding
+satisfaction--still glancing at Traddles, as if he desired to have his
+opinion.
+
+‘Why, the plain state of the case, Mrs. Micawber,’ said Traddles, mildly
+breaking the truth to her. ‘I mean the real prosaic fact, you know--’
+
+‘Just so,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘my dear Mr. Traddles, I wish to be as
+prosaic and literal as possible on a subject of so much importance.’
+
+‘--Is,’ said Traddles, ‘that this branch of the law, even if Mr.
+Micawber were a regular solicitor--’
+
+‘Exactly so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. [‘Wilkins, you are squinting, and
+will not be able to get your eyes back.’)
+
+‘--Has nothing,’ pursued Traddles, ‘to do with that. Only a barrister
+is eligible for such preferments; and Mr. Micawber could not be a
+barrister, without being entered at an inn of court as a student, for
+five years.’
+
+‘Do I follow you?’ said Mrs. Micawber, with her most affable air
+of business. ‘Do I understand, my dear Mr. Traddles, that, at the
+expiration of that period, Mr. Micawber would be eligible as a Judge or
+Chancellor?’
+
+‘He would be ELIGIBLE,’ returned Traddles, with a strong emphasis on
+that word.
+
+‘Thank you,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘That is quite sufficient. If such is
+the case, and Mr. Micawber forfeits no privilege by entering on these
+duties, my anxiety is set at rest. I speak,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘as a
+female, necessarily; but I have always been of opinion that Mr. Micawber
+possesses what I have heard my papa call, when I lived at home, the
+judicial mind; and I hope Mr. Micawber is now entering on a field where
+that mind will develop itself, and take a commanding station.’
+
+I quite believe that Mr. Micawber saw himself, in his judicial mind’s
+eye, on the woolsack. He passed his hand complacently over his bald
+head, and said with ostentatious resignation:
+
+‘My dear, we will not anticipate the decrees of fortune. If I am
+reserved to wear a wig, I am at least prepared, externally,’ in allusion
+to his baldness, ‘for that distinction. I do not,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+‘regret my hair, and I may have been deprived of it for a specific
+purpose. I cannot say. It is my intention, my dear Copperfield, to
+educate my son for the Church; I will not deny that I should be happy,
+on his account, to attain to eminence.’
+
+‘For the Church?’ said I, still pondering, between whiles, on Uriah
+Heep.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘He has a remarkable head-voice, and will
+commence as a chorister. Our residence at Canterbury, and our local
+connexion, will, no doubt, enable him to take advantage of any vacancy
+that may arise in the Cathedral corps.’
+
+On looking at Master Micawber again, I saw that he had a certain
+expression of face, as if his voice were behind his eyebrows; where it
+presently appeared to be, on his singing us (as an alternative between
+that and bed) ‘The Wood-Pecker tapping’. After many compliments on this
+performance, we fell into some general conversation; and as I was too
+full of my desperate intentions to keep my altered circumstances to
+myself, I made them known to Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. I cannot express how
+extremely delighted they both were, by the idea of my aunt’s being in
+difficulties; and how comfortable and friendly it made them.
+
+When we were nearly come to the last round of the punch, I addressed
+myself to Traddles, and reminded him that we must not separate, without
+wishing our friends health, happiness, and success in their new career.
+I begged Mr. Micawber to fill us bumpers, and proposed the toast in
+due form: shaking hands with him across the table, and kissing Mrs.
+Micawber, to commemorate that eventful occasion. Traddles imitated me
+in the first particular, but did not consider himself a sufficiently old
+friend to venture on the second.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, rising with one of his thumbs
+in each of his waistcoat pockets, ‘the companion of my youth: if I may
+be allowed the expression--and my esteemed friend Traddles: if I may be
+permitted to call him so--will allow me, on the part of Mrs. Micawber,
+myself, and our offspring, to thank them in the warmest and most
+uncompromising terms for their good wishes. It may be expected that
+on the eve of a migration which will consign us to a perfectly new
+existence,’ Mr. Micawber spoke as if they were going five hundred
+thousand miles, ‘I should offer a few valedictory remarks to two such
+friends as I see before me. But all that I have to say in this way, I
+have said. Whatever station in society I may attain, through the medium
+of the learned profession of which I am about to become an unworthy
+member, I shall endeavour not to disgrace, and Mrs. Micawber will be
+safe to adorn. Under the temporary pressure of pecuniary liabilities,
+contracted with a view to their immediate liquidation, but remaining
+unliquidated through a combination of circumstances, I have been
+under the necessity of assuming a garb from which my natural instincts
+recoil--I allude to spectacles--and possessing myself of a cognomen, to
+which I can establish no legitimate pretensions. All I have to say on
+that score is, that the cloud has passed from the dreary scene, and the
+God of Day is once more high upon the mountain tops. On Monday next, on
+the arrival of the four o’clock afternoon coach at Canterbury, my foot
+will be on my native heath--my name, Micawber!’
+
+Mr. Micawber resumed his seat on the close of these remarks, and
+drank two glasses of punch in grave succession. He then said with much
+solemnity:
+
+‘One thing more I have to do, before this separation is complete, and
+that is to perform an act of justice. My friend Mr. Thomas Traddles
+has, on two several occasions, “put his name”, if I may use a common
+expression, to bills of exchange for my accommodation. On the first
+occasion Mr. Thomas Traddles was left--let me say, in short, in the
+lurch. The fulfilment of the second has not yet arrived. The amount of
+the first obligation,’ here Mr. Micawber carefully referred to papers,
+‘was, I believe, twenty-three, four, nine and a half, of the second,
+according to my entry of that transaction, eighteen, six, two. These
+sums, united, make a total, if my calculation is correct, amounting to
+forty-one, ten, eleven and a half. My friend Copperfield will perhaps do
+me the favour to check that total?’
+
+I did so and found it correct.
+
+‘To leave this metropolis,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘and my friend Mr.
+Thomas Traddles, without acquitting myself of the pecuniary part of this
+obligation, would weigh upon my mind to an insupportable extent. I have,
+therefore, prepared for my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles, and I now hold
+in my hand, a document, which accomplishes the desired object. I beg
+to hand to my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles my I.O.U. for forty-one, ten,
+eleven and a half, and I am happy to recover my moral dignity, and to
+know that I can once more walk erect before my fellow man!’
+
+With this introduction (which greatly affected him), Mr. Micawber placed
+his I.O.U. in the hands of Traddles, and said he wished him well in
+every relation of life. I am persuaded, not only that this was quite
+the same to Mr. Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself
+hardly knew the difference until he had had time to think about it. Mr.
+Micawber walked so erect before his fellow man, on the strength of
+this virtuous action, that his chest looked half as broad again when he
+lighted us downstairs. We parted with great heartiness on both sides;
+and when I had seen Traddles to his own door, and was going home alone,
+I thought, among the other odd and contradictory things I mused upon,
+that, slippery as Mr. Micawber was, I was probably indebted to some
+compassionate recollection he retained of me as his boy-lodger, for
+never having been asked by him for money. I certainly should not have
+had the moral courage to refuse it; and I have no doubt he knew that (to
+his credit be it written), quite as well as I did.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 37. A LITTLE COLD WATER
+
+
+My new life had lasted for more than a week, and I was stronger than
+ever in those tremendous practical resolutions that I felt the crisis
+required. I continued to walk extremely fast, and to have a general idea
+that I was getting on. I made it a rule to take as much out of myself
+as I possibly could, in my way of doing everything to which I applied
+my energies. I made a perfect victim of myself. I even entertained some
+idea of putting myself on a vegetable diet, vaguely conceiving that, in
+becoming a graminivorous animal, I should sacrifice to Dora.
+
+As yet, little Dora was quite unconscious of my desperate firmness,
+otherwise than as my letters darkly shadowed it forth. But another
+Saturday came, and on that Saturday evening she was to be at Miss
+Mills’s; and when Mr. Mills had gone to his whist-club (telegraphed to
+me in the street, by a bird-cage in the drawing-room middle window), I
+was to go there to tea.
+
+By this time, we were quite settled down in Buckingham Street, where Mr.
+Dick continued his copying in a state of absolute felicity. My aunt had
+obtained a signal victory over Mrs. Crupp, by paying her off, throwing
+the first pitcher she planted on the stairs out of window, and
+protecting in person, up and down the staircase, a supernumerary whom
+she engaged from the outer world. These vigorous measures struck such
+terror to the breast of Mrs. Crupp, that she subsided into her own
+kitchen, under the impression that my aunt was mad. My aunt being
+supremely indifferent to Mrs. Crupp’s opinion and everybody else’s, and
+rather favouring than discouraging the idea, Mrs. Crupp, of late the
+bold, became within a few days so faint-hearted, that rather than
+encounter my aunt upon the staircase, she would endeavour to hide her
+portly form behind doors--leaving visible, however, a wide margin of
+flannel petticoat--or would shrink into dark corners. This gave my aunt
+such unspeakable satisfaction, that I believe she took a delight in
+prowling up and down, with her bonnet insanely perched on the top of her
+head, at times when Mrs. Crupp was likely to be in the way.
+
+My aunt, being uncommonly neat and ingenious, made so many little
+improvements in our domestic arrangements, that I seemed to be richer
+instead of poorer. Among the rest, she converted the pantry into a
+dressing-room for me; and purchased and embellished a bedstead for my
+occupation, which looked as like a bookcase in the daytime as a bedstead
+could. I was the object of her constant solicitude; and my poor mother
+herself could not have loved me better, or studied more how to make me
+happy.
+
+Peggotty had considered herself highly privileged in being allowed to
+participate in these labours; and, although she still retained something
+of her old sentiment of awe in reference to my aunt, had received so
+many marks of encouragement and confidence, that they were the best
+friends possible. But the time had now come (I am speaking of the
+Saturday when I was to take tea at Miss Mills’s) when it was necessary
+for her to return home, and enter on the discharge of the duties she had
+undertaken in behalf of Ham. ‘So good-bye, Barkis,’ said my aunt, ‘and
+take care of yourself! I am sure I never thought I could be sorry to
+lose you!’
+
+I took Peggotty to the coach office and saw her off. She cried at
+parting, and confided her brother to my friendship as Ham had done. We
+had heard nothing of him since he went away, that sunny afternoon.
+
+‘And now, my own dear Davy,’ said Peggotty, ‘if, while you’re a
+prentice, you should want any money to spend; or if, when you’re out of
+your time, my dear, you should want any to set you up (and you must do
+one or other, or both, my darling); who has such a good right to ask
+leave to lend it you, as my sweet girl’s own old stupid me!’
+
+I was not so savagely independent as to say anything in reply, but that
+if ever I borrowed money of anyone, I would borrow it of her. Next to
+accepting a large sum on the spot, I believe this gave Peggotty more
+comfort than anything I could have done.
+
+‘And, my dear!’ whispered Peggotty, ‘tell the pretty little angel that
+I should so have liked to see her, only for a minute! And tell her that
+before she marries my boy, I’ll come and make your house so beautiful
+for you, if you’ll let me!’
+
+I declared that nobody else should touch it; and this gave Peggotty such
+delight that she went away in good spirits.
+
+I fatigued myself as much as I possibly could in the Commons all day, by
+a variety of devices, and at the appointed time in the evening repaired
+to Mr. Mills’s street. Mr. Mills, who was a terrible fellow to fall
+asleep after dinner, had not yet gone out, and there was no bird-cage in
+the middle window.
+
+He kept me waiting so long, that I fervently hoped the Club would fine
+him for being late. At last he came out; and then I saw my own Dora hang
+up the bird-cage, and peep into the balcony to look for me, and run
+in again when she saw I was there, while Jip remained behind, to bark
+injuriously at an immense butcher’s dog in the street, who could have
+taken him like a pill.
+
+Dora came to the drawing-room door to meet me; and Jip came scrambling
+out, tumbling over his own growls, under the impression that I was a
+Bandit; and we all three went in, as happy and loving as could be. I
+soon carried desolation into the bosom of our joys--not that I meant to
+do it, but that I was so full of the subject--by asking Dora, without
+the smallest preparation, if she could love a beggar?
+
+My pretty, little, startled Dora! Her only association with the word was
+a yellow face and a nightcap, or a pair of crutches, or a wooden leg, or
+a dog with a decanter-stand in his mouth, or something of that kind; and
+she stared at me with the most delightful wonder.
+
+‘How can you ask me anything so foolish?’ pouted Dora. ‘Love a beggar!’
+
+‘Dora, my own dearest!’ said I. ‘I am a beggar!’
+
+‘How can you be such a silly thing,’ replied Dora, slapping my hand, ‘as
+to sit there, telling such stories? I’ll make Jip bite you!’
+
+Her childish way was the most delicious way in the world to me, but it
+was necessary to be explicit, and I solemnly repeated:
+
+‘Dora, my own life, I am your ruined David!’
+
+‘I declare I’ll make Jip bite you!’ said Dora, shaking her curls, ‘if
+you are so ridiculous.’
+
+But I looked so serious, that Dora left off shaking her curls, and laid
+her trembling little hand upon my shoulder, and first looked scared
+and anxious, then began to cry. That was dreadful. I fell upon my knees
+before the sofa, caressing her, and imploring her not to rend my heart;
+but, for some time, poor little Dora did nothing but exclaim Oh dear! Oh
+dear! And oh, she was so frightened! And where was Julia Mills! And oh,
+take her to Julia Mills, and go away, please! until I was almost beside
+myself.
+
+At last, after an agony of supplication and protestation, I got Dora
+to look at me, with a horrified expression of face, which I gradually
+soothed until it was only loving, and her soft, pretty cheek was lying
+against mine. Then I told her, with my arms clasped round her, how I
+loved her, so dearly, and so dearly; how I felt it right to offer to
+release her from her engagement, because now I was poor; how I never
+could bear it, or recover it, if I lost her; how I had no fears of
+poverty, if she had none, my arm being nerved and my heart inspired by
+her; how I was already working with a courage such as none but lovers
+knew; how I had begun to be practical, and look into the future; how a
+crust well earned was sweeter far than a feast inherited; and much
+more to the same purpose, which I delivered in a burst of passionate
+eloquence quite surprising to myself, though I had been thinking about
+it, day and night, ever since my aunt had astonished me.
+
+‘Is your heart mine still, dear Dora?’ said I, rapturously, for I knew
+by her clinging to me that it was.
+
+‘Oh, yes!’ cried Dora. ‘Oh, yes, it’s all yours. Oh, don’t be dreadful!’
+
+I dreadful! To Dora!
+
+‘Don’t talk about being poor, and working hard!’ said Dora, nestling
+closer to me. ‘Oh, don’t, don’t!’
+
+‘My dearest love,’ said I, ‘the crust well-earned--’
+
+‘Oh, yes; but I don’t want to hear any more about crusts!’ said Dora.
+‘And Jip must have a mutton-chop every day at twelve, or he’ll die.’
+
+I was charmed with her childish, winning way. I fondly explained to Dora
+that Jip should have his mutton-chop with his accustomed regularity.
+I drew a picture of our frugal home, made independent by my
+labour--sketching in the little house I had seen at Highgate, and my
+aunt in her room upstairs.
+
+‘I am not dreadful now, Dora?’ said I, tenderly.
+
+‘Oh, no, no!’ cried Dora. ‘But I hope your aunt will keep in her own
+room a good deal. And I hope she’s not a scolding old thing!’
+
+If it were possible for me to love Dora more than ever, I am sure I did.
+But I felt she was a little impracticable. It damped my new-born ardour,
+to find that ardour so difficult of communication to her. I made another
+trial. When she was quite herself again, and was curling Jip’s ears, as
+he lay upon her lap, I became grave, and said:
+
+‘My own! May I mention something?’
+
+‘Oh, please don’t be practical!’ said Dora, coaxingly. ‘Because it
+frightens me so!’
+
+‘Sweetheart!’ I returned; ‘there is nothing to alarm you in all this. I
+want you to think of it quite differently. I want to make it nerve you,
+and inspire you, Dora!’
+
+‘Oh, but that’s so shocking!’ cried Dora.
+
+‘My love, no. Perseverance and strength of character will enable us to
+bear much worse things.’ ‘But I haven’t got any strength at all,’
+said Dora, shaking her curls. ‘Have I, Jip? Oh, do kiss Jip, and be
+agreeable!’
+
+It was impossible to resist kissing Jip, when she held him up to me for
+that purpose, putting her own bright, rosy little mouth into kissing
+form, as she directed the operation, which she insisted should be
+performed symmetrically, on the centre of his nose. I did as she bade
+me--rewarding myself afterwards for my obedience--and she charmed me out
+of my graver character for I don’t know how long.
+
+‘But, Dora, my beloved!’ said I, at last resuming it; ‘I was going to
+mention something.’
+
+The judge of the Prerogative Court might have fallen in love with her,
+to see her fold her little hands and hold them up, begging and praying
+me not to be dreadful any more.
+
+‘Indeed I am not going to be, my darling!’ I assured her. ‘But, Dora, my
+love, if you will sometimes think,--not despondingly, you know; far from
+that!--but if you will sometimes think--just to encourage yourself--that
+you are engaged to a poor man--’
+
+‘Don’t, don’t! Pray don’t!’ cried Dora. ‘It’s so very dreadful!’
+
+‘My soul, not at all!’ said I, cheerfully. ‘If you will sometimes think
+of that, and look about now and then at your papa’s housekeeping, and
+endeavour to acquire a little habit--of accounts, for instance--’
+
+Poor little Dora received this suggestion with something that was half a
+sob and half a scream.
+
+‘--It would be so useful to us afterwards,’ I went on. ‘And if you would
+promise me to read a little--a little Cookery Book that I would send
+you, it would be so excellent for both of us. For our path in life, my
+Dora,’ said I, warming with the subject, ‘is stony and rugged now, and
+it rests with us to smooth it. We must fight our way onward. We must be
+brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet, and crush them!’
+
+I was going on at a great rate, with a clenched hand, and a most
+enthusiastic countenance; but it was quite unnecessary to proceed. I had
+said enough. I had done it again. Oh, she was so frightened! Oh, where
+was Julia Mills! Oh, take her to Julia Mills, and go away, please!
+So that, in short, I was quite distracted, and raved about the
+drawing-room.
+
+I thought I had killed her, this time. I sprinkled water on her face.
+I went down on my knees. I plucked at my hair. I denounced myself as a
+remorseless brute and a ruthless beast. I implored her forgiveness.
+I besought her to look up. I ravaged Miss Mills’s work-box for a
+smelling-bottle, and in my agony of mind applied an ivory needle-case
+instead, and dropped all the needles over Dora. I shook my fists at Jip,
+who was as frantic as myself. I did every wild extravagance that could
+be done, and was a long way beyond the end of my wits when Miss Mills
+came into the room.
+
+‘Who has done this?’ exclaimed Miss Mills, succouring her friend.
+
+I replied, ‘I, Miss Mills! I have done it! Behold the destroyer!’--or
+words to that effect--and hid my face from the light, in the sofa
+cushion.
+
+At first Miss Mills thought it was a quarrel, and that we were verging
+on the Desert of Sahara; but she soon found out how matters stood, for
+my dear affectionate little Dora, embracing her, began exclaiming that I
+was ‘a poor labourer’; and then cried for me, and embraced me, and asked
+me would I let her give me all her money to keep, and then fell on Miss
+Mills’s neck, sobbing as if her tender heart were broken.
+
+Miss Mills must have been born to be a blessing to us. She ascertained
+from me in a few words what it was all about, comforted Dora, and
+gradually convinced her that I was not a labourer--from my manner of
+stating the case I believe Dora concluded that I was a navigator,
+and went balancing myself up and down a plank all day with a
+wheelbarrow--and so brought us together in peace. When we were quite
+composed, and Dora had gone up-stairs to put some rose-water to her
+eyes, Miss Mills rang for tea. In the ensuing interval, I told Miss
+Mills that she was evermore my friend, and that my heart must cease to
+vibrate ere I could forget her sympathy.
+
+I then expounded to Miss Mills what I had endeavoured, so very
+unsuccessfully, to expound to Dora. Miss Mills replied, on general
+principles, that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace of
+cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.
+
+I said to Miss Mills that this was very true, and who should know
+it better than I, who loved Dora with a love that never mortal had
+experienced yet? But on Miss Mills observing, with despondency, that
+it were well indeed for some hearts if this were so, I explained that
+I begged leave to restrict the observation to mortals of the masculine
+gender.
+
+I then put it to Miss Mills, to say whether she considered that there
+was or was not any practical merit in the suggestion I had been anxious
+to make, concerning the accounts, the housekeeping, and the Cookery
+Book?
+
+Miss Mills, after some consideration, thus replied:
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield, I will be plain with you. Mental suffering and trial
+supply, in some natures, the place of years, and I will be as plain with
+you as if I were a Lady Abbess. No. The suggestion is not appropriate
+to our Dora. Our dearest Dora is a favourite child of nature. She is a
+thing of light, and airiness, and joy. I am free to confess that if it
+could be done, it might be well, but--’ And Miss Mills shook her head.
+
+I was encouraged by this closing admission on the part of Miss Mills to
+ask her, whether, for Dora’s sake, if she had any opportunity of luring
+her attention to such preparations for an earnest life, she would avail
+herself of it? Miss Mills replied in the affirmative so readily, that I
+further asked her if she would take charge of the Cookery Book; and, if
+she ever could insinuate it upon Dora’s acceptance, without frightening
+her, undertake to do me that crowning service. Miss Mills accepted this
+trust, too; but was not sanguine.
+
+And Dora returned, looking such a lovely little creature, that I really
+doubted whether she ought to be troubled with anything so ordinary. And
+she loved me so much, and was so captivating (particularly when she made
+Jip stand on his hind legs for toast, and when she pretended to hold
+that nose of his against the hot teapot for punishment because he
+wouldn’t), that I felt like a sort of Monster who had got into a Fairy’s
+bower, when I thought of having frightened her, and made her cry.
+
+After tea we had the guitar; and Dora sang those same dear old French
+songs about the impossibility of ever on any account leaving off
+dancing, La ra la, La ra la, until I felt a much greater Monster than
+before.
+
+We had only one check to our pleasure, and that happened a little while
+before I took my leave, when, Miss Mills chancing to make some allusion
+to tomorrow morning, I unluckily let out that, being obliged to exert
+myself now, I got up at five o’clock. Whether Dora had any idea that
+I was a Private Watchman, I am unable to say; but it made a great
+impression on her, and she neither played nor sang any more.
+
+It was still on her mind when I bade her adieu; and she said to me, in
+her pretty coaxing way--as if I were a doll, I used to think:
+
+‘Now don’t get up at five o’clock, you naughty boy. It’s so
+nonsensical!’
+
+‘My love,’ said I, ‘I have work to do.’
+
+‘But don’t do it!’ returned Dora. ‘Why should you?’
+
+It was impossible to say to that sweet little surprised face, otherwise
+than lightly and playfully, that we must work to live.
+
+‘Oh! How ridiculous!’ cried Dora.
+
+‘How shall we live without, Dora?’ said I.
+
+‘How? Any how!’ said Dora.
+
+She seemed to think she had quite settled the question, and gave me such
+a triumphant little kiss, direct from her innocent heart, that I would
+hardly have put her out of conceit with her answer, for a fortune.
+
+Well! I loved her, and I went on loving her, most absorbingly, entirely,
+and completely. But going on, too, working pretty hard, and busily
+keeping red-hot all the irons I now had in the fire, I would sit
+sometimes of a night, opposite my aunt, thinking how I had frightened
+Dora that time, and how I could best make my way with a guitar-case
+through the forest of difficulty, until I used to fancy that my head was
+turning quite grey.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 38. A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP
+
+
+I did not allow my resolution, with respect to the Parliamentary
+Debates, to cool. It was one of the irons I began to heat immediately,
+and one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at, with a perseverance
+I may honestly admire. I bought an approved scheme of the noble art and
+mystery of stenography (which cost me ten and sixpence); and plunged
+into a sea of perplexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the
+confines of distraction. The changes that were rung upon dots, which
+in such a position meant such a thing, and in such another position
+something else, entirely different; the wonderful vagaries that were
+played by circles; the unaccountable consequences that resulted from
+marks like flies’ legs; the tremendous effects of a curve in a wrong
+place; not only troubled my waking hours, but reappeared before me in
+my sleep. When I had groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties,
+and had mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple in itself,
+there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary
+characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who
+insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb,
+meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for
+disadvantageous. When I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found
+that they had driven everything else out of it; then, beginning again, I
+forgot them; while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments
+of the system; in short, it was almost heart-breaking.
+
+It might have been quite heart-breaking, but for Dora, who was the stay
+and anchor of my tempest-driven bark. Every scratch in the scheme was
+a gnarled oak in the forest of difficulty, and I went on cutting them
+down, one after another, with such vigour, that in three or four months
+I was in a condition to make an experiment on one of our crack speakers
+in the Commons. Shall I ever forget how the crack speaker walked off
+from me before I began, and left my imbecile pencil staggering about the
+paper as if it were in a fit!
+
+This would not do, it was quite clear. I was flying too high, and should
+never get on, so. I resorted to Traddles for advice; who suggested
+that he should dictate speeches to me, at a pace, and with occasional
+stoppages, adapted to my weakness. Very grateful for this friendly aid,
+I accepted the proposal; and night after night, almost every night, for
+a long time, we had a sort of Private Parliament in Buckingham Street,
+after I came home from the Doctor’s.
+
+I should like to see such a Parliament anywhere else! My aunt and Mr.
+Dick represented the Government or the Opposition (as the case might
+be), and Traddles, with the assistance of Enfield’s Speakers, or a
+volume of parliamentary orations, thundered astonishing invectives
+against them. Standing by the table, with his finger in the page to keep
+the place, and his right arm flourishing above his head, Traddles, as
+Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Burke, Lord Castlereagh, Viscount
+Sidmouth, or Mr. Canning, would work himself into the most violent
+heats, and deliver the most withering denunciations of the profligacy
+and corruption of my aunt and Mr. Dick; while I used to sit, at a little
+distance, with my notebook on my knee, fagging after him with all my
+might and main. The inconsistency and recklessness of Traddles were not
+to be exceeded by any real politician. He was for any description of
+policy, in the compass of a week; and nailed all sorts of colours to
+every denomination of mast. My aunt, looking very like an immovable
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, would occasionally throw in an interruption
+or two, as ‘Hear!’ or ‘No!’ or ‘Oh!’ when the text seemed to require it:
+which was always a signal to Mr. Dick (a perfect country gentleman)
+to follow lustily with the same cry. But Mr. Dick got taxed with
+such things in the course of his Parliamentary career, and was made
+responsible for such awful consequences, that he became uncomfortable in
+his mind sometimes. I believe he actually began to be afraid he really
+had been doing something, tending to the annihilation of the British
+constitution, and the ruin of the country.
+
+Often and often we pursued these debates until the clock pointed to
+midnight, and the candles were burning down. The result of so much good
+practice was, that by and by I began to keep pace with Traddles pretty
+well, and should have been quite triumphant if I had had the least idea
+what my notes were about. But, as to reading them after I had got them,
+I might as well have copied the Chinese inscriptions of an immense
+collection of tea-chests, or the golden characters on all the great red
+and green bottles in the chemists’ shops!
+
+There was nothing for it, but to turn back and begin all over again. It
+was very hard, but I turned back, though with a heavy heart, and began
+laboriously and methodically to plod over the same tedious ground at a
+snail’s pace; stopping to examine minutely every speck in the way, on
+all sides, and making the most desperate efforts to know these elusive
+characters by sight wherever I met them. I was always punctual at
+the office; at the Doctor’s too: and I really did work, as the common
+expression is, like a cart-horse. One day, when I went to the Commons as
+usual, I found Mr. Spenlow in the doorway looking extremely grave, and
+talking to himself. As he was in the habit of complaining of pains in
+his head--he had naturally a short throat, and I do seriously believe
+he over-starched himself--I was at first alarmed by the idea that he was
+not quite right in that direction; but he soon relieved my uneasiness.
+
+Instead of returning my ‘Good morning’ with his usual affability, he
+looked at me in a distant, ceremonious manner, and coldly requested me
+to accompany him to a certain coffee-house, which, in those days, had
+a door opening into the Commons, just within the little archway in St.
+Paul’s Churchyard. I complied, in a very uncomfortable state, and with a
+warm shooting all over me, as if my apprehensions were breaking out into
+buds. When I allowed him to go on a little before, on account of the
+narrowness of the way, I observed that he carried his head with a lofty
+air that was particularly unpromising; and my mind misgave me that he
+had found out about my darling Dora.
+
+If I had not guessed this, on the way to the coffee-house, I could
+hardly have failed to know what was the matter when I followed him
+into an upstairs room, and found Miss Murdstone there, supported by
+a background of sideboard, on which were several inverted tumblers
+sustaining lemons, and two of those extraordinary boxes, all corners and
+flutings, for sticking knives and forks in, which, happily for mankind,
+are now obsolete.
+
+Miss Murdstone gave me her chilly finger-nails, and sat severely rigid.
+Mr. Spenlow shut the door, motioned me to a chair, and stood on the
+hearth-rug in front of the fireplace.
+
+‘Have the goodness to show Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Spenlow, what you
+have in your reticule, Miss Murdstone.’
+
+I believe it was the old identical steel-clasped reticule of my
+childhood, that shut up like a bite. Compressing her lips, in sympathy
+with the snap, Miss Murdstone opened it--opening her mouth a little
+at the same time--and produced my last letter to Dora, teeming with
+expressions of devoted affection.
+
+‘I believe that is your writing, Mr. Copperfield?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
+
+I was very hot, and the voice I heard was very unlike mine, when I said,
+‘It is, sir!’
+
+‘If I am not mistaken,’ said Mr. Spenlow, as Miss Murdstone brought a
+parcel of letters out of her reticule, tied round with the dearest bit
+of blue ribbon, ‘those are also from your pen, Mr. Copperfield?’
+
+I took them from her with a most desolate sensation; and, glancing at
+such phrases at the top, as ‘My ever dearest and own Dora,’ ‘My best
+beloved angel,’ ‘My blessed one for ever,’ and the like, blushed deeply,
+and inclined my head.
+
+‘No, thank you!’ said Mr. Spenlow, coldly, as I mechanically offered
+them back to him. ‘I will not deprive you of them. Miss Murdstone, be so
+good as to proceed!’
+
+That gentle creature, after a moment’s thoughtful survey of the carpet,
+delivered herself with much dry unction as follows.
+
+‘I must confess to having entertained my suspicions of Miss Spenlow, in
+reference to David Copperfield, for some time. I observed Miss Spenlow
+and David Copperfield, when they first met; and the impression made upon
+me then was not agreeable. The depravity of the human heart is such--’
+
+‘You will oblige me, ma’am,’ interrupted Mr. Spenlow, ‘by confining
+yourself to facts.’
+
+Miss Murdstone cast down her eyes, shook her head as if protesting
+against this unseemly interruption, and with frowning dignity resumed:
+
+‘Since I am to confine myself to facts, I will state them as dryly as I
+can. Perhaps that will be considered an acceptable course of proceeding.
+I have already said, sir, that I have had my suspicions of Miss Spenlow,
+in reference to David Copperfield, for some time. I have frequently
+endeavoured to find decisive corroboration of those suspicions, but
+without effect. I have therefore forborne to mention them to Miss
+Spenlow’s father’; looking severely at him--‘knowing how little
+disposition there usually is in such cases, to acknowledge the
+conscientious discharge of duty.’
+
+Mr. Spenlow seemed quite cowed by the gentlemanly sternness of Miss
+Murdstone’s manner, and deprecated her severity with a conciliatory
+little wave of his hand.
+
+‘On my return to Norwood, after the period of absence occasioned by my
+brother’s marriage,’ pursued Miss Murdstone in a disdainful voice, ‘and
+on the return of Miss Spenlow from her visit to her friend Miss Mills,
+I imagined that the manner of Miss Spenlow gave me greater occasion for
+suspicion than before. Therefore I watched Miss Spenlow closely.’
+
+Dear, tender little Dora, so unconscious of this Dragon’s eye!
+
+‘Still,’ resumed Miss Murdstone, ‘I found no proof until last night.
+It appeared to me that Miss Spenlow received too many letters from her
+friend Miss Mills; but Miss Mills being her friend with her father’s
+full concurrence,’ another telling blow at Mr. Spenlow, ‘it was not
+for me to interfere. If I may not be permitted to allude to the natural
+depravity of the human heart, at least I may--I must--be permitted, so
+far to refer to misplaced confidence.’
+
+Mr. Spenlow apologetically murmured his assent.
+
+‘Last evening after tea,’ pursued Miss Murdstone, ‘I observed the little
+dog starting, rolling, and growling about the drawing-room, worrying
+something. I said to Miss Spenlow, “Dora, what is that the dog has in
+his mouth? It’s paper.” Miss Spenlow immediately put her hand to her
+frock, gave a sudden cry, and ran to the dog. I interposed, and said,
+“Dora, my love, you must permit me.”’
+
+Oh Jip, miserable Spaniel, this wretchedness, then, was your work!
+
+‘Miss Spenlow endeavoured,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘to bribe me with
+kisses, work-boxes, and small articles of jewellery--that, of course,
+I pass over. The little dog retreated under the sofa on my approaching
+him, and was with great difficulty dislodged by the fire-irons. Even
+when dislodged, he still kept the letter in his mouth; and on my
+endeavouring to take it from him, at the imminent risk of being bitten,
+he kept it between his teeth so pertinaciously as to suffer himself
+to be held suspended in the air by means of the document. At length I
+obtained possession of it. After perusing it, I taxed Miss Spenlow with
+having many such letters in her possession; and ultimately obtained from
+her the packet which is now in David Copperfield’s hand.’
+
+Here she ceased; and snapping her reticule again, and shutting her
+mouth, looked as if she might be broken, but could never be bent.
+
+‘You have heard Miss Murdstone,’ said Mr. Spenlow, turning to me. ‘I beg
+to ask, Mr. Copperfield, if you have anything to say in reply?’
+
+The picture I had before me, of the beautiful little treasure of my
+heart, sobbing and crying all night--of her being alone, frightened,
+and wretched, then--of her having so piteously begged and prayed that
+stony-hearted woman to forgive her--of her having vainly offered her
+those kisses, work-boxes, and trinkets--of her being in such grievous
+distress, and all for me--very much impaired the little dignity I had
+been able to muster. I am afraid I was in a tremulous state for a minute
+or so, though I did my best to disguise it.
+
+‘There is nothing I can say, sir,’ I returned, ‘except that all the
+blame is mine. Dora--’
+
+‘Miss Spenlow, if you please,’ said her father, majestically.
+
+‘--was induced and persuaded by me,’ I went on, swallowing that colder
+designation, ‘to consent to this concealment, and I bitterly regret it.’
+
+‘You are very much to blame, sir,’ said Mr. Spenlow, walking to and fro
+upon the hearth-rug, and emphasizing what he said with his whole body
+instead of his head, on account of the stiffness of his cravat and
+spine. ‘You have done a stealthy and unbecoming action, Mr. Copperfield.
+When I take a gentleman to my house, no matter whether he is nineteen,
+twenty-nine, or ninety, I take him there in a spirit of confidence.
+If he abuses my confidence, he commits a dishonourable action, Mr.
+Copperfield.’
+
+‘I feel it, sir, I assure you,’ I returned. ‘But I never thought so,
+before. Sincerely, honestly, indeed, Mr. Spenlow, I never thought so,
+before. I love Miss Spenlow to that extent--’
+
+‘Pooh! nonsense!’ said Mr. Spenlow, reddening. ‘Pray don’t tell me to my
+face that you love my daughter, Mr. Copperfield!’
+
+‘Could I defend my conduct if I did not, sir?’ I returned, with all
+humility.
+
+‘Can you defend your conduct if you do, sir?’ said Mr. Spenlow, stopping
+short upon the hearth-rug. ‘Have you considered your years, and my
+daughter’s years, Mr. Copperfield? Have you considered what it is to
+undermine the confidence that should subsist between my daughter and
+myself? Have you considered my daughter’s station in life, the projects
+I may contemplate for her advancement, the testamentary intentions I
+may have with reference to her? Have you considered anything, Mr.
+Copperfield?’
+
+‘Very little, sir, I am afraid;’ I answered, speaking to him as
+respectfully and sorrowfully as I felt; ‘but pray believe me, I have
+considered my own worldly position. When I explained it to you, we were
+already engaged--’
+
+‘I BEG,’ said Mr. Spenlow, more like Punch than I had ever seen him,
+as he energetically struck one hand upon the other--I could not help
+noticing that even in my despair; ‘that YOU Will NOT talk to me of
+engagements, Mr. Copperfield!’
+
+The otherwise immovable Miss Murdstone laughed contemptuously in one
+short syllable.
+
+‘When I explained my altered position to you, sir,’ I began again,
+substituting a new form of expression for what was so unpalatable to
+him, ‘this concealment, into which I am so unhappy as to have led Miss
+Spenlow, had begun. Since I have been in that altered position, I have
+strained every nerve, I have exerted every energy, to improve it. I am
+sure I shall improve it in time. Will you grant me time--any length of
+time? We are both so young, sir,--’
+
+‘You are right,’ interrupted Mr. Spenlow, nodding his head a great
+many times, and frowning very much, ‘you are both very young. It’s all
+nonsense. Let there be an end of the nonsense. Take away those letters,
+and throw them in the fire. Give me Miss Spenlow’s letters to throw in
+the fire; and although our future intercourse must, you are aware, be
+restricted to the Commons here, we will agree to make no further mention
+of the past. Come, Mr. Copperfield, you don’t want sense; and this is
+the sensible course.’
+
+No. I couldn’t think of agreeing to it. I was very sorry, but there
+was a higher consideration than sense. Love was above all earthly
+considerations, and I loved Dora to idolatry, and Dora loved me. I
+didn’t exactly say so; I softened it down as much as I could; but I
+implied it, and I was resolute upon it. I don’t think I made myself very
+ridiculous, but I know I was resolute.
+
+‘Very well, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘I must try my influence
+with my daughter.’
+
+Miss Murdstone, by an expressive sound, a long drawn respiration, which
+was neither a sigh nor a moan, but was like both, gave it as her opinion
+that he should have done this at first.
+
+‘I must try,’ said Mr. Spenlow, confirmed by this support, ‘my
+influence with my daughter. Do you decline to take those letters, Mr.
+Copperfield?’ For I had laid them on the table.
+
+Yes. I told him I hoped he would not think it wrong, but I couldn’t
+possibly take them from Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Nor from me?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
+
+No, I replied with the profoundest respect; nor from him.
+
+‘Very well!’ said Mr. Spenlow.
+
+A silence succeeding, I was undecided whether to go or stay. At length
+I was moving quietly towards the door, with the intention of saying that
+perhaps I should consult his feelings best by withdrawing: when he said,
+with his hands in his coat pockets, into which it was as much as he
+could do to get them; and with what I should call, upon the whole, a
+decidedly pious air:
+
+‘You are probably aware, Mr. Copperfield, that I am not altogether
+destitute of worldly possessions, and that my daughter is my nearest and
+dearest relative?’
+
+I hurriedly made him a reply to the effect, that I hoped the error into
+which I had been betrayed by the desperate nature of my love, did not
+induce him to think me mercenary too?
+
+‘I don’t allude to the matter in that light,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘It
+would be better for yourself, and all of us, if you WERE mercenary, Mr.
+Copperfield--I mean, if you were more discreet and less influenced by
+all this youthful nonsense. No. I merely say, with quite another view,
+you are probably aware I have some property to bequeath to my child?’
+
+I certainly supposed so.
+
+‘And you can hardly think,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘having experience of what
+we see, in the Commons here, every day, of the various unaccountable
+and negligent proceedings of men, in respect of their testamentary
+arrangements--of all subjects, the one on which perhaps the strangest
+revelations of human inconsistency are to be met with--but that mine are
+made?’
+
+I inclined my head in acquiescence.
+
+‘I should not allow,’ said Mr. Spenlow, with an evident increase of
+pious sentiment, and slowly shaking his head as he poised himself upon
+his toes and heels alternately, ‘my suitable provision for my child to
+be influenced by a piece of youthful folly like the present. It is mere
+folly. Mere nonsense. In a little while, it will weigh lighter than
+any feather. But I might--I might--if this silly business were not
+completely relinquished altogether, be induced in some anxious moment
+to guard her from, and surround her with protections against, the
+consequences of any foolish step in the way of marriage. Now, Mr.
+Copperfield, I hope that you will not render it necessary for me to
+open, even for a quarter of an hour, that closed page in the book of
+life, and unsettle, even for a quarter of an hour, grave affairs long
+since composed.’
+
+There was a serenity, a tranquillity, a calm sunset air about him, which
+quite affected me. He was so peaceful and resigned--clearly had his
+affairs in such perfect train, and so systematically wound up--that he
+was a man to feel touched in the contemplation of. I really think I saw
+tears rise to his eyes, from the depth of his own feeling of all this.
+
+But what could I do? I could not deny Dora and my own heart. When he
+told me I had better take a week to consider of what he had said, how
+could I say I wouldn’t take a week, yet how could I fail to know that no
+amount of weeks could influence such love as mine?
+
+‘In the meantime, confer with Miss Trotwood, or with any person with
+any knowledge of life,’ said Mr. Spenlow, adjusting his cravat with both
+hands. ‘Take a week, Mr. Copperfield.’
+
+I submitted; and, with a countenance as expressive as I was able to
+make it of dejected and despairing constancy, came out of the room. Miss
+Murdstone’s heavy eyebrows followed me to the door--I say her eyebrows
+rather than her eyes, because they were much more important in her
+face--and she looked so exactly as she used to look, at about that
+hour of the morning, in our parlour at Blunderstone, that I could have
+fancied I had been breaking down in my lessons again, and that the
+dead weight on my mind was that horrible old spelling-book, with
+oval woodcuts, shaped, to my youthful fancy, like the glasses out of
+spectacles.
+
+When I got to the office, and, shutting out old Tiffey and the rest of
+them with my hands, sat at my desk, in my own particular nook, thinking
+of this earthquake that had taken place so unexpectedly, and in the
+bitterness of my spirit cursing Jip, I fell into such a state of torment
+about Dora, that I wonder I did not take up my hat and rush insanely to
+Norwood. The idea of their frightening her, and making her cry, and of
+my not being there to comfort her, was so excruciating, that it impelled
+me to write a wild letter to Mr. Spenlow, beseeching him not to visit
+upon her the consequences of my awful destiny. I implored him to spare
+her gentle nature--not to crush a fragile flower--and addressed him
+generally, to the best of my remembrance, as if, instead of being her
+father, he had been an Ogre, or the Dragon of Wantley. This letter I
+sealed and laid upon his desk before he returned; and when he came in,
+I saw him, through the half-opened door of his room, take it up and read
+it.
+
+He said nothing about it all the morning; but before he went away in the
+afternoon he called me in, and told me that I need not make myself at
+all uneasy about his daughter’s happiness. He had assured her, he said,
+that it was all nonsense; and he had nothing more to say to her. He
+believed he was an indulgent father (as indeed he was), and I might
+spare myself any solicitude on her account.
+
+‘You may make it necessary, if you are foolish or obstinate, Mr.
+Copperfield,’ he observed, ‘for me to send my daughter abroad again,
+for a term; but I have a better opinion of you. I hope you will be wiser
+than that, in a few days. As to Miss Murdstone,’ for I had alluded to
+her in the letter, ‘I respect that lady’s vigilance, and feel obliged to
+her; but she has strict charge to avoid the subject. All I desire, Mr.
+Copperfield, is, that it should be forgotten. All you have got to do,
+Mr. Copperfield, is to forget it.’
+
+All! In the note I wrote to Miss Mills, I bitterly quoted this
+sentiment. All I had to do, I said, with gloomy sarcasm, was to forget
+Dora. That was all, and what was that! I entreated Miss Mills to see
+me, that evening. If it could not be done with Mr. Mills’s sanction
+and concurrence, I besought a clandestine interview in the back kitchen
+where the Mangle was. I informed her that my reason was tottering on
+its throne, and only she, Miss Mills, could prevent its being deposed.
+I signed myself, hers distractedly; and I couldn’t help feeling, while
+I read this composition over, before sending it by a porter, that it was
+something in the style of Mr. Micawber.
+
+However, I sent it. At night I repaired to Miss Mills’s street, and
+walked up and down, until I was stealthily fetched in by Miss Mills’s
+maid, and taken the area way to the back kitchen. I have since seen
+reason to believe that there was nothing on earth to prevent my going in
+at the front door, and being shown up into the drawing-room, except Miss
+Mills’s love of the romantic and mysterious.
+
+In the back kitchen, I raved as became me. I went there, I suppose,
+to make a fool of myself, and I am quite sure I did it. Miss Mills had
+received a hasty note from Dora, telling her that all was discovered,
+and saying. ‘Oh pray come to me, Julia, do, do!’ But Miss Mills,
+mistrusting the acceptability of her presence to the higher powers, had
+not yet gone; and we were all benighted in the Desert of Sahara.
+
+Miss Mills had a wonderful flow of words, and liked to pour them out. I
+could not help feeling, though she mingled her tears with mine, that she
+had a dreadful luxury in our afflictions. She petted them, as I may say,
+and made the most of them. A deep gulf, she observed, had opened between
+Dora and me, and Love could only span it with its rainbow. Love must
+suffer in this stern world; it ever had been so, it ever would be so. No
+matter, Miss Mills remarked. Hearts confined by cobwebs would burst at
+last, and then Love was avenged.
+
+This was small consolation, but Miss Mills wouldn’t encourage fallacious
+hopes. She made me much more wretched than I was before, and I felt (and
+told her with the deepest gratitude) that she was indeed a friend. We
+resolved that she should go to Dora the first thing in the morning,
+and find some means of assuring her, either by looks or words, of my
+devotion and misery. We parted, overwhelmed with grief; and I think Miss
+Mills enjoyed herself completely.
+
+I confided all to my aunt when I got home; and in spite of all she could
+say to me, went to bed despairing. I got up despairing, and went out
+despairing. It was Saturday morning, and I went straight to the Commons.
+
+I was surprised, when I came within sight of our office-door, to see the
+ticket-porters standing outside talking together, and some half-dozen
+stragglers gazing at the windows which were shut up. I quickened my
+pace, and, passing among them, wondering at their looks, went hurriedly
+in.
+
+The clerks were there, but nobody was doing anything. Old Tiffey, for
+the first time in his life I should think, was sitting on somebody
+else’s stool, and had not hung up his hat.
+
+‘This is a dreadful calamity, Mr. Copperfield,’ said he, as I entered.
+
+‘What is?’ I exclaimed. ‘What’s the matter?’
+
+‘Don’t you know?’ cried Tiffey, and all the rest of them, coming round
+me.
+
+‘No!’ said I, looking from face to face.
+
+‘Mr. Spenlow,’ said Tiffey.
+
+‘What about him!’
+
+‘Dead!’ I thought it was the office reeling, and not I, as one of
+the clerks caught hold of me. They sat me down in a chair, untied my
+neck-cloth, and brought me some water. I have no idea whether this took
+any time.
+
+‘Dead?’ said I.
+
+‘He dined in town yesterday, and drove down in the phaeton by himself,’
+said Tiffey, ‘having sent his own groom home by the coach, as he
+sometimes did, you know--’
+
+‘Well?’
+
+‘The phaeton went home without him. The horses stopped at the
+stable-gate. The man went out with a lantern. Nobody in the carriage.’
+
+‘Had they run away?’
+
+‘They were not hot,’ said Tiffey, putting on his glasses; ‘no hotter, I
+understand, than they would have been, going down at the usual pace. The
+reins were broken, but they had been dragging on the ground. The house
+was roused up directly, and three of them went out along the road. They
+found him a mile off.’
+
+‘More than a mile off, Mr. Tiffey,’ interposed a junior.
+
+‘Was it? I believe you are right,’ said Tiffey,--‘more than a mile
+off--not far from the church--lying partly on the roadside, and partly
+on the path, upon his face. Whether he fell out in a fit, or got out,
+feeling ill before the fit came on--or even whether he was quite dead
+then, though there is no doubt he was quite insensible--no one appears
+to know. If he breathed, certainly he never spoke. Medical assistance
+was got as soon as possible, but it was quite useless.’
+
+I cannot describe the state of mind into which I was thrown by this
+intelligence. The shock of such an event happening so suddenly, and
+happening to one with whom I had been in any respect at variance--the
+appalling vacancy in the room he had occupied so lately, where his chair
+and table seemed to wait for him, and his handwriting of yesterday was
+like a ghost--the indefinable impossibility of separating him from the
+place, and feeling, when the door opened, as if he might come in--the
+lazy hush and rest there was in the office, and the insatiable relish
+with which our people talked about it, and other people came in and
+out all day, and gorged themselves with the subject--this is easily
+intelligible to anyone. What I cannot describe is, how, in the innermost
+recesses of my own heart, I had a lurking jealousy even of Death. How
+I felt as if its might would push me from my ground in Dora’s thoughts.
+How I was, in a grudging way I have no words for, envious of her grief.
+How it made me restless to think of her weeping to others, or being
+consoled by others. How I had a grasping, avaricious wish to shut out
+everybody from her but myself, and to be all in all to her, at that
+unseasonable time of all times.
+
+In the trouble of this state of mind--not exclusively my own, I hope,
+but known to others--I went down to Norwood that night; and finding from
+one of the servants, when I made my inquiries at the door, that Miss
+Mills was there, got my aunt to direct a letter to her, which I wrote.
+I deplored the untimely death of Mr. Spenlow, most sincerely, and shed
+tears in doing so. I entreated her to tell Dora, if Dora were in a
+state to hear it, that he had spoken to me with the utmost kindness and
+consideration; and had coupled nothing but tenderness, not a single or
+reproachful word, with her name. I know I did this selfishly, to have my
+name brought before her; but I tried to believe it was an act of justice
+to his memory. Perhaps I did believe it.
+
+My aunt received a few lines next day in reply; addressed, outside, to
+her; within, to me. Dora was overcome by grief; and when her friend had
+asked her should she send her love to me, had only cried, as she was
+always crying, ‘Oh, dear papa! oh, poor papa!’ But she had not said No,
+and that I made the most of.
+
+Mr. Jorkins, who had been at Norwood since the occurrence, came to the
+office a few days afterwards. He and Tiffey were closeted together for
+some few moments, and then Tiffey looked out at the door and beckoned me
+in.
+
+‘Oh!’ said Mr. Jorkins. ‘Mr. Tiffey and myself, Mr. Copperfield, are
+about to examine the desks, the drawers, and other such repositories
+of the deceased, with the view of sealing up his private papers, and
+searching for a Will. There is no trace of any, elsewhere. It may be as
+well for you to assist us, if you please.’
+
+I had been in agony to obtain some knowledge of the circumstances
+in which my Dora would be placed--as, in whose guardianship, and so
+forth--and this was something towards it. We began the search at once;
+Mr. Jorkins unlocking the drawers and desks, and we all taking out the
+papers. The office-papers we placed on one side, and the private papers
+(which were not numerous) on the other. We were very grave; and when we
+came to a stray seal, or pencil-case, or ring, or any little article of
+that kind which we associated personally with him, we spoke very low.
+
+We had sealed up several packets; and were still going on dustily and
+quietly, when Mr. Jorkins said to us, applying exactly the same words to
+his late partner as his late partner had applied to him:
+
+‘Mr. Spenlow was very difficult to move from the beaten track. You know
+what he was! I am disposed to think he had made no will.’
+
+‘Oh, I know he had!’ said I.
+
+They both stopped and looked at me. ‘On the very day when I last saw
+him,’ said I, ‘he told me that he had, and that his affairs were long
+since settled.’
+
+Mr. Jorkins and old Tiffey shook their heads with one accord.
+
+‘That looks unpromising,’ said Tiffey.
+
+‘Very unpromising,’ said Mr. Jorkins.
+
+‘Surely you don’t doubt--’ I began.
+
+‘My good Mr. Copperfield!’ said Tiffey, laying his hand upon my arm, and
+shutting up both his eyes as he shook his head: ‘if you had been in the
+Commons as long as I have, you would know that there is no subject on
+which men are so inconsistent, and so little to be trusted.’
+
+‘Why, bless my soul, he made that very remark!’ I replied persistently.
+
+‘I should call that almost final,’ observed Tiffey. ‘My opinion is--no
+will.’
+
+It appeared a wonderful thing to me, but it turned out that there was
+no will. He had never so much as thought of making one, so far as his
+papers afforded any evidence; for there was no kind of hint, sketch, or
+memorandum, of any testamentary intention whatever. What was scarcely
+less astonishing to me, was, that his affairs were in a most disordered
+state. It was extremely difficult, I heard, to make out what he owed, or
+what he had paid, or of what he died possessed. It was considered likely
+that for years he could have had no clear opinion on these subjects
+himself. By little and little it came out, that, in the competition on
+all points of appearance and gentility then running high in the Commons,
+he had spent more than his professional income, which was not a very
+large one, and had reduced his private means, if they ever had been
+great (which was exceedingly doubtful), to a very low ebb indeed. There
+was a sale of the furniture and lease, at Norwood; and Tiffey told me,
+little thinking how interested I was in the story, that, paying all the
+just debts of the deceased, and deducting his share of outstanding bad
+and doubtful debts due to the firm, he wouldn’t give a thousand pounds
+for all the assets remaining.
+
+This was at the expiration of about six weeks. I had suffered tortures
+all the time; and thought I really must have laid violent hands upon
+myself, when Miss Mills still reported to me, that my broken-hearted
+little Dora would say nothing, when I was mentioned, but ‘Oh, poor papa!
+Oh, dear papa!’ Also, that she had no other relations than two aunts,
+maiden sisters of Mr. Spenlow, who lived at Putney, and who had not held
+any other than chance communication with their brother for many years.
+Not that they had ever quarrelled (Miss Mills informed me); but that
+having been, on the occasion of Dora’s christening, invited to tea, when
+they considered themselves privileged to be invited to dinner, they
+had expressed their opinion in writing, that it was ‘better for the
+happiness of all parties’ that they should stay away. Since which they
+had gone their road, and their brother had gone his.
+
+These two ladies now emerged from their retirement, and proposed to
+take Dora to live at Putney. Dora, clinging to them both, and weeping,
+exclaimed, ‘O yes, aunts! Please take Julia Mills and me and Jip to
+Putney!’ So they went, very soon after the funeral.
+
+How I found time to haunt Putney, I am sure I don’t know; but I
+contrived, by some means or other, to prowl about the neighbourhood
+pretty often. Miss Mills, for the more exact discharge of the duties of
+friendship, kept a journal; and she used to meet me sometimes, on the
+Common, and read it, or (if she had not time to do that) lend it to me.
+How I treasured up the entries, of which I subjoin a sample--!
+
+‘Monday. My sweet D. still much depressed. Headache. Called attention to
+J. as being beautifully sleek. D. fondled J. Associations thus awakened,
+opened floodgates of sorrow. Rush of grief admitted. (Are tears the
+dewdrops of the heart? J. M.)
+
+‘Tuesday. D. weak and nervous. Beautiful in pallor. (Do we not remark
+this in moon likewise? J. M.) D., J. M. and J. took airing in carriage.
+J. looking out of window, and barking violently at dustman, occasioned
+smile to overspread features of D. (Of such slight links is chain of
+life composed! J. M.)
+
+‘Wednesday. D. comparatively cheerful. Sang to her, as congenial melody,
+“Evening Bells”. Effect not soothing, but reverse. D. inexpressibly
+affected. Found sobbing afterwards, in own room. Quoted verses
+respecting self and young Gazelle. Ineffectually. Also referred to
+Patience on Monument. (Qy. Why on monument? J. M.)
+
+‘Thursday. D. certainly improved. Better night. Slight tinge of damask
+revisiting cheek. Resolved to mention name of D. C. Introduced same,
+cautiously, in course of airing. D. immediately overcome. “Oh, dear,
+dear Julia! Oh, I have been a naughty and undutiful child!” Soothed
+and caressed. Drew ideal picture of D. C. on verge of tomb. D. again
+overcome. “Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do? Oh, take me somewhere!”
+ Much alarmed. Fainting of D. and glass of water from public-house.
+(Poetical affinity. Chequered sign on door-post; chequered human life.
+Alas! J. M.)
+
+‘Friday. Day of incident. Man appears in kitchen, with blue bag, “for
+lady’s boots left out to heel”. Cook replies, “No such orders.” Man
+argues point. Cook withdraws to inquire, leaving man alone with J. On
+Cook’s return, man still argues point, but ultimately goes. J. missing.
+D. distracted. Information sent to police. Man to be identified by
+broad nose, and legs like balustrades of bridge. Search made in
+every direction. No J. D. weeping bitterly, and inconsolable. Renewed
+reference to young Gazelle. Appropriate, but unavailing. Towards
+evening, strange boy calls. Brought into parlour. Broad nose, but no
+balustrades. Says he wants a pound, and knows a dog. Declines to explain
+further, though much pressed. Pound being produced by D. takes Cook
+to little house, where J. alone tied up to leg of table. Joy of D.
+who dances round J. while he eats his supper. Emboldened by this happy
+change, mention D. C. upstairs. D. weeps afresh, cries piteously, “Oh,
+don’t, don’t, don’t! It is so wicked to think of anything but poor
+papa!”--embraces J. and sobs herself to sleep. (Must not D. C. confine
+himself to the broad pinions of Time? J. M.)’
+
+Miss Mills and her journal were my sole consolation at this period.
+To see her, who had seen Dora but a little while before--to trace the
+initial letter of Dora’s name through her sympathetic pages--to be made
+more and more miserable by her--were my only comforts. I felt as if I
+had been living in a palace of cards, which had tumbled down, leaving
+only Miss Mills and me among the ruins; I felt as if some grim enchanter
+had drawn a magic circle round the innocent goddess of my heart, which
+nothing indeed but those same strong pinions, capable of carrying so
+many people over so much, would enable me to enter!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 39. WICKFIELD AND HEEP
+
+
+My aunt, beginning, I imagine, to be made seriously uncomfortable by my
+prolonged dejection, made a pretence of being anxious that I should go
+to Dover, to see that all was working well at the cottage, which was
+let; and to conclude an agreement, with the same tenant, for a longer
+term of occupation. Janet was drafted into the service of Mrs. Strong,
+where I saw her every day. She had been undecided, on leaving Dover,
+whether or no to give the finishing touch to that renunciation of
+mankind in which she had been educated, by marrying a pilot; but she
+decided against that venture. Not so much for the sake of principle, I
+believe, as because she happened not to like him.
+
+Although it required an effort to leave Miss Mills, I fell rather
+willingly into my aunt’s pretence, as a means of enabling me to pass a
+few tranquil hours with Agnes. I consulted the good Doctor relative
+to an absence of three days; and the Doctor wishing me to take that
+relaxation,--he wished me to take more; but my energy could not bear
+that,--I made up my mind to go.
+
+As to the Commons, I had no great occasion to be particular about my
+duties in that quarter. To say the truth, we were getting in no very
+good odour among the tip-top proctors, and were rapidly sliding down
+to but a doubtful position. The business had been indifferent under Mr.
+Jorkins, before Mr. Spenlow’s time; and although it had been quickened
+by the infusion of new blood, and by the display which Mr. Spenlow made,
+still it was not established on a sufficiently strong basis to bear,
+without being shaken, such a blow as the sudden loss of its active
+manager. It fell off very much. Mr. Jorkins, notwithstanding his
+reputation in the firm, was an easy-going, incapable sort of man, whose
+reputation out of doors was not calculated to back it up. I was turned
+over to him now, and when I saw him take his snuff and let the business
+go, I regretted my aunt’s thousand pounds more than ever.
+
+But this was not the worst of it. There were a number of hangers-on and
+outsiders about the Commons, who, without being proctors themselves,
+dabbled in common-form business, and got it done by real proctors, who
+lent their names in consideration of a share in the spoil;--and there
+were a good many of these too. As our house now wanted business on any
+terms, we joined this noble band; and threw out lures to the hangers-on
+and outsiders, to bring their business to us. Marriage licences and
+small probates were what we all looked for, and what paid us best;
+and the competition for these ran very high indeed. Kidnappers and
+inveiglers were planted in all the avenues of entrance to the Commons,
+with instructions to do their utmost to cut off all persons in mourning,
+and all gentlemen with anything bashful in their appearance, and entice
+them to the offices in which their respective employers were interested;
+which instructions were so well observed, that I myself, before I was
+known by sight, was twice hustled into the premises of our principal
+opponent. The conflicting interests of these touting gentlemen being of
+a nature to irritate their feelings, personal collisions took place;
+and the Commons was even scandalized by our principal inveigler (who
+had formerly been in the wine trade, and afterwards in the sworn brokery
+line) walking about for some days with a black eye. Any one of these
+scouts used to think nothing of politely assisting an old lady in
+black out of a vehicle, killing any proctor whom she inquired for,
+representing his employer as the lawful successor and representative of
+that proctor, and bearing the old lady off (sometimes greatly affected)
+to his employer’s office. Many captives were brought to me in this way.
+As to marriage licences, the competition rose to such a pitch, that a
+shy gentleman in want of one, had nothing to do but submit himself
+to the first inveigler, or be fought for, and become the prey of the
+strongest. One of our clerks, who was an outsider, used, in the height
+of this contest, to sit with his hat on, that he might be ready to rush
+out and swear before a surrogate any victim who was brought in. The
+system of inveigling continues, I believe, to this day. The last time I
+was in the Commons, a civil able-bodied person in a white apron pounced
+out upon me from a doorway, and whispering the word ‘Marriage-licence’
+in my ear, was with great difficulty prevented from taking me up in
+his arms and lifting me into a proctor’s. From this digression, let me
+proceed to Dover.
+
+I found everything in a satisfactory state at the cottage; and was
+enabled to gratify my aunt exceedingly by reporting that the tenant
+inherited her feud, and waged incessant war against donkeys. Having
+settled the little business I had to transact there, and slept there one
+night, I walked on to Canterbury early in the morning. It was now
+winter again; and the fresh, cold windy day, and the sweeping downland,
+brightened up my hopes a little.
+
+Coming into Canterbury, I loitered through the old streets with a sober
+pleasure that calmed my spirits, and eased my heart. There were the old
+signs, the old names over the shops, the old people serving in them. It
+appeared so long, since I had been a schoolboy there, that I wondered
+the place was so little changed, until I reflected how little I
+was changed myself. Strange to say, that quiet influence which was
+inseparable in my mind from Agnes, seemed to pervade even the city where
+she dwelt. The venerable cathedral towers, and the old jackdaws and
+rooks whose airy voices made them more retired than perfect silence
+would have done; the battered gateways, one stuck full with statues,
+long thrown down, and crumbled away, like the reverential pilgrims
+who had gazed upon them; the still nooks, where the ivied growth of
+centuries crept over gabled ends and ruined walls; the ancient houses,
+the pastoral landscape of field, orchard, and garden; everywhere--on
+everything--I felt the same serener air, the same calm, thoughtful,
+softening spirit.
+
+Arrived at Mr. Wickfield’s house, I found, in the little lower room on
+the ground floor, where Uriah Heep had been of old accustomed to sit,
+Mr. Micawber plying his pen with great assiduity. He was dressed in a
+legal-looking suit of black, and loomed, burly and large, in that small
+office.
+
+Mr. Micawber was extremely glad to see me, but a little confused too.
+He would have conducted me immediately into the presence of Uriah, but I
+declined.
+
+‘I know the house of old, you recollect,’ said I, ‘and will find my way
+upstairs. How do you like the law, Mr. Micawber?’
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ he replied. ‘To a man possessed of the higher
+imaginative powers, the objection to legal studies is the amount of
+detail which they involve. Even in our professional correspondence,’
+said Mr. Micawber, glancing at some letters he was writing, ‘the mind is
+not at liberty to soar to any exalted form of expression. Still, it is a
+great pursuit. A great pursuit!’
+
+He then told me that he had become the tenant of Uriah Heep’s old house;
+and that Mrs. Micawber would be delighted to receive me, once more,
+under her own roof.
+
+‘It is humble,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘--to quote a favourite expression
+of my friend Heep; but it may prove the stepping-stone to more ambitious
+domiciliary accommodation.’
+
+I asked him whether he had reason, so far, to be satisfied with his
+friend Heep’s treatment of him? He got up to ascertain if the door were
+close shut, before he replied, in a lower voice:
+
+‘My dear Copperfield, a man who labours under the pressure of pecuniary
+embarrassments, is, with the generality of people, at a disadvantage.
+That disadvantage is not diminished, when that pressure necessitates the
+drawing of stipendiary emoluments, before those emoluments are strictly
+due and payable. All I can say is, that my friend Heep has responded
+to appeals to which I need not more particularly refer, in a manner
+calculated to redound equally to the honour of his head, and of his
+heart.’
+
+‘I should not have supposed him to be very free with his money either,’
+I observed.
+
+‘Pardon me!’ said Mr. Micawber, with an air of constraint, ‘I speak of
+my friend Heep as I have experience.’
+
+‘I am glad your experience is so favourable,’ I returned.
+
+‘You are very obliging, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber; and
+hummed a tune.
+
+‘Do you see much of Mr. Wickfield?’ I asked, to change the subject.
+
+‘Not much,’ said Mr. Micawber, slightingly. ‘Mr. Wickfield is, I dare
+say, a man of very excellent intentions; but he is--in short, he is
+obsolete.’
+
+‘I am afraid his partner seeks to make him so,’ said I.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield!’ returned Mr. Micawber, after some uneasy
+evolutions on his stool, ‘allow me to offer a remark! I am here, in
+a capacity of confidence. I am here, in a position of trust. The
+discussion of some topics, even with Mrs. Micawber herself (so long the
+partner of my various vicissitudes, and a woman of a remarkable lucidity
+of intellect), is, I am led to consider, incompatible with the functions
+now devolving on me. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting
+that in our friendly intercourse--which I trust will never be
+disturbed!--we draw a line. On one side of this line,’ said Mr.
+Micawber, representing it on the desk with the office ruler, ‘is the
+whole range of the human intellect, with a trifling exception; on
+the other, IS that exception; that is to say, the affairs of Messrs
+Wickfield and Heep, with all belonging and appertaining thereunto. I
+trust I give no offence to the companion of my youth, in submitting this
+proposition to his cooler judgement?’
+
+Though I saw an uneasy change in Mr. Micawber, which sat tightly on
+him, as if his new duties were a misfit, I felt I had no right to be
+offended. My telling him so, appeared to relieve him; and he shook hands
+with me.
+
+‘I am charmed, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘let me assure you, with
+Miss Wickfield. She is a very superior young lady, of very remarkable
+attractions, graces, and virtues. Upon my honour,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+indefinitely kissing his hand and bowing with his genteelest air, ‘I do
+Homage to Miss Wickfield! Hem!’ ‘I am glad of that, at least,’ said I.
+
+‘If you had not assured us, my dear Copperfield, on the occasion of that
+agreeable afternoon we had the happiness of passing with you, that D.
+was your favourite letter,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I should unquestionably
+have supposed that A. had been so.’
+
+We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us
+occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done
+before, in a remote time--of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago,
+by the same faces, objects, and circumstances--of our knowing perfectly
+what will be said next, as if we suddenly remembered it! I never had
+this mysterious impression more strongly in my life, than before he
+uttered those words.
+
+I took my leave of Mr. Micawber, for the time, charging him with my best
+remembrances to all at home. As I left him, resuming his stool and his
+pen, and rolling his head in his stock, to get it into easier writing
+order, I clearly perceived that there was something interposed between
+him and me, since he had come into his new functions, which prevented
+our getting at each other as we used to do, and quite altered the
+character of our intercourse.
+
+There was no one in the quaint old drawing-room, though it presented
+tokens of Mrs. Heep’s whereabouts. I looked into the room still
+belonging to Agnes, and saw her sitting by the fire, at a pretty
+old-fashioned desk she had, writing.
+
+My darkening the light made her look up. What a pleasure to be the cause
+of that bright change in her attentive face, and the object of that
+sweet regard and welcome!
+
+‘Ah, Agnes!’ said I, when we were sitting together, side by side; ‘I
+have missed you so much, lately!’
+
+‘Indeed?’ she replied. ‘Again! And so soon?’
+
+I shook my head.
+
+‘I don’t know how it is, Agnes; I seem to want some faculty of mind that
+I ought to have. You were so much in the habit of thinking for me, in
+the happy old days here, and I came so naturally to you for counsel and
+support, that I really think I have missed acquiring it.’
+
+‘And what is it?’ said Agnes, cheerfully.
+
+‘I don’t know what to call it,’ I replied. ‘I think I am earnest and
+persevering?’
+
+‘I am sure of it,’ said Agnes.
+
+‘And patient, Agnes?’ I inquired, with a little hesitation.
+
+‘Yes,’ returned Agnes, laughing. ‘Pretty well.’
+
+‘And yet,’ said I, ‘I get so miserable and worried, and am so unsteady
+and irresolute in my power of assuring myself, that I know I must
+want--shall I call it--reliance, of some kind?’
+
+‘Call it so, if you will,’ said Agnes.
+
+‘Well!’ I returned. ‘See here! You come to London, I rely on you, and I
+have an object and a course at once. I am driven out of it, I come
+here, and in a moment I feel an altered person. The circumstances that
+distressed me are not changed, since I came into this room; but an
+influence comes over me in that short interval that alters me, oh, how
+much for the better! What is it? What is your secret, Agnes?’
+
+Her head was bent down, looking at the fire.
+
+‘It’s the old story,’ said I. ‘Don’t laugh, when I say it was always
+the same in little things as it is in greater ones. My old troubles were
+nonsense, and now they are serious; but whenever I have gone away from
+my adopted sister--’
+
+Agnes looked up--with such a Heavenly face!--and gave me her hand, which
+I kissed.
+
+‘Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and approve in the
+beginning, I have seemed to go wild, and to get into all sorts of
+difficulty. When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done),
+I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired
+traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!’
+
+I felt so deeply what I said, it affected me so sincerely, that my voice
+failed, and I covered my face with my hand, and broke into tears. I
+write the truth. Whatever contradictions and inconsistencies there were
+within me, as there are within so many of us; whatever might have been
+so different, and so much better; whatever I had done, in which I had
+perversely wandered away from the voice of my own heart; I knew nothing
+of. I only knew that I was fervently in earnest, when I felt the rest
+and peace of having Agnes near me.
+
+In her placid sisterly manner; with her beaming eyes; with her tender
+voice; and with that sweet composure, which had long ago made the house
+that held her quite a sacred place to me; she soon won me from this
+weakness, and led me on to tell all that had happened since our last
+meeting.
+
+‘And there is not another word to tell, Agnes,’ said I, when I had made
+an end of my confidence. ‘Now, my reliance is on you.’
+
+‘But it must not be on me, Trotwood,’ returned Agnes, with a pleasant
+smile. ‘It must be on someone else.’
+
+‘On Dora?’ said I.
+
+‘Assuredly.’
+
+‘Why, I have not mentioned, Agnes,’ said I, a little embarrassed, ‘that
+Dora is rather difficult to--I would not, for the world, say, to rely
+upon, because she is the soul of purity and truth--but rather difficult
+to--I hardly know how to express it, really, Agnes. She is a timid
+little thing, and easily disturbed and frightened. Some time ago, before
+her father’s death, when I thought it right to mention to her--but I’ll
+tell you, if you will bear with me, how it was.’
+
+Accordingly, I told Agnes about my declaration of poverty, about the
+cookery-book, the housekeeping accounts, and all the rest of it.
+
+‘Oh, Trotwood!’ she remonstrated, with a smile. ‘Just your old headlong
+way! You might have been in earnest in striving to get on in the world,
+without being so very sudden with a timid, loving, inexperienced girl.
+Poor Dora!’
+
+I never heard such sweet forbearing kindness expressed in a voice,
+as she expressed in making this reply. It was as if I had seen her
+admiringly and tenderly embracing Dora, and tacitly reproving me, by
+her considerate protection, for my hot haste in fluttering that little
+heart. It was as if I had seen Dora, in all her fascinating artlessness,
+caressing Agnes, and thanking her, and coaxingly appealing against me,
+and loving me with all her childish innocence.
+
+I felt so grateful to Agnes, and admired her so! I saw those two
+together, in a bright perspective, such well-associated friends, each
+adorning the other so much!
+
+‘What ought I to do then, Agnes?’ I inquired, after looking at the fire
+a little while. ‘What would it be right to do?’
+
+‘I think,’ said Agnes, ‘that the honourable course to take, would be to
+write to those two ladies. Don’t you think that any secret course is an
+unworthy one?’
+
+‘Yes. If YOU think so,’ said I.
+
+‘I am poorly qualified to judge of such matters,’ replied Agnes, with
+a modest hesitation, ‘but I certainly feel--in short, I feel that your
+being secret and clandestine, is not being like yourself.’
+
+‘Like myself, in the too high opinion you have of me, Agnes, I am
+afraid,’ said I.
+
+‘Like yourself, in the candour of your nature,’ she returned; ‘and
+therefore I would write to those two ladies. I would relate, as plainly
+and as openly as possible, all that has taken place; and I would ask
+their permission to visit sometimes, at their house. Considering that
+you are young, and striving for a place in life, I think it would be
+well to say that you would readily abide by any conditions they might
+impose upon you. I would entreat them not to dismiss your request,
+without a reference to Dora; and to discuss it with her when they should
+think the time suitable. I would not be too vehement,’ said Agnes,
+gently, ‘or propose too much. I would trust to my fidelity and
+perseverance--and to Dora.’
+
+‘But if they were to frighten Dora again, Agnes, by speaking to her,’
+said I. ‘And if Dora were to cry, and say nothing about me!’
+
+‘Is that likely?’ inquired Agnes, with the same sweet consideration in
+her face.
+
+‘God bless her, she is as easily scared as a bird,’ said I. ‘It might
+be! Or if the two Miss Spenlows (elderly ladies of that sort are odd
+characters sometimes) should not be likely persons to address in that
+way!’
+
+‘I don’t think, Trotwood,’ returned Agnes, raising her soft eyes
+to mine, ‘I would consider that. Perhaps it would be better only to
+consider whether it is right to do this; and, if it is, to do it.’
+
+I had no longer any doubt on the subject. With a lightened heart, though
+with a profound sense of the weighty importance of my task, I devoted
+the whole afternoon to the composition of the draft of this letter; for
+which great purpose, Agnes relinquished her desk to me. But first I went
+downstairs to see Mr. Wickfield and Uriah Heep.
+
+I found Uriah in possession of a new, plaster-smelling office, built out
+in the garden; looking extraordinarily mean, in the midst of a quantity
+of books and papers. He received me in his usual fawning way, and
+pretended not to have heard of my arrival from Mr. Micawber; a
+pretence I took the liberty of disbelieving. He accompanied me into Mr.
+Wickfield’s room, which was the shadow of its former self--having been
+divested of a variety of conveniences, for the accommodation of the new
+partner--and stood before the fire, warming his back, and shaving his
+chin with his bony hand, while Mr. Wickfield and I exchanged greetings.
+
+‘You stay with us, Trotwood, while you remain in Canterbury?’ said Mr.
+Wickfield, not without a glance at Uriah for his approval.
+
+‘Is there room for me?’ said I.
+
+‘I am sure, Master Copperfield--I should say Mister, but the other
+comes so natural,’ said Uriah,--‘I would turn out of your old room with
+pleasure, if it would be agreeable.’
+
+‘No, no,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Why should you be inconvenienced? There’s
+another room. There’s another room.’ ‘Oh, but you know,’ returned Uriah,
+with a grin, ‘I should really be delighted!’
+
+To cut the matter short, I said I would have the other room or none at
+all; so it was settled that I should have the other room; and, taking my
+leave of the firm until dinner, I went upstairs again.
+
+I had hoped to have no other companion than Agnes. But Mrs. Heep had
+asked permission to bring herself and her knitting near the fire, in
+that room; on pretence of its having an aspect more favourable for
+her rheumatics, as the wind then was, than the drawing-room or
+dining-parlour. Though I could almost have consigned her to the mercies
+of the wind on the topmost pinnacle of the Cathedral, without remorse, I
+made a virtue of necessity, and gave her a friendly salutation.
+
+‘I’m umbly thankful to you, sir,’ said Mrs. Heep, in acknowledgement of
+my inquiries concerning her health, ‘but I’m only pretty well. I haven’t
+much to boast of. If I could see my Uriah well settled in life, I
+couldn’t expect much more I think. How do you think my Ury looking,
+sir?’
+
+I thought him looking as villainous as ever, and I replied that I saw no
+change in him.
+
+‘Oh, don’t you think he’s changed?’ said Mrs. Heep. ‘There I must umbly
+beg leave to differ from you. Don’t you see a thinness in him?’
+
+‘Not more than usual,’ I replied.
+
+‘Don’t you though!’ said Mrs. Heep. ‘But you don’t take notice of him
+with a mother’s eye!’
+
+His mother’s eye was an evil eye to the rest of the world, I thought as
+it met mine, howsoever affectionate to him; and I believe she and her
+son were devoted to one another. It passed me, and went on to Agnes.
+
+‘Don’t YOU see a wasting and a wearing in him, Miss Wickfield?’ inquired
+Mrs. Heep.
+
+‘No,’ said Agnes, quietly pursuing the work on which she was engaged.
+‘You are too solicitous about him. He is very well.’
+
+Mrs. Heep, with a prodigious sniff, resumed her knitting.
+
+She never left off, or left us for a moment. I had arrived early in the
+day, and we had still three or four hours before dinner; but she sat
+there, plying her knitting-needles as monotonously as an hour-glass
+might have poured out its sands. She sat on one side of the fire; I sat
+at the desk in front of it; a little beyond me, on the other side, sat
+Agnes. Whensoever, slowly pondering over my letter, I lifted up my
+eyes, and meeting the thoughtful face of Agnes, saw it clear, and beam
+encouragement upon me, with its own angelic expression, I was conscious
+presently of the evil eye passing me, and going on to her, and coming
+back to me again, and dropping furtively upon the knitting. What the
+knitting was, I don’t know, not being learned in that art; but it looked
+like a net; and as she worked away with those Chinese chopsticks of
+knitting-needles, she showed in the firelight like an ill-looking
+enchantress, baulked as yet by the radiant goodness opposite, but
+getting ready for a cast of her net by and by.
+
+At dinner she maintained her watch, with the same unwinking eyes. After
+dinner, her son took his turn; and when Mr. Wickfield, himself, and I
+were left alone together, leered at me, and writhed until I could hardly
+bear it. In the drawing-room, there was the mother knitting and watching
+again. All the time that Agnes sang and played, the mother sat at the
+piano. Once she asked for a particular ballad, which she said her Ury
+(who was yawning in a great chair) doted on; and at intervals she looked
+round at him, and reported to Agnes that he was in raptures with the
+music. But she hardly ever spoke--I question if she ever did--without
+making some mention of him. It was evident to me that this was the duty
+assigned to her.
+
+This lasted until bedtime. To have seen the mother and son, like two
+great bats hanging over the whole house, and darkening it with their
+ugly forms, made me so uncomfortable, that I would rather have remained
+downstairs, knitting and all, than gone to bed. I hardly got any sleep.
+Next day the knitting and watching began again, and lasted all day.
+
+I had not an opportunity of speaking to Agnes, for ten minutes. I could
+barely show her my letter. I proposed to her to walk out with me; but
+Mrs. Heep repeatedly complaining that she was worse, Agnes charitably
+remained within, to bear her company. Towards the twilight I went out
+by myself, musing on what I ought to do, and whether I was justified
+in withholding from Agnes, any longer, what Uriah Heep had told me in
+London; for that began to trouble me again, very much.
+
+I had not walked out far enough to be quite clear of the town, upon the
+Ramsgate road, where there was a good path, when I was hailed, through
+the dust, by somebody behind me. The shambling figure, and the scanty
+great-coat, were not to be mistaken. I stopped, and Uriah Heep came up.
+
+‘Well?’ said I.
+
+‘How fast you walk!’ said he. ‘My legs are pretty long, but you’ve given
+‘em quite a job.’
+
+‘Where are you going?’ said I.
+
+‘I am going with you, Master Copperfield, if you’ll allow me the
+pleasure of a walk with an old acquaintance.’ Saying this, with a jerk
+of his body, which might have been either propitiatory or derisive, he
+fell into step beside me.
+
+‘Uriah!’ said I, as civilly as I could, after a silence.
+
+‘Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah.
+
+‘To tell you the truth (at which you will not be offended), I came Out
+to walk alone, because I have had so much company.’
+
+He looked at me sideways, and said with his hardest grin, ‘You mean
+mother.’
+
+‘Why yes, I do,’ said I.
+
+‘Ah! But you know we’re so very umble,’ he returned. ‘And having such a
+knowledge of our own umbleness, we must really take care that we’re not
+pushed to the wall by them as isn’t umble. All stratagems are fair in
+love, sir.’
+
+Raising his great hands until they touched his chin, he rubbed them
+softly, and softly chuckled; looking as like a malevolent baboon, I
+thought, as anything human could look.
+
+‘You see,’ he said, still hugging himself in that unpleasant way,
+and shaking his head at me, ‘you’re quite a dangerous rival, Master
+Copperfield. You always was, you know.’
+
+‘Do you set a watch upon Miss Wickfield, and make her home no home,
+because of me?’ said I.
+
+‘Oh! Master Copperfield! Those are very arsh words,’ he replied.
+
+‘Put my meaning into any words you like,’ said I. ‘You know what it is,
+Uriah, as well as I do.’
+
+‘Oh no! You must put it into words,’ he said. ‘Oh, really! I couldn’t
+myself.’
+
+‘Do you suppose,’ said I, constraining myself to be very temperate
+and quiet with him, on account of Agnes, ‘that I regard Miss Wickfield
+otherwise than as a very dear sister?’
+
+‘Well, Master Copperfield,’ he replied, ‘you perceive I am not bound
+to answer that question. You may not, you know. But then, you see, you
+may!’
+
+Anything to equal the low cunning of his visage, and of his shadowless
+eyes without the ghost of an eyelash, I never saw.
+
+‘Come then!’ said I. ‘For the sake of Miss Wickfield--’
+
+‘My Agnes!’ he exclaimed, with a sickly, angular contortion of himself.
+‘Would you be so good as call her Agnes, Master Copperfield!’
+
+‘For the sake of Agnes Wickfield--Heaven bless her!’
+
+‘Thank you for that blessing, Master Copperfield!’ he interposed.
+
+‘I will tell you what I should, under any other circumstances, as soon
+have thought of telling to--Jack Ketch.’
+
+‘To who, sir?’ said Uriah, stretching out his neck, and shading his ear
+with his hand.
+
+‘To the hangman,’ I returned. ‘The most unlikely person I could think
+of,’--though his own face had suggested the allusion quite as a natural
+sequence. ‘I am engaged to another young lady. I hope that contents
+you.’
+
+‘Upon your soul?’ said Uriah.
+
+I was about indignantly to give my assertion the confirmation he
+required, when he caught hold of my hand, and gave it a squeeze.
+
+‘Oh, Master Copperfield!’ he said. ‘If you had only had the
+condescension to return my confidence when I poured out the fulness of
+my art, the night I put you so much out of the way by sleeping before
+your sitting-room fire, I never should have doubted you. As it is, I’m
+sure I’ll take off mother directly, and only too appy. I know you’ll
+excuse the precautions of affection, won’t you? What a pity, Master
+Copperfield, that you didn’t condescend to return my confidence! I’m
+sure I gave you every opportunity. But you never have condescended to
+me, as much as I could have wished. I know you have never liked me, as I
+have liked you!’
+
+All this time he was squeezing my hand with his damp fishy fingers,
+while I made every effort I decently could to get it away. But I was
+quite unsuccessful. He drew it under the sleeve of his mulberry-coloured
+great-coat, and I walked on, almost upon compulsion, arm-in-arm with
+him.
+
+‘Shall we turn?’ said Uriah, by and by wheeling me face about towards
+the town, on which the early moon was now shining, silvering the distant
+windows.
+
+‘Before we leave the subject, you ought to understand,’ said I, breaking
+a pretty long silence, ‘that I believe Agnes Wickfield to be as far
+above you, and as far removed from all your aspirations, as that moon
+herself!’
+
+‘Peaceful! Ain’t she!’ said Uriah. ‘Very! Now confess, Master
+Copperfield, that you haven’t liked me quite as I have liked you. All
+along you’ve thought me too umble now, I shouldn’t wonder?’
+
+‘I am not fond of professions of humility,’ I returned, ‘or professions
+of anything else.’ ‘There now!’ said Uriah, looking flabby and
+lead-coloured in the moonlight. ‘Didn’t I know it! But how little
+you think of the rightful umbleness of a person in my station, Master
+Copperfield! Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school
+for boys; and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of
+charitable, establishment. They taught us all a deal of umbleness--not
+much else that I know of, from morning to night. We was to be umble to
+this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and
+to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves
+before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters! Father got the
+monitor-medal by being umble. So did I. Father got made a sexton by
+being umble. He had the character, among the gentlefolks, of being
+such a well-behaved man, that they were determined to bring him in. “Be
+umble, Uriah,” says father to me, “and you’ll get on. It was what was
+always being dinned into you and me at school; it’s what goes down best.
+Be umble,” says father, “and you’ll do!” And really it ain’t done bad!’
+
+It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that this detestable
+cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family. I
+had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed.
+
+‘When I was quite a young boy,’ said Uriah, ‘I got to know what
+umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I
+stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, “Hold hard!” When
+you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. “People like to be above
+you,” says father, “keep yourself down.” I am very umble to the present
+moment, Master Copperfield, but I’ve got a little power!’
+
+And he said all this--I knew, as I saw his face in the moonlight--that
+I might understand he was resolved to recompense himself by using his
+power. I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and malice; but I
+fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting,
+and revengeful spirit, must have been engendered by this early, and this
+long, suppression.
+
+His account of himself was so far attended with an agreeable result,
+that it led to his withdrawing his hand in order that he might have
+another hug of himself under the chin. Once apart from him, I was
+determined to keep apart; and we walked back, side by side, saying
+very little more by the way. Whether his spirits were elevated by the
+communication I had made to him, or by his having indulged in this
+retrospect, I don’t know; but they were raised by some influence. He
+talked more at dinner than was usual with him; asked his mother (off
+duty, from the moment of our re-entering the house) whether he was not
+growing too old for a bachelor; and once looked at Agnes so, that I
+would have given all I had, for leave to knock him down.
+
+When we three males were left alone after dinner, he got into a more
+adventurous state. He had taken little or no wine; and I presume it was
+the mere insolence of triumph that was upon him, flushed perhaps by the
+temptation my presence furnished to its exhibition.
+
+I had observed yesterday, that he tried to entice Mr. Wickfield to
+drink; and, interpreting the look which Agnes had given me as she went
+out, had limited myself to one glass, and then proposed that we should
+follow her. I would have done so again today; but Uriah was too quick
+for me.
+
+‘We seldom see our present visitor, sir,’ he said, addressing Mr.
+Wickfield, sitting, such a contrast to him, at the end of the table,
+‘and I should propose to give him welcome in another glass or two
+of wine, if you have no objections. Mr. Copperfield, your elth and
+appiness!’
+
+I was obliged to make a show of taking the hand he stretched across
+to me; and then, with very different emotions, I took the hand of the
+broken gentleman, his partner.
+
+‘Come, fellow-partner,’ said Uriah, ‘if I may take the liberty,--now,
+suppose you give us something or another appropriate to Copperfield!’
+
+I pass over Mr. Wickfield’s proposing my aunt, his proposing Mr. Dick,
+his proposing Doctors’ Commons, his proposing Uriah, his drinking
+everything twice; his consciousness of his own weakness, the ineffectual
+effort that he made against it; the struggle between his shame in
+Uriah’s deportment, and his desire to conciliate him; the manifest
+exultation with which Uriah twisted and turned, and held him up before
+me. It made me sick at heart to see, and my hand recoils from writing
+it.
+
+‘Come, fellow-partner!’ said Uriah, at last, ‘I’ll give you another one,
+and I umbly ask for bumpers, seeing I intend to make it the divinest of
+her sex.’
+
+Her father had his empty glass in his hand. I saw him set it down, look
+at the picture she was so like, put his hand to his forehead, and shrink
+back in his elbow-chair.
+
+‘I’m an umble individual to give you her elth,’ proceeded Uriah, ‘but I
+admire--adore her.’
+
+No physical pain that her father’s grey head could have borne, I think,
+could have been more terrible to me, than the mental endurance I saw
+compressed now within both his hands.
+
+‘Agnes,’ said Uriah, either not regarding him, or not knowing what the
+nature of his action was, ‘Agnes Wickfield is, I am safe to say, the
+divinest of her sex. May I speak out, among friends? To be her father is
+a proud distinction, but to be her usband--’
+
+Spare me from ever again hearing such a cry, as that with which her
+father rose up from the table! ‘What’s the matter?’ said Uriah, turning
+of a deadly colour. ‘You are not gone mad, after all, Mr. Wickfield, I
+hope? If I say I’ve an ambition to make your Agnes my Agnes, I have as
+good a right to it as another man. I have a better right to it than any
+other man!’
+
+I had my arms round Mr. Wickfield, imploring him by everything that I
+could think of, oftenest of all by his love for Agnes, to calm himself
+a little. He was mad for the moment; tearing out his hair, beating his
+head, trying to force me from him, and to force himself from me, not
+answering a word, not looking at or seeing anyone; blindly striving
+for he knew not what, his face all staring and distorted--a frightful
+spectacle.
+
+I conjured him, incoherently, but in the most impassioned manner, not
+to abandon himself to this wildness, but to hear me. I besought him to
+think of Agnes, to connect me with Agnes, to recollect how Agnes and I
+had grown up together, how I honoured her and loved her, how she was his
+pride and joy. I tried to bring her idea before him in any form; I even
+reproached him with not having firmness to spare her the knowledge of
+such a scene as this. I may have effected something, or his wildness may
+have spent itself; but by degrees he struggled less, and began to look
+at me--strangely at first, then with recognition in his eyes. At length
+he said, ‘I know, Trotwood! My darling child and you--I know! But look
+at him!’
+
+He pointed to Uriah, pale and glowering in a corner, evidently very much
+out in his calculations, and taken by surprise.
+
+‘Look at my torturer,’ he replied. ‘Before him I have step by step
+abandoned name and reputation, peace and quiet, house and home.’
+
+‘I have kept your name and reputation for you, and your peace and
+quiet, and your house and home too,’ said Uriah, with a sulky, hurried,
+defeated air of compromise. ‘Don’t be foolish, Mr. Wickfield. If I
+have gone a little beyond what you were prepared for, I can go back, I
+suppose? There’s no harm done.’
+
+‘I looked for single motives in everyone,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘and I was
+satisfied I had bound him to me by motives of interest. But see what he
+is--oh, see what he is!’
+
+‘You had better stop him, Copperfield, if you can,’ cried Uriah,
+with his long forefinger pointing towards me. ‘He’ll say something
+presently--mind you!--he’ll be sorry to have said afterwards, and you’ll
+be sorry to have heard!’
+
+‘I’ll say anything!’ cried Mr. Wickfield, with a desperate air. ‘Why
+should I not be in all the world’s power if I am in yours?’
+
+‘Mind! I tell you!’ said Uriah, continuing to warn me. ‘If you don’t
+stop his mouth, you’re not his friend! Why shouldn’t you be in all the
+world’s power, Mr. Wickfield? Because you have got a daughter. You and
+me know what we know, don’t we? Let sleeping dogs lie--who wants to
+rouse ‘em? I don’t. Can’t you see I am as umble as I can be? I tell you,
+if I’ve gone too far, I’m sorry. What would you have, sir?’
+
+‘Oh, Trotwood, Trotwood!’ exclaimed Mr. Wickfield, wringing his hands.
+‘What I have come down to be, since I first saw you in this house! I was
+on my downward way then, but the dreary, dreary road I have traversed
+since! Weak indulgence has ruined me. Indulgence in remembrance, and
+indulgence in forgetfulness. My natural grief for my child’s mother
+turned to disease; my natural love for my child turned to disease. I
+have infected everything I touched. I have brought misery on what I
+dearly love, I know--you know! I thought it possible that I could truly
+love one creature in the world, and not love the rest; I thought it
+possible that I could truly mourn for one creature gone out of the
+world, and not have some part in the grief of all who mourned. Thus the
+lessons of my life have been perverted! I have preyed on my own morbid
+coward heart, and it has preyed on me. Sordid in my grief, sordid in my
+love, sordid in my miserable escape from the darker side of both, oh see
+the ruin I am, and hate me, shun me!’
+
+He dropped into a chair, and weakly sobbed. The excitement into which he
+had been roused was leaving him. Uriah came out of his corner.
+
+‘I don’t know all I have done, in my fatuity,’ said Mr. Wickfield,
+putting out his hands, as if to deprecate my condemnation. ‘He knows
+best,’ meaning Uriah Heep, ‘for he has always been at my elbow,
+whispering me. You see the millstone that he is about my neck. You
+find him in my house, you find him in my business. You heard him, but a
+little time ago. What need have I to say more!’
+
+‘You haven’t need to say so much, nor half so much, nor anything at
+all,’ observed Uriah, half defiant, and half fawning. ‘You wouldn’t have
+took it up so, if it hadn’t been for the wine. You’ll think better of
+it tomorrow, sir. If I have said too much, or more than I meant, what of
+it? I haven’t stood by it!’
+
+The door opened, and Agnes, gliding in, without a vestige of colour in
+her face, put her arm round his neck, and steadily said, ‘Papa, you are
+not well. Come with me!’
+
+He laid his head upon her shoulder, as if he were oppressed with heavy
+shame, and went out with her. Her eyes met mine for but an instant, yet
+I saw how much she knew of what had passed.
+
+‘I didn’t expect he’d cut up so rough, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah.
+‘But it’s nothing. I’ll be friends with him tomorrow. It’s for his good.
+I’m umbly anxious for his good.’
+
+I gave him no answer, and went upstairs into the quiet room where Agnes
+had so often sat beside me at my books. Nobody came near me until late
+at night. I took up a book, and tried to read. I heard the clocks strike
+twelve, and was still reading, without knowing what I read, when Agnes
+touched me.
+
+‘You will be going early in the morning, Trotwood! Let us say good-bye,
+now!’
+
+She had been weeping, but her face then was so calm and beautiful!
+
+‘Heaven bless you!’ she said, giving me her hand.
+
+‘Dearest Agnes!’ I returned, ‘I see you ask me not to speak of
+tonight--but is there nothing to be done?’
+
+‘There is God to trust in!’ she replied.
+
+‘Can I do nothing--I, who come to you with my poor sorrows?’
+
+‘And make mine so much lighter,’ she replied. ‘Dear Trotwood, no!’
+
+‘Dear Agnes,’ I said, ‘it is presumptuous for me, who am so poor in all
+in which you are so rich--goodness, resolution, all noble qualities--to
+doubt or direct you; but you know how much I love you, and how much I
+owe you. You will never sacrifice yourself to a mistaken sense of duty,
+Agnes?’
+
+More agitated for a moment than I had ever seen her, she took her hands
+from me, and moved a step back.
+
+‘Say you have no such thought, dear Agnes! Much more than sister!
+Think of the priceless gift of such a heart as yours, of such a love as
+yours!’
+
+Oh! long, long afterwards, I saw that face rise up before me, with its
+momentary look, not wondering, not accusing, not regretting. Oh, long,
+long afterwards, I saw that look subside, as it did now, into the lovely
+smile, with which she told me she had no fear for herself--I need have
+none for her--and parted from me by the name of Brother, and was gone!
+
+It was dark in the morning, when I got upon the coach at the inn door.
+The day was just breaking when we were about to start, and then, as
+I sat thinking of her, came struggling up the coach side, through the
+mingled day and night, Uriah’s head.
+
+‘Copperfield!’ said he, in a croaking whisper, as he hung by the iron
+on the roof, ‘I thought you’d be glad to hear before you went off, that
+there are no squares broke between us. I’ve been into his room already,
+and we’ve made it all smooth. Why, though I’m umble, I’m useful to him,
+you know; and he understands his interest when he isn’t in liquor! What
+an agreeable man he is, after all, Master Copperfield!’
+
+I obliged myself to say that I was glad he had made his apology.
+
+‘Oh, to be sure!’ said Uriah. ‘When a person’s umble, you know, what’s
+an apology? So easy! I say! I suppose,’ with a jerk, ‘you have sometimes
+plucked a pear before it was ripe, Master Copperfield?’
+
+‘I suppose I have,’ I replied.
+
+‘I did that last night,’ said Uriah; ‘but it’ll ripen yet! It only wants
+attending to. I can wait!’
+
+Profuse in his farewells, he got down again as the coachman got up. For
+anything I know, he was eating something to keep the raw morning
+air out; but he made motions with his mouth as if the pear were ripe
+already, and he were smacking his lips over it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 40. THE WANDERER
+
+
+We had a very serious conversation in Buckingham Street that night,
+about the domestic occurrences I have detailed in the last chapter. My
+aunt was deeply interested in them, and walked up and down the room with
+her arms folded, for more than two hours afterwards. Whenever she was
+particularly discomposed, she always performed one of these pedestrian
+feats; and the amount of her discomposure might always be estimated by
+the duration of her walk. On this occasion she was so much disturbed in
+mind as to find it necessary to open the bedroom door, and make a course
+for herself, comprising the full extent of the bedrooms from wall to
+wall; and while Mr. Dick and I sat quietly by the fire, she kept passing
+in and out, along this measured track, at an unchanging pace, with the
+regularity of a clock-pendulum.
+
+When my aunt and I were left to ourselves by Mr. Dick’s going out to
+bed, I sat down to write my letter to the two old ladies. By that time
+she was tired of walking, and sat by the fire with her dress tucked up
+as usual. But instead of sitting in her usual manner, holding her glass
+upon her knee, she suffered it to stand neglected on the chimney-piece;
+and, resting her left elbow on her right arm, and her chin on her left
+hand, looked thoughtfully at me. As often as I raised my eyes from what
+I was about, I met hers. ‘I am in the lovingest of tempers, my dear,’
+she would assure me with a nod, ‘but I am fidgeted and sorry!’
+
+I had been too busy to observe, until after she was gone to bed, that
+she had left her night-mixture, as she always called it, untasted on
+the chimney-piece. She came to her door, with even more than her usual
+affection of manner, when I knocked to acquaint her with this discovery;
+but only said, ‘I have not the heart to take it, Trot, tonight,’ and
+shook her head, and went in again.
+
+She read my letter to the two old ladies, in the morning, and approved
+of it. I posted it, and had nothing to do then, but wait, as patiently
+as I could, for the reply. I was still in this state of expectation, and
+had been, for nearly a week; when I left the Doctor’s one snowy night,
+to walk home.
+
+It had been a bitter day, and a cutting north-east wind had blown for
+some time. The wind had gone down with the light, and so the snow had
+come on. It was a heavy, settled fall, I recollect, in great flakes; and
+it lay thick. The noise of wheels and tread of people were as hushed, as
+if the streets had been strewn that depth with feathers.
+
+My shortest way home,--and I naturally took the shortest way on such a
+night--was through St. Martin’s Lane. Now, the church which gives its
+name to the lane, stood in a less free situation at that time; there
+being no open space before it, and the lane winding down to the Strand.
+As I passed the steps of the portico, I encountered, at the corner,
+a woman’s face. It looked in mine, passed across the narrow lane,
+and disappeared. I knew it. I had seen it somewhere. But I could not
+remember where. I had some association with it, that struck upon my
+heart directly; but I was thinking of anything else when it came upon
+me, and was confused.
+
+On the steps of the church, there was the stooping figure of a man, who
+had put down some burden on the smooth snow, to adjust it; my seeing the
+face, and my seeing him, were simultaneous. I don’t think I had stopped
+in my surprise; but, in any case, as I went on, he rose, turned, and
+came down towards me. I stood face to face with Mr. Peggotty!
+
+Then I remembered the woman. It was Martha, to whom Emily had given the
+money that night in the kitchen. Martha Endell--side by side with whom,
+he would not have seen his dear niece, Ham had told me, for all the
+treasures wrecked in the sea.
+
+We shook hands heartily. At first, neither of us could speak a word.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy!’ he said, gripping me tight, ‘it do my art good to see you,
+sir. Well met, well met!’
+
+‘Well met, my dear old friend!’ said I.
+
+‘I had my thowts o’ coming to make inquiration for you, sir, tonight,’
+he said, ‘but knowing as your aunt was living along wi’ you--fur I’ve
+been down yonder--Yarmouth way--I was afeerd it was too late. I should
+have come early in the morning, sir, afore going away.’
+
+‘Again?’ said I.
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, patiently shaking his head, ‘I’m away tomorrow.’
+
+‘Where were you going now?’ I asked.
+
+‘Well!’ he replied, shaking the snow out of his long hair, ‘I was
+a-going to turn in somewheers.’
+
+In those days there was a side-entrance to the stable-yard of the Golden
+Cross, the inn so memorable to me in connexion with his misfortune,
+nearly opposite to where we stood. I pointed out the gateway, put my arm
+through his, and we went across. Two or three public-rooms opened out of
+the stable-yard; and looking into one of them, and finding it empty, and
+a good fire burning, I took him in there.
+
+When I saw him in the light, I observed, not only that his hair was long
+and ragged, but that his face was burnt dark by the sun. He was greyer,
+the lines in his face and forehead were deeper, and he had every
+appearance of having toiled and wandered through all varieties
+of weather; but he looked very strong, and like a man upheld by
+steadfastness of purpose, whom nothing could tire out. He shook the snow
+from his hat and clothes, and brushed it away from his face, while I was
+inwardly making these remarks. As he sat down opposite to me at a table,
+with his back to the door by which we had entered, he put out his rough
+hand again, and grasped mine warmly.
+
+‘I’ll tell you, Mas’r Davy,’ he said,--‘wheer all I’ve been, and
+what-all we’ve heerd. I’ve been fur, and we’ve heerd little; but I’ll
+tell you!’
+
+I rang the bell for something hot to drink. He would have nothing
+stronger than ale; and while it was being brought, and being warmed
+at the fire, he sat thinking. There was a fine, massive gravity in his
+face, I did not venture to disturb.
+
+‘When she was a child,’ he said, lifting up his head soon after we were
+left alone, ‘she used to talk to me a deal about the sea, and about
+them coasts where the sea got to be dark blue, and to lay a-shining and
+a-shining in the sun. I thowt, odd times, as her father being drownded
+made her think on it so much. I doen’t know, you see, but maybe she
+believed--or hoped--he had drifted out to them parts, where the flowers
+is always a-blowing, and the country bright.’
+
+‘It is likely to have been a childish fancy,’ I replied.
+
+‘When she was--lost,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I know’d in my mind, as he
+would take her to them countries. I know’d in my mind, as he’d have told
+her wonders of ‘em, and how she was to be a lady theer, and how he got
+her to listen to him fust, along o’ sech like. When we see his mother,
+I know’d quite well as I was right. I went across-channel to France, and
+landed theer, as if I’d fell down from the sky.’
+
+I saw the door move, and the snow drift in. I saw it move a little more,
+and a hand softly interpose to keep it open.
+
+‘I found out an English gen’leman as was in authority,’ said Mr.
+Peggotty, ‘and told him I was a-going to seek my niece. He got me them
+papers as I wanted fur to carry me through--I doen’t rightly know how
+they’re called--and he would have give me money, but that I was thankful
+to have no need on. I thank him kind, for all he done, I’m sure! “I’ve
+wrote afore you,” he says to me, “and I shall speak to many as will come
+that way, and many will know you, fur distant from here, when you’re
+a-travelling alone.” I told him, best as I was able, what my gratitoode
+was, and went away through France.’
+
+‘Alone, and on foot?’ said I.
+
+‘Mostly a-foot,’ he rejoined; ‘sometimes in carts along with people
+going to market; sometimes in empty coaches. Many mile a day a-foot, and
+often with some poor soldier or another, travelling to see his friends.
+I couldn’t talk to him,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘nor he to me; but we was
+company for one another, too, along the dusty roads.’
+
+I should have known that by his friendly tone.
+
+‘When I come to any town,’ he pursued, ‘I found the inn, and waited
+about the yard till someone turned up (someone mostly did) as know’d
+English. Then I told how that I was on my way to seek my niece, and they
+told me what manner of gentlefolks was in the house, and I waited to see
+any as seemed like her, going in or out. When it warn’t Em’ly, I went on
+agen. By little and little, when I come to a new village or that, among
+the poor people, I found they know’d about me. They would set me down at
+their cottage doors, and give me what-not fur to eat and drink, and show
+me where to sleep; and many a woman, Mas’r Davy, as has had a daughter
+of about Em’ly’s age, I’ve found a-waiting fur me, at Our Saviour’s
+Cross outside the village, fur to do me sim’lar kindnesses. Some has had
+daughters as was dead. And God only knows how good them mothers was to
+me!’
+
+It was Martha at the door. I saw her haggard, listening face distinctly.
+My dread was lest he should turn his head, and see her too.
+
+‘They would often put their children--particular their little girls,’
+said Mr. Peggotty, ‘upon my knee; and many a time you might have seen
+me sitting at their doors, when night was coming in, a’most as if they’d
+been my Darling’s children. Oh, my Darling!’
+
+Overpowered by sudden grief, he sobbed aloud. I laid my trembling hand
+upon the hand he put before his face. ‘Thankee, sir,’ he said, ‘doen’t
+take no notice.’
+
+In a very little while he took his hand away and put it on his breast,
+and went on with his story. ‘They often walked with me,’ he said, ‘in
+the morning, maybe a mile or two upon my road; and when we parted, and
+I said, “I’m very thankful to you! God bless you!” they always seemed to
+understand, and answered pleasant. At last I come to the sea. It warn’t
+hard, you may suppose, for a seafaring man like me to work his way
+over to Italy. When I got theer, I wandered on as I had done afore. The
+people was just as good to me, and I should have gone from town to town,
+maybe the country through, but that I got news of her being seen among
+them Swiss mountains yonder. One as know’d his servant see ‘em there,
+all three, and told me how they travelled, and where they was. I made
+fur them mountains, Mas’r Davy, day and night. Ever so fur as I went,
+ever so fur the mountains seemed to shift away from me. But I come up
+with ‘em, and I crossed ‘em. When I got nigh the place as I had been
+told of, I began to think within my own self, “What shall I do when I
+see her?”’
+
+The listening face, insensible to the inclement night, still drooped at
+the door, and the hands begged me--prayed me--not to cast it forth.
+
+‘I never doubted her,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘No! Not a bit! On’y let her
+see my face--on’y let her heer my voice--on’y let my stanning still
+afore her bring to her thoughts the home she had fled away from, and the
+child she had been--and if she had growed to be a royal lady, she’d have
+fell down at my feet! I know’d it well! Many a time in my sleep had I
+heerd her cry out, “Uncle!” and seen her fall like death afore me. Many
+a time in my sleep had I raised her up, and whispered to her, “Em’ly, my
+dear, I am come fur to bring forgiveness, and to take you home!”’
+
+He stopped and shook his head, and went on with a sigh.
+
+‘He was nowt to me now. Em’ly was all. I bought a country dress to put
+upon her; and I know’d that, once found, she would walk beside me over
+them stony roads, go where I would, and never, never, leave me more. To
+put that dress upon her, and to cast off what she wore--to take her on
+my arm again, and wander towards home--to stop sometimes upon the road,
+and heal her bruised feet and her worse-bruised heart--was all that I
+thowt of now. I doen’t believe I should have done so much as look at
+him. But, Mas’r Davy, it warn’t to be--not yet! I was too late, and they
+was gone. Wheer, I couldn’t learn. Some said heer, some said theer.
+I travelled heer, and I travelled theer, but I found no Em’ly, and I
+travelled home.’
+
+‘How long ago?’ I asked.
+
+‘A matter o’ fower days,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I sighted the old boat
+arter dark, and the light a-shining in the winder. When I come nigh and
+looked in through the glass, I see the faithful creetur Missis Gummidge
+sittin’ by the fire, as we had fixed upon, alone. I called out, “Doen’t
+be afeerd! It’s Dan’l!” and I went in. I never could have thowt the old
+boat would have been so strange!’ From some pocket in his breast, he
+took out, with a very careful hand a small paper bundle containing two
+or three letters or little packets, which he laid upon the table.
+
+‘This fust one come,’ he said, selecting it from the rest, ‘afore I had
+been gone a week. A fifty pound Bank note, in a sheet of paper, directed
+to me, and put underneath the door in the night. She tried to hide her
+writing, but she couldn’t hide it from Me!’
+
+He folded up the note again, with great patience and care, in exactly
+the same form, and laid it on one side.
+
+‘This come to Missis Gummidge,’ he said, opening another, ‘two or three
+months ago.’ After looking at it for some moments, he gave it to me, and
+added in a low voice, ‘Be so good as read it, sir.’
+
+I read as follows:
+
+
+‘Oh what will you feel when you see this writing, and know it comes from
+my wicked hand! But try, try--not for my sake, but for uncle’s goodness,
+try to let your heart soften to me, only for a little little time! Try,
+pray do, to relent towards a miserable girl, and write down on a bit of
+paper whether he is well, and what he said about me before you left off
+ever naming me among yourselves--and whether, of a night, when it is my
+old time of coming home, you ever see him look as if he thought of one
+he used to love so dear. Oh, my heart is breaking when I think about
+it! I am kneeling down to you, begging and praying you not to be as
+hard with me as I deserve--as I well, well, know I deserve--but to be so
+gentle and so good, as to write down something of him, and to send it to
+me. You need not call me Little, you need not call me by the name I have
+disgraced; but oh, listen to my agony, and have mercy on me so far as to
+write me some word of uncle, never, never to be seen in this world by my
+eyes again!
+
+‘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 tomorrow (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 enclosed 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 fust.
+But the fust 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.’
+
+‘Poor fellow, I can believe it!’
+
+‘He ain’t no care, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty in a solemn
+whisper--‘kinder no care no-how for his life. When a man’s wanted for
+rough sarvice in rough weather, he’s theer. When there’s hard duty to
+be done with danger in it, he steps for’ard afore all his mates. And yet
+he’s as gentle as any child. There ain’t a child in Yarmouth that doen’t
+know him.’
+
+He gathered up the letters thoughtfully, smoothing them with his hand;
+put them into their little bundle; and placed it tenderly in his breast
+again. The face was gone from the door. I still saw the snow drifting
+in; but nothing else was there.
+
+‘Well!’ he said, looking to his bag, ‘having seen you tonight, Mas’r
+Davy (and that doos me good!), I shall away betimes tomorrow morning.
+You have seen what I’ve got heer’; putting his hand on where the little
+packet lay; ‘all that troubles me is, to think that any harm might come
+to me, afore that money was give back. If I was to die, and it was lost,
+or stole, or elseways made away with, and it was never know’d by him
+but what I’d took it, I believe the t’other wureld wouldn’t hold me! I
+believe I must come back!’
+
+He rose, and I rose too; we grasped each other by the hand again, before
+going out.
+
+‘I’d go ten thousand mile,’ he said, ‘I’d go till I dropped dead, to lay
+that money down afore him. If I do that, and find my Em’ly, I’m content.
+If I doen’t find her, maybe she’ll come to hear, sometime, as her loving
+uncle only ended his search for her when he ended his life; and if I
+know her, even that will turn her home at last!’
+
+As he went out into the rigorous night, I saw the lonely figure flit
+away before us. I turned him hastily on some pretence, and held him in
+conversation until it was gone.
+
+He spoke of a traveller’s house on the Dover Road, where he knew he
+could find a clean, plain lodging for the night. I went with him over
+Westminster Bridge, and parted from him on the Surrey shore. Everything
+seemed, to my imagination, to be hushed in reverence for him, as he
+resumed his solitary journey through the snow.
+
+I returned to the inn yard, and, impressed by my remembrance of the
+face, looked awfully around for it. It was not there. The snow had
+covered our late footprints; my new track was the only one to be seen;
+and even that began to die away (it snowed so fast) as I looked back
+over my shoulder.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 41. DORA’S AUNTS
+
+
+At last, an answer came from the two old ladies. They presented their
+compliments to Mr. Copperfield, and informed him that they had given his
+letter their best consideration, ‘with a view to the happiness of
+both parties’--which I thought rather an alarming expression, not
+only because of the use they had made of it in relation to the family
+difference before-mentioned, but because I had (and have all my life)
+observed that conventional phrases are a sort of fireworks, easily let
+off, and liable to take a great variety of shapes and colours not at
+all suggested by their original form. The Misses Spenlow added that they
+begged to forbear expressing, ‘through the medium of correspondence’, an
+opinion on the subject of Mr. Copperfield’s communication; but that if
+Mr. Copperfield would do them the favour to call, upon a certain day
+(accompanied, if he thought proper, by a confidential friend), they
+would be happy to hold some conversation on the subject.
+
+To this favour, Mr. Copperfield immediately replied, with his respectful
+compliments, that he would have the honour of waiting on the Misses
+Spenlow, at the time appointed; accompanied, in accordance with their
+kind permission, by his friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple.
+Having dispatched which missive, Mr. Copperfield fell into a condition
+of strong nervous agitation; and so remained until the day arrived.
+
+It was a great augmentation of my uneasiness to be bereaved, at this
+eventful crisis, of the inestimable services of Miss Mills. But Mr.
+Mills, who was always doing something or other to annoy me--or I felt
+as if he were, which was the same thing--had brought his conduct to a
+climax, by taking it into his head that he would go to India. Why should
+he go to India, except to harass me? To be sure he had nothing to do
+with any other part of the world, and had a good deal to do with that
+part; being entirely in the India trade, whatever that was (I had
+floating dreams myself concerning golden shawls and elephants’ teeth);
+having been at Calcutta in his youth; and designing now to go out there
+again, in the capacity of resident partner. But this was nothing to me.
+However, it was so much to him that for India he was bound, and
+Julia with him; and Julia went into the country to take leave of
+her relations; and the house was put into a perfect suit of bills,
+announcing that it was to be let or sold, and that the furniture (Mangle
+and all) was to be taken at a valuation. So, here was another earthquake
+of which I became the sport, before I had recovered from the shock of
+its predecessor!
+
+I was in several minds how to dress myself on the important day; being
+divided between my desire to appear to advantage, and my apprehensions
+of putting on anything that might impair my severely practical character
+in the eyes of the Misses Spenlow. I endeavoured to hit a happy medium
+between these two extremes; my aunt approved the result; and Mr. Dick
+threw one of his shoes after Traddles and me, for luck, as we went
+downstairs.
+
+Excellent fellow as I knew Traddles to be, and warmly attached to him as
+I was, I could not help wishing, on that delicate occasion, that he had
+never contracted the habit of brushing his hair so very upright. It
+gave him a surprised look--not to say a hearth-broomy kind of
+expression--which, my apprehensions whispered, might be fatal to us.
+
+I took the liberty of mentioning it to Traddles, as we were walking to
+Putney; and saying that if he WOULD smooth it down a little--
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, lifting off his hat, and rubbing
+his hair all kinds of ways, ‘nothing would give me greater pleasure. But
+it won’t.’
+
+‘Won’t be smoothed down?’ said I.
+
+‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Nothing will induce it. If I was to carry a
+half-hundred-weight upon it, all the way to Putney, it would be up again
+the moment the weight was taken off. You have no idea what obstinate
+hair mine is, Copperfield. I am quite a fretful porcupine.’
+
+I was a little disappointed, I must confess, but thoroughly charmed by
+his good-nature too. I told him how I esteemed his good-nature; and said
+that his hair must have taken all the obstinacy out of his character,
+for he had none.
+
+‘Oh!’ returned Traddles, laughing. ‘I assure you, it’s quite an old
+story, my unfortunate hair. My uncle’s wife couldn’t bear it. She said
+it exasperated her. It stood very much in my way, too, when I first fell
+in love with Sophy. Very much!’
+
+‘Did she object to it?’
+
+‘SHE didn’t,’ rejoined Traddles; ‘but her eldest sister--the one that’s
+the Beauty--quite made game of it, I understand. In fact, all the
+sisters laugh at it.’
+
+‘Agreeable!’ said I.
+
+‘Yes,’ returned Traddles with perfect innocence, ‘it’s a joke for us.
+They pretend that Sophy has a lock of it in her desk, and is obliged to
+shut it in a clasped book, to keep it down. We laugh about it.’
+
+‘By the by, my dear Traddles,’ said I, ‘your experience may suggest
+something to me. When you became engaged to the young lady whom you have
+just mentioned, did you make a regular proposal to her family? Was there
+anything like--what we are going through today, for instance?’ I added,
+nervously.
+
+‘Why,’ replied Traddles, on whose attentive face a thoughtful shade had
+stolen, ‘it was rather a painful transaction, Copperfield, in my case.
+You see, Sophy being of so much use in the family, none of them could
+endure the thought of her ever being married. Indeed, they had quite
+settled among themselves that she never was to be married, and they
+called her the old maid. Accordingly, when I mentioned it, with the
+greatest precaution, to Mrs. Crewler--’
+
+‘The mama?’ said I.
+
+‘The mama,’ said Traddles--‘Reverend Horace Crewler--when I mentioned it
+with every possible precaution to Mrs. Crewler, the effect upon her was
+such that she gave a scream and became insensible. I couldn’t approach
+the subject again, for months.’
+
+‘You did at last?’ said I.
+
+‘Well, the Reverend Horace did,’ said Traddles. ‘He is an excellent man,
+most exemplary in every way; and he pointed out to her that she ought,
+as a Christian, to reconcile herself to the sacrifice (especially as it
+was so uncertain), and to bear no uncharitable feeling towards me. As to
+myself, Copperfield, I give you my word, I felt a perfect bird of prey
+towards the family.’
+
+‘The sisters took your part, I hope, Traddles?’
+
+‘Why, I can’t say they did,’ he returned. ‘When we had comparatively
+reconciled Mrs. Crewler to it, we had to break it to Sarah. You
+recollect my mentioning Sarah, as the one that has something the matter
+with her spine?’
+
+‘Perfectly!’
+
+‘She clenched both her hands,’ said Traddles, looking at me in dismay;
+‘shut her eyes; turned lead-colour; became perfectly stiff; and
+took nothing for two days but toast-and-water, administered with a
+tea-spoon.’
+
+‘What a very unpleasant girl, Traddles!’ I remarked.
+
+‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Copperfield!’ said Traddles. ‘She is a very
+charming girl, but she has a great deal of feeling. In fact, they all
+have. Sophy told me afterwards, that the self-reproach she underwent
+while she was in attendance upon Sarah, no words could describe. I know
+it must have been severe, by my own feelings, Copperfield; which were
+like a criminal’s. After Sarah was restored, we still had to break it
+to the other eight; and it produced various effects upon them of a most
+pathetic nature. The two little ones, whom Sophy educates, have only
+just left off de-testing me.’
+
+‘At any rate, they are all reconciled to it now, I hope?’ said I.
+
+‘Ye-yes, I should say they were, on the whole, resigned to it,’ said
+Traddles, doubtfully. ‘The fact is, we avoid mentioning the subject;
+and my unsettled prospects and indifferent circumstances are a great
+consolation to them. There will be a deplorable scene, whenever we
+are married. It will be much more like a funeral, than a wedding. And
+they’ll all hate me for taking her away!’
+
+His honest face, as he looked at me with a serio-comic shake of his
+head, impresses me more in the remembrance than it did in the reality,
+for I was by this time in a state of such excessive trepidation
+and wandering of mind, as to be quite unable to fix my attention on
+anything. On our approaching the house where the Misses Spenlow lived,
+I was at such a discount in respect of my personal looks and presence of
+mind, that Traddles proposed a gentle stimulant in the form of a glass
+of ale. This having been administered at a neighbouring public-house, he
+conducted me, with tottering steps, to the Misses Spenlow’s door.
+
+I had a vague sensation of being, as it were, on view, when the maid
+opened it; and of wavering, somehow, across a hall with a weather-glass
+in it, into a quiet little drawing-room on the ground-floor, commanding
+a neat garden. Also of sitting down here, on a sofa, and seeing
+Traddles’s hair start up, now his hat was removed, like one of those
+obtrusive little figures made of springs, that fly out of fictitious
+snuff-boxes when the lid is taken off. Also of hearing an old-fashioned
+clock ticking away on the chimney-piece, and trying to make it keep time
+to the jerking of my heart,--which it wouldn’t. Also of looking round
+the room for any sign of Dora, and seeing none. Also of thinking that
+Jip once barked in the distance, and was instantly choked by somebody.
+Ultimately I found myself backing Traddles into the fireplace, and
+bowing in great confusion to two dry little elderly ladies, dressed in
+black, and each looking wonderfully like a preparation in chip or tan of
+the late Mr. Spenlow.
+
+‘Pray,’ said one of the two little ladies, ‘be seated.’
+
+When I had done tumbling over Traddles, and had sat upon something which
+was not a cat--my first seat was--I so far recovered my sight, as to
+perceive that Mr. Spenlow had evidently been the youngest of the
+family; that there was a disparity of six or eight years between the
+two sisters; and that the younger appeared to be the manager of the
+conference, inasmuch as she had my letter in her hand--so familiar as
+it looked to me, and yet so odd!--and was referring to it through an
+eye-glass. They were dressed alike, but this sister wore her dress with
+a more youthful air than the other; and perhaps had a trifle more frill,
+or tucker, or brooch, or bracelet, or some little thing of that kind,
+which made her look more lively. They were both upright in their
+carriage, formal, precise, composed, and quiet. The sister who had
+not my letter, had her arms crossed on her breast, and resting on each
+other, like an Idol.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield, I believe,’ said the sister who had got my letter,
+addressing herself to Traddles.
+
+This was a frightful beginning. Traddles had to indicate that I was Mr.
+Copperfield, and I had to lay claim to myself, and they had to divest
+themselves of a preconceived opinion that Traddles was Mr. Copperfield,
+and altogether we were in a nice condition. To improve it, we all
+distinctly heard Jip give two short barks, and receive another choke.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield!’ said the sister with the letter.
+
+I did something--bowed, I suppose--and was all attention, when the other
+sister struck in.
+
+‘My sister Lavinia,’ said she ‘being conversant with matters of this
+nature, will state what we consider most calculated to promote the
+happiness of both parties.’
+
+I discovered afterwards that Miss Lavinia was an authority in affairs
+of the heart, by reason of there having anciently existed a certain Mr.
+Pidger, who played short whist, and was supposed to have been enamoured
+of her. My private opinion is, that this was entirely a gratuitous
+assumption, and that Pidger was altogether innocent of any such
+sentiments--to which he had never given any sort of expression that
+I could ever hear of. Both Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa had a
+superstition, however, that he would have declared his passion, if he
+had not been cut short in his youth (at about sixty) by over-drinking
+his constitution, and over-doing an attempt to set it right again by
+swilling Bath water. They had a lurking suspicion even, that he died of
+secret love; though I must say there was a picture of him in the house
+with a damask nose, which concealment did not appear to have ever preyed
+upon.
+
+‘We will not,’ said Miss Lavinia, ‘enter on the past history of this
+matter. Our poor brother Francis’s death has cancelled that.’
+
+‘We had not,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘been in the habit of frequent
+association with our brother Francis; but there was no decided division
+or disunion between us. Francis took his road; we took ours. We
+considered it conducive to the happiness of all parties that it should
+be so. And it was so.’
+
+Each of the sisters leaned a little forward to speak, shook her head
+after speaking, and became upright again when silent. Miss Clarissa
+never moved her arms. She sometimes played tunes upon them with her
+fingers--minuets and marches I should think--but never moved them.
+
+‘Our niece’s position, or supposed position, is much changed by our
+brother Francis’s death,’ said Miss Lavinia; ‘and therefore we consider
+our brother’s opinions as regarded her position as being changed too. We
+have no reason to doubt, Mr. Copperfield, that you are a young gentleman
+possessed of good qualities and honourable character; or that you have
+an affection--or are fully persuaded that you have an affection--for our
+niece.’
+
+I replied, as I usually did whenever I had a chance, that nobody had
+ever loved anybody else as I loved Dora. Traddles came to my assistance
+with a confirmatory murmur.
+
+Miss Lavinia was going on to make some rejoinder, when Miss Clarissa,
+who appeared to be incessantly beset by a desire to refer to her brother
+Francis, struck in again:
+
+‘If Dora’s mama,’ she said, ‘when she married our brother Francis, had
+at once said that there was not room for the family at the dinner-table,
+it would have been better for the happiness of all parties.’
+
+‘Sister Clarissa,’ said Miss Lavinia. ‘Perhaps we needn’t mind that
+now.’
+
+‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘it belongs to the subject. With
+your branch of the subject, on which alone you are competent to speak, I
+should not think of interfering. On this branch of the subject I have a
+voice and an opinion. It would have been better for the happiness of
+all parties, if Dora’s mama, when she married our brother Francis, had
+mentioned plainly what her intentions were. We should then have known
+what we had to expect. We should have said “Pray do not invite us,
+at any time”; and all possibility of misunderstanding would have been
+avoided.’
+
+When Miss Clarissa had shaken her head, Miss Lavinia resumed: again
+referring to my letter through her eye-glass. They both had little
+bright round twinkling eyes, by the way, which were like birds’ eyes.
+They were not unlike birds, altogether; having a sharp, brisk, sudden
+manner, and a little short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, like
+canaries.
+
+Miss Lavinia, as I have said, resumed:
+
+‘You ask permission of my sister Clarissa and myself, Mr. Copperfield,
+to visit here, as the accepted suitor of our niece.’
+
+‘If our brother Francis,’ said Miss Clarissa, breaking out again, if I
+may call anything so calm a breaking out, ‘wished to surround himself
+with an atmosphere of Doctors’ Commons, and of Doctors’ Commons only,
+what right or desire had we to object? None, I am sure. We have ever
+been far from wishing to obtrude ourselves on anyone. But why not say
+so? Let our brother Francis and his wife have their society. Let
+my sister Lavinia and myself have our society. We can find it for
+ourselves, I hope.’
+
+As this appeared to be addressed to Traddles and me, both Traddles and
+I made some sort of reply. Traddles was inaudible. I think I observed,
+myself, that it was highly creditable to all concerned. I don’t in the
+least know what I meant.
+
+‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, having now relieved her mind, ‘you
+can go on, my dear.’
+
+Miss Lavinia proceeded:
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield, my sister Clarissa and I have been very careful
+indeed in considering this letter; and we have not considered it without
+finally showing it to our niece, and discussing it with our niece. We
+have no doubt that you think you like her very much.’
+
+‘Think, ma’am,’ I rapturously began, ‘oh!--’
+
+But Miss Clarissa giving me a look (just like a sharp canary), as
+requesting that I would not interrupt the oracle, I begged pardon.
+
+‘Affection,’ said Miss Lavinia, glancing at her sister for
+corroboration, which she gave in the form of a little nod to every
+clause, ‘mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express
+itself. Its voice is low. It is modest and retiring, it lies in ambush,
+waits and waits. Such is the mature fruit. Sometimes a life glides away,
+and finds it still ripening in the shade.’
+
+Of course I did not understand then that this was an allusion to her
+supposed experience of the stricken Pidger; but I saw, from the gravity
+with which Miss Clarissa nodded her head, that great weight was attached
+to these words.
+
+‘The light--for I call them, in comparison with such sentiments, the
+light--inclinations of very young people,’ pursued Miss Lavinia, ‘are
+dust, compared to rocks. It is owing to the difficulty of knowing
+whether they are likely to endure or have any real foundation, that
+my sister Clarissa and myself have been very undecided how to act, Mr.
+Copperfield, and Mr.--’
+
+‘Traddles,’ said my friend, finding himself looked at.
+
+‘I beg pardon. Of the Inner Temple, I believe?’ said Miss Clarissa,
+again glancing at my letter.
+
+Traddles said ‘Exactly so,’ and became pretty red in the face.
+
+Now, although I had not received any express encouragement as yet, I
+fancied that I saw in the two little sisters, and particularly in Miss
+Lavinia, an intensified enjoyment of this new and fruitful subject of
+domestic interest, a settling down to make the most of it, a disposition
+to pet it, in which there was a good bright ray of hope. I thought
+I perceived that Miss Lavinia would have uncommon satisfaction in
+superintending two young lovers, like Dora and me; and that Miss
+Clarissa would have hardly less satisfaction in seeing her superintend
+us, and in chiming in with her own particular department of the subject
+whenever that impulse was strong upon her. This gave me courage to
+protest most vehemently that I loved Dora better than I could tell, or
+anyone believe; that all my friends knew how I loved her; that my aunt,
+Agnes, Traddles, everyone who knew me, knew how I loved her, and how
+earnest my love had made me. For the truth of this, I appealed to
+Traddles. And Traddles, firing up as if he were plunging into a
+Parliamentary Debate, really did come out nobly: confirming me in good
+round terms, and in a plain sensible practical manner, that evidently
+made a favourable impression.
+
+‘I speak, if I may presume to say so, as one who has some little
+experience of such things,’ said Traddles, ‘being myself engaged to a
+young lady--one of ten, down in Devonshire--and seeing no probability,
+at present, of our engagement coming to a termination.’
+
+‘You may be able to confirm what I have said, Mr. Traddles,’ observed
+Miss Lavinia, evidently taking a new interest in him, ‘of the affection
+that is modest and retiring; that waits and waits?’
+
+‘Entirely, ma’am,’ said Traddles.
+
+Miss Clarissa looked at Miss Lavinia, and shook her head gravely. Miss
+Lavinia looked consciously at Miss Clarissa, and heaved a little sigh.
+‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘take my smelling-bottle.’
+
+Miss Lavinia revived herself with a few whiffs of aromatic
+vinegar--Traddles and I looking on with great solicitude the while; and
+then went on to say, rather faintly:
+
+‘My sister and myself have been in great doubt, Mr. Traddles, what
+course we ought to take in reference to the likings, or imaginary
+likings, of such very young people as your friend Mr. Copperfield and
+our niece.’
+
+‘Our brother Francis’s child,’ remarked Miss Clarissa. ‘If our brother
+Francis’s wife had found it convenient in her lifetime (though she had
+an unquestionable right to act as she thought best) to invite the family
+to her dinner-table, we might have known our brother Francis’s child
+better at the present moment. Sister Lavinia, proceed.’
+
+Miss Lavinia turned my letter, so as to bring the superscription towards
+herself, and referred through her eye-glass to some orderly-looking
+notes she had made on that part of it.
+
+‘It seems to us,’ said she, ‘prudent, Mr. Traddles, to bring these
+feelings to the test of our own observation. At present we know nothing
+of them, and are not in a situation to judge how much reality there
+may be in them. Therefore we are inclined so far to accede to Mr.
+Copperfield’s proposal, as to admit his visits here.’
+
+‘I shall never, dear ladies,’ I exclaimed, relieved of an immense load
+of apprehension, ‘forget your kindness!’
+
+‘But,’ pursued Miss Lavinia,--‘but, we would prefer to regard those
+visits, Mr. Traddles, as made, at present, to us. We must guard
+ourselves from recognizing any positive engagement between Mr.
+Copperfield and our niece, until we have had an opportunity--’
+
+‘Until YOU have had an opportunity, sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa.
+
+‘Be it so,’ assented Miss Lavinia, with a sigh--‘until I have had an
+opportunity of observing them.’
+
+‘Copperfield,’ said Traddles, turning to me, ‘you feel, I am sure, that
+nothing could be more reasonable or considerate.’
+
+‘Nothing!’ cried I. ‘I am deeply sensible of it.’
+
+‘In this position of affairs,’ said Miss Lavinia, again referring to
+her notes, ‘and admitting his visits on this understanding only, we
+must require from Mr. Copperfield a distinct assurance, on his word of
+honour, that no communication of any kind shall take place between him
+and our niece without our knowledge. That no project whatever shall be
+entertained with regard to our niece, without being first submitted to
+us--’ ‘To you, sister Lavinia,’ Miss Clarissa interposed.
+
+‘Be it so, Clarissa!’ assented Miss Lavinia resignedly--‘to me--and
+receiving our concurrence. We must make this a most express and serious
+stipulation, not to be broken on any account. We wished Mr. Copperfield
+to be accompanied by some confidential friend today,’ with an
+inclination of her head towards Traddles, who bowed, ‘in order that
+there might be no doubt or misconception on this subject. If Mr.
+Copperfield, or if you, Mr. Traddles, feel the least scruple, in giving
+this promise, I beg you to take time to consider it.’
+
+I exclaimed, in a state of high ecstatic fervour, that not a moment’s
+consideration could be necessary. I bound myself by the required
+promise, in a most impassioned manner; called upon Traddles to witness
+it; and denounced myself as the most atrocious of characters if I ever
+swerved from it in the least degree.
+
+‘Stay!’ said Miss Lavinia, holding up her hand; ‘we resolved, before we
+had the pleasure of receiving you two gentlemen, to leave you alone
+for a quarter of an hour, to consider this point. You will allow us to
+retire.’
+
+It was in vain for me to say that no consideration was necessary. They
+persisted in withdrawing for the specified time. Accordingly, these
+little birds hopped out with great dignity; leaving me to receive the
+congratulations of Traddles, and to feel as if I were translated to
+regions of exquisite happiness. Exactly at the expiration of the
+quarter of an hour, they reappeared with no less dignity than they had
+disappeared. They had gone rustling away as if their little dresses were
+made of autumn-leaves: and they came rustling back, in like manner.
+
+I then bound myself once more to the prescribed conditions.
+
+‘Sister Clarissa,’ said Miss Lavinia, ‘the rest is with you.’
+
+Miss Clarissa, unfolding her arms for the first time, took the notes and
+glanced at them.
+
+‘We shall be happy,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘to see Mr. Copperfield to
+dinner, every Sunday, if it should suit his convenience. Our hour is
+three.’
+
+I bowed.
+
+‘In the course of the week,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘we shall be happy to
+see Mr. Copperfield to tea. Our hour is half-past six.’
+
+I bowed again.
+
+‘Twice in the week,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘but, as a rule, not oftener.’
+
+I bowed again.
+
+‘Miss Trotwood,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘mentioned in Mr. Copperfield’s
+letter, will perhaps call upon us. When visiting is better for the
+happiness of all parties, we are glad to receive visits, and return
+them. When it is better for the happiness of all parties that no
+visiting should take place, (as in the case of our brother Francis, and
+his establishment) that is quite different.’
+
+I intimated that my aunt would be proud and delighted to make their
+acquaintance; though I must say I was not quite sure of their getting
+on very satisfactorily together. The conditions being now closed, I
+expressed my acknowledgements in the warmest manner; and, taking the
+hand, first of Miss Clarissa, and then of Miss Lavinia, pressed it, in
+each case, to my lips.
+
+Miss Lavinia then arose, and begging Mr. Traddles to excuse us for a
+minute, requested me to follow her. I obeyed, all in a tremble, and was
+conducted into another room. There I found my blessed darling stopping
+her ears behind the door, with her dear little face against the wall;
+and Jip in the plate-warmer with his head tied up in a towel.
+
+Oh! How beautiful she was in her black frock, and how she sobbed and
+cried at first, and wouldn’t come out from behind the door! How fond we
+were of one another, when she did come out at last; and what a state of
+bliss I was in, when we took Jip out of the plate-warmer, and restored
+him to the light, sneezing very much, and were all three reunited!
+
+‘My dearest Dora! Now, indeed, my own for ever!’
+
+‘Oh, DON’T!’ pleaded Dora. ‘Please!’
+
+‘Are you not my own for ever, Dora?’
+
+‘Oh yes, of course I am!’ cried Dora, ‘but I am so frightened!’
+
+‘Frightened, my own?’
+
+‘Oh yes! I don’t like him,’ said Dora. ‘Why don’t he go?’
+
+‘Who, my life?’
+
+‘Your friend,’ said Dora. ‘It isn’t any business of his. What a stupid
+he must be!’
+
+‘My love!’ (There never was anything so coaxing as her childish ways.)
+‘He is the best creature!’
+
+‘Oh, but we don’t want any best creatures!’ pouted Dora.
+
+‘My dear,’ I argued, ‘you will soon know him well, and like him of all
+things. And here is my aunt coming soon; and you’ll like her of all
+things too, when you know her.’
+
+‘No, please don’t bring her!’ said Dora, giving me a horrified
+little kiss, and folding her hands. ‘Don’t. I know she’s a naughty,
+mischief-making old thing! Don’t let her come here, Doady!’ which was a
+corruption of David.
+
+Remonstrance was of no use, then; so I laughed, and admired, and was
+very much in love and very happy; and she showed me Jip’s new trick of
+standing on his hind legs in a corner--which he did for about the space
+of a flash of lightning, and then fell down--and I don’t know how long I
+should have stayed there, oblivious of Traddles, if Miss Lavinia had not
+come in to take me away. Miss Lavinia was very fond of Dora (she told
+me Dora was exactly like what she had been herself at her age--she must
+have altered a good deal), and she treated Dora just as if she had been
+a toy. I wanted to persuade Dora to come and see Traddles, but on my
+proposing it she ran off to her own room and locked herself in; so I
+went to Traddles without her, and walked away with him on air.
+
+‘Nothing could be more satisfactory,’ said Traddles; ‘and they are very
+agreeable old ladies, I am sure. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you
+were to be married years before me, Copperfield.’
+
+‘Does your Sophy play on any instrument, Traddles?’ I inquired, in the
+pride of my heart.
+
+‘She knows enough of the piano to teach it to her little sisters,’ said
+Traddles.
+
+‘Does she sing at all?’ I asked.
+
+‘Why, she sings ballads, sometimes, to freshen up the others a little
+when they’re out of spirits,’ said Traddles. ‘Nothing scientific.’
+
+‘She doesn’t sing to the guitar?’ said I.
+
+‘Oh dear no!’ said Traddles.
+
+‘Paint at all?’
+
+‘Not at all,’ said Traddles.
+
+I promised Traddles that he should hear Dora sing, and see some of her
+flower-painting. He said he should like it very much, and we went home
+arm in arm in great good humour and delight. I encouraged him to talk
+about Sophy, on the way; which he did with a loving reliance on her
+that I very much admired. I compared her in my mind with Dora, with
+considerable inward satisfaction; but I candidly admitted to myself that
+she seemed to be an excellent kind of girl for Traddles, too.
+
+Of course my aunt was immediately made acquainted with the successful
+issue of the conference, and with all that had been said and done in the
+course of it. She was happy to see me so happy, and promised to call on
+Dora’s aunts without loss of time. But she took such a long walk up and
+down our rooms that night, while I was writing to Agnes, that I began to
+think she meant to walk till morning.
+
+My letter to Agnes was a fervent and grateful one, narrating all the
+good effects that had resulted from my following her advice. She wrote,
+by return of post, to me. Her letter was hopeful, earnest, and cheerful.
+She was always cheerful from that time.
+
+I had my hands more full than ever, now. My daily journeys to Highgate
+considered, Putney was a long way off; and I naturally wanted to go
+there as often as I could. The proposed tea-drinkings being quite
+impracticable, I compounded with Miss Lavinia for permission to visit
+every Saturday afternoon, without detriment to my privileged Sundays.
+So, the close of every week was a delicious time for me; and I got
+through the rest of the week by looking forward to it.
+
+I was wonderfully relieved to find that my aunt and Dora’s aunts
+rubbed on, all things considered, much more smoothly than I could have
+expected. My aunt made her promised visit within a few days of the
+conference; and within a few more days, Dora’s aunts called upon her,
+in due state and form. Similar but more friendly exchanges took place
+afterwards, usually at intervals of three or four weeks. I know that my
+aunt distressed Dora’s aunts very much, by utterly setting at naught the
+dignity of fly-conveyance, and walking out to Putney at extraordinary
+times, as shortly after breakfast or just before tea; likewise by
+wearing her bonnet in any manner that happened to be comfortable to her
+head, without at all deferring to the prejudices of civilization on that
+subject. But Dora’s aunts soon agreed to regard my aunt as an eccentric
+and somewhat masculine lady, with a strong understanding; and although
+my aunt occasionally ruffled the feathers of Dora’s aunts, by expressing
+heretical opinions on various points of ceremony, she loved me too
+well not to sacrifice some of her little peculiarities to the general
+harmony.
+
+The only member of our small society who positively refused to adapt
+himself to circumstances, was Jip. He never saw my aunt without
+immediately displaying every tooth in his head, retiring under a chair,
+and growling incessantly: with now and then a doleful howl, as if she
+really were too much for his feelings. All kinds of treatment were tried
+with him, coaxing, scolding, slapping, bringing him to Buckingham
+Street (where he instantly dashed at the two cats, to the terror of all
+beholders); but he never could prevail upon himself to bear my
+aunt’s society. He would sometimes think he had got the better of his
+objection, and be amiable for a few minutes; and then would put up his
+snub nose, and howl to that extent, that there was nothing for it but
+to blind him and put him in the plate-warmer. At length, Dora regularly
+muffled him in a towel and shut him up there, whenever my aunt was
+reported at the door.
+
+One thing troubled me much, after we had fallen into this quiet train.
+It was, that Dora seemed by one consent to be regarded like a pretty toy
+or plaything. My aunt, with whom she gradually became familiar, always
+called her Little Blossom; and the pleasure of Miss Lavinia’s life was
+to wait upon her, curl her hair, make ornaments for her, and treat her
+like a pet child. What Miss Lavinia did, her sister did as a matter of
+course. It was very odd to me; but they all seemed to treat Dora, in her
+degree, much as Dora treated Jip in his.
+
+I made up my mind to speak to Dora about this; and one day when we were
+out walking (for we were licensed by Miss Lavinia, after a while, to
+go out walking by ourselves), I said to her that I wished she could get
+them to behave towards her differently.
+
+‘Because you know, my darling,’ I remonstrated, ‘you are not a child.’
+
+‘There!’ said Dora. ‘Now you’re going to be cross!’
+
+‘Cross, my love?’
+
+‘I am sure they’re very kind to me,’ said Dora, ‘and I am very happy--’
+
+‘Well! But my dearest life!’ said I, ‘you might be very happy, and yet
+be treated rationally.’
+
+Dora gave me a reproachful look--the prettiest look!--and then began to
+sob, saying, if I didn’t like her, why had I ever wanted so much to be
+engaged to her? And why didn’t I go away, now, if I couldn’t bear her?
+
+What could I do, but kiss away her tears, and tell her how I doted on
+her, after that!
+
+‘I am sure I am very affectionate,’ said Dora; ‘you oughtn’t to be cruel
+to me, Doady!’
+
+‘Cruel, my precious love! As if I would--or could--be cruel to you, for
+the world!’
+
+‘Then don’t find fault with me,’ said Dora, making a rosebud of her
+mouth; ‘and I’ll be good.’
+
+I was charmed by her presently asking me, of her own accord, to give
+her that cookery-book I had once spoken of, and to show her how to keep
+accounts as I had once promised I would. I brought the volume with me on
+my next visit (I got it prettily bound, first, to make it look less dry
+and more inviting); and as we strolled about the Common, I showed her an
+old housekeeping-book of my aunt’s, and gave her a set of tablets, and
+a pretty little pencil-case and box of leads, to practise housekeeping
+with.
+
+But the cookery-book made Dora’s head ache, and the figures made her
+cry. They wouldn’t add up, she said. So she rubbed them out, and drew
+little nosegays and likenesses of me and Jip, all over the tablets.
+
+Then I playfully tried verbal instruction in domestic matters, as we
+walked about on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes, for example, when we
+passed a butcher’s shop, I would say:
+
+‘Now suppose, my pet, that we were married, and you were going to buy a
+shoulder of mutton for dinner, would you know how to buy it?’
+
+My pretty little Dora’s face would fall, and she would make her mouth
+into a bud again, as if she would very much prefer to shut mine with a
+kiss.
+
+‘Would you know how to buy it, my darling?’ I would repeat, perhaps, if
+I were very inflexible.
+
+Dora would think a little, and then reply, perhaps, with great triumph:
+
+‘Why, the butcher would know how to sell it, and what need I know? Oh,
+you silly boy!’
+
+So, when I once asked Dora, with an eye to the cookery-book, what she
+would do, if we were married, and I were to say I should like a nice
+Irish stew, she replied that she would tell the servant to make it; and
+then clapped her little hands together across my arm, and laughed in
+such a charming manner that she was more delightful than ever.
+
+Consequently, the principal use to which the cookery-book was devoted,
+was being put down in the corner for Jip to stand upon. But Dora was so
+pleased, when she had trained him to stand upon it without offering to
+come off, and at the same time to hold the pencil-case in his mouth,
+that I was very glad I had bought it.
+
+And we fell back on the guitar-case, and the flower-painting, and the
+songs about never leaving off dancing, Ta ra la! and were as happy as
+the week was long. I occasionally wished I could venture to hint to Miss
+Lavinia, that she treated the darling of my heart a little too much like
+a plaything; and I sometimes awoke, as it were, wondering to find that
+I had fallen into the general fault, and treated her like a plaything
+too--but not often.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 42. MISCHIEF
+
+I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript
+is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous
+short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of
+responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have
+already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a
+patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me,
+and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any
+strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my
+success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have
+worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could
+have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order,
+and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one
+object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon
+its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit
+of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine,
+in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man
+indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents
+neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted
+feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I
+do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My
+meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have
+tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself
+to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in
+small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed
+it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from
+the companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and
+hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this
+earth. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the
+two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that
+ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no
+substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never
+to put one hand to anything, on which I could throw my whole self; and
+never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now,
+to have been my golden rules.
+
+How much of the practice I have just reduced to precept, I owe to Agnes,
+I will not repeat here. My narrative proceeds to Agnes, with a thankful
+love.
+
+She came on a visit of a fortnight to the Doctor’s. Mr. Wickfield was
+the Doctor’s old friend, and the Doctor wished to talk with him, and
+do him good. It had been matter of conversation with Agnes when she was
+last in town, and this visit was the result. She and her father came
+together. I was not much surprised to hear from her that she had engaged
+to find a lodging in the neighbourhood for Mrs. Heep, whose rheumatic
+complaint required change of air, and who would be charmed to have it in
+such company. Neither was I surprised when, on the very next day, Uriah,
+like a dutiful son, brought his worthy mother to take possession.
+
+‘You see, Master Copperfield,’ said he, as he forced himself upon my
+company for a turn in the Doctor’s garden, ‘where a person loves, a
+person is a little jealous--leastways, anxious to keep an eye on the
+beloved one.’
+
+‘Of whom are you jealous, now?’ said I.
+
+‘Thanks to you, Master Copperfield,’ he returned, ‘of no one in
+particular just at present--no male person, at least.’
+
+‘Do you mean that you are jealous of a female person?’
+
+He gave me a sidelong glance out of his sinister red eyes, and laughed.
+
+‘Really, Master Copperfield,’ he said, ‘--I should say Mister, but I
+know you’ll excuse the abit I’ve got into--you’re so insinuating, that
+you draw me like a corkscrew! Well, I don’t mind telling you,’ putting
+his fish-like hand on mine, ‘I’m not a lady’s man in general, sir, and I
+never was, with Mrs. Strong.’
+
+His eyes looked green now, as they watched mine with a rascally cunning.
+
+‘What do you mean?’ said I.
+
+‘Why, though I am a lawyer, Master Copperfield,’ he replied, with a dry
+grin, ‘I mean, just at present, what I say.’
+
+‘And what do you mean by your look?’ I retorted, quietly.
+
+‘By my look? Dear me, Copperfield, that’s sharp practice! What do I mean
+by my look?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said I. ‘By your look.’
+
+He seemed very much amused, and laughed as heartily as it was in his
+nature to laugh. After some scraping of his chin with his hand, he went
+on to say, with his eyes cast downward--still scraping, very slowly:
+
+‘When I was but an umble clerk, she always looked down upon me. She was
+for ever having my Agnes backwards and forwards at her ouse, and she was
+for ever being a friend to you, Master Copperfield; but I was too far
+beneath her, myself, to be noticed.’
+
+‘Well?’ said I; ‘suppose you were!’
+
+‘--And beneath him too,’ pursued Uriah, very distinctly, and in a
+meditative tone of voice, as he continued to scrape his chin.
+
+‘Don’t you know the Doctor better,’ said I, ‘than to suppose him
+conscious of your existence, when you were not before him?’
+
+He directed his eyes at me in that sidelong glance again, and he made
+his face very lantern-jawed, for the greater convenience of scraping, as
+he answered:
+
+‘Oh dear, I am not referring to the Doctor! Oh no, poor man! I mean Mr.
+Maldon!’
+
+My heart quite died within me. All my old doubts and apprehensions on
+that subject, all the Doctor’s happiness and peace, all the mingled
+possibilities of innocence and compromise, that I could not unravel, I
+saw, in a moment, at the mercy of this fellow’s twisting.
+
+‘He never could come into the office, without ordering and shoving me
+about,’ said Uriah. ‘One of your fine gentlemen he was! I was very meek
+and umble--and I am. But I didn’t like that sort of thing--and I don’t!’
+
+He left off scraping his chin, and sucked in his cheeks until they
+seemed to meet inside; keeping his sidelong glance upon me all the
+while.
+
+‘She is one of your lovely women, she is,’ he pursued, when he had
+slowly restored his face to its natural form; ‘and ready to be no friend
+to such as me, I know. She’s just the person as would put my Agnes up
+to higher sort of game. Now, I ain’t one of your lady’s men, Master
+Copperfield; but I’ve had eyes in my ed, a pretty long time back. We
+umble ones have got eyes, mostly speaking--and we look out of ‘em.’
+
+I endeavoured to appear unconscious and not disquieted, but, I saw in
+his face, with poor success.
+
+‘Now, I’m not a-going to let myself be run down, Copperfield,’ he
+continued, raising that part of his countenance, where his red eyebrows
+would have been if he had had any, with malignant triumph, ‘and I shall
+do what I can to put a stop to this friendship. I don’t approve of it.
+I don’t mind acknowledging to you that I’ve got rather a grudging
+disposition, and want to keep off all intruders. I ain’t a-going, if I
+know it, to run the risk of being plotted against.’
+
+‘You are always plotting, and delude yourself into the belief that
+everybody else is doing the like, I think,’ said I.
+
+‘Perhaps so, Master Copperfield,’ he replied. ‘But I’ve got a motive, as
+my fellow-partner used to say; and I go at it tooth and nail. I mustn’t
+be put upon, as a numble person, too much. I can’t allow people in my
+way. Really they must come out of the cart, Master Copperfield!’
+
+‘I don’t understand you,’ said I.
+
+‘Don’t you, though?’ he returned, with one of his jerks. ‘I’m astonished
+at that, Master Copperfield, you being usually so quick! I’ll try to be
+plainer, another time.---Is that Mr. Maldon a-norseback, ringing at the
+gate, sir?’
+
+‘It looks like him,’ I replied, as carelessly as I could.
+
+Uriah stopped short, put his hands between his great knobs of knees, and
+doubled himself up with laughter. With perfectly silent laughter. Not
+a sound escaped from him. I was so repelled by his odious behaviour,
+particularly by this concluding instance, that I turned away without any
+ceremony; and left him doubled up in the middle of the garden, like a
+scarecrow in want of support.
+
+It was not on that evening; but, as I well remember, on the next evening
+but one, which was a Sunday; that I took Agnes to see Dora. I had
+arranged the visit, beforehand, with Miss Lavinia; and Agnes was
+expected to tea.
+
+I was in a flutter of pride and anxiety; pride in my dear little
+betrothed, and anxiety that Agnes should like her. All the way to
+Putney, Agnes being inside the stage-coach, and I outside, I pictured
+Dora to myself in every one of the pretty looks I knew so well; now
+making up my mind that I should like her to look exactly as she looked
+at such a time, and then doubting whether I should not prefer her
+looking as she looked at such another time; and almost worrying myself
+into a fever about it.
+
+I was troubled by no doubt of her being very pretty, in any case; but
+it fell out that I had never seen her look so well. She was not in the
+drawing-room when I presented Agnes to her little aunts, but was shyly
+keeping out of the way. I knew where to look for her, now; and sure
+enough I found her stopping her ears again, behind the same dull old
+door.
+
+At first she wouldn’t come at all; and then she pleaded for five minutes
+by my watch. When at length she put her arm through mine, to be taken
+to the drawing-room, her charming little face was flushed, and had never
+been so pretty. But, when we went into the room, and it turned pale, she
+was ten thousand times prettier yet.
+
+Dora was afraid of Agnes. She had told me that she knew Agnes was
+‘too clever’. But when she saw her looking at once so cheerful and so
+earnest, and so thoughtful, and so good, she gave a faint little cry of
+pleased surprise, and just put her affectionate arms round Agnes’s neck,
+and laid her innocent cheek against her face.
+
+I never was so happy. I never was so pleased as when I saw those two sit
+down together, side by side. As when I saw my little darling looking up
+so naturally to those cordial eyes. As when I saw the tender, beautiful
+regard which Agnes cast upon her.
+
+Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa partook, in their way, of my joy. It was
+the pleasantest tea-table in the world. Miss Clarissa presided. I cut
+and handed the sweet seed-cake--the little sisters had a bird-like
+fondness for picking up seeds and pecking at sugar; Miss Lavinia looked
+on with benignant patronage, as if our happy love were all her work; and
+we were perfectly contented with ourselves and one another.
+
+The gentle cheerfulness of Agnes went to all their hearts. Her quiet
+interest in everything that interested Dora; her manner of making
+acquaintance with Jip (who responded instantly); her pleasant way, when
+Dora was ashamed to come over to her usual seat by me; her modest grace
+and ease, eliciting a crowd of blushing little marks of confidence from
+Dora; seemed to make our circle quite complete.
+
+‘I am so glad,’ said Dora, after tea, ‘that you like me. I didn’t think
+you would; and I want, more than ever, to be liked, now Julia Mills is
+gone.’
+
+I have omitted to mention it, by the by. Miss Mills had sailed, and Dora
+and I had gone aboard a great East Indiaman at Gravesend to see her;
+and we had had preserved ginger, and guava, and other delicacies of that
+sort for lunch; and we had left Miss Mills weeping on a camp-stool on
+the quarter-deck, with a large new diary under her arm, in which the
+original reflections awakened by the contemplation of Ocean were to be
+recorded under lock and key.
+
+Agnes said she was afraid I must have given her an unpromising
+character; but Dora corrected that directly.
+
+‘Oh no!’ she said, shaking her curls at me; ‘it was all praise. He
+thinks so much of your opinion, that I was quite afraid of it.’
+
+‘My good opinion cannot strengthen his attachment to some people whom he
+knows,’ said Agnes, with a smile; ‘it is not worth their having.’
+
+‘But please let me have it,’ said Dora, in her coaxing way, ‘if you
+can!’
+
+We made merry about Dora’s wanting to be liked, and Dora said I was a
+goose, and she didn’t like me at any rate, and the short evening flew
+away on gossamer-wings. The time was at hand when the coach was to call
+for us. I was standing alone before the fire, when Dora came stealing
+softly in, to give me that usual precious little kiss before I went.
+
+‘Don’t you think, if I had had her for a friend a long time ago, Doady,’
+said Dora, her bright eyes shining very brightly, and her little right
+hand idly busying itself with one of the buttons of my coat, ‘I might
+have been more clever perhaps?’
+
+‘My love!’ said I, ‘what nonsense!’
+
+‘Do you think it is nonsense?’ returned Dora, without looking at me.
+‘Are you sure it is?’
+
+‘Of course I am!’ ‘I have forgotten,’ said Dora, still turning the
+button round and round, ‘what relation Agnes is to you, you dear bad
+boy.’
+
+‘No blood-relation,’ I replied; ‘but we were brought up together, like
+brother and sister.’
+
+‘I wonder why you ever fell in love with me?’ said Dora, beginning on
+another button of my coat.
+
+‘Perhaps because I couldn’t see you, and not love you, Dora!’
+
+‘Suppose you had never seen me at all,’ said Dora, going to another
+button.
+
+‘Suppose we had never been born!’ said I, gaily.
+
+I wondered what she was thinking about, as I glanced in admiring silence
+at the little soft hand travelling up the row of buttons on my coat, and
+at the clustering hair that lay against my breast, and at the lashes of
+her downcast eyes, slightly rising as they followed her idle fingers. At
+length her eyes were lifted up to mine, and she stood on tiptoe to
+give me, more thoughtfully than usual, that precious little kiss--once,
+twice, three times--and went out of the room.
+
+They all came back together within five minutes afterwards, and Dora’s
+unusual thoughtfulness was quite gone then. She was laughingly resolved
+to put Jip through the whole of his performances, before the coach came.
+They took some time (not so much on account of their variety, as Jip’s
+reluctance), and were still unfinished when it was heard at the door.
+There was a hurried but affectionate parting between Agnes and herself;
+and Dora was to write to Agnes (who was not to mind her letters being
+foolish, she said), and Agnes was to write to Dora; and they had a
+second parting at the coach door, and a third when Dora, in spite of
+the remonstrances of Miss Lavinia, would come running out once more to
+remind Agnes at the coach window about writing, and to shake her curls
+at me on the box.
+
+The stage-coach was to put us down near Covent Garden, where we were
+to take another stage-coach for Highgate. I was impatient for the short
+walk in the interval, that Agnes might praise Dora to me. Ah! what
+praise it was! How lovingly and fervently did it commend the pretty
+creature I had won, with all her artless graces best displayed, to my
+most gentle care! How thoughtfully remind me, yet with no pretence of
+doing so, of the trust in which I held the orphan child!
+
+Never, never, had I loved Dora so deeply and truly, as I loved her that
+night. When we had again alighted, and were walking in the starlight
+along the quiet road that led to the Doctor’s house, I told Agnes it was
+her doing.
+
+‘When you were sitting by her,’ said I, ‘you seemed to be no less her
+guardian angel than mine; and you seem so now, Agnes.’
+
+‘A poor angel,’ she returned, ‘but faithful.’
+
+The clear tone of her voice, going straight to my heart, made it natural
+to me to say:
+
+‘The cheerfulness that belongs to you, Agnes (and to no one else that
+ever I have seen), is so restored, I have observed today, that I have
+begun to hope you are happier at home?’
+
+‘I am happier in myself,’ she said; ‘I am quite cheerful and
+light-hearted.’
+
+I glanced at the serene face looking upward, and thought it was the
+stars that made it seem so noble.
+
+‘There has been no change at home,’ said Agnes, after a few moments.
+
+‘No fresh reference,’ said I, ‘to--I wouldn’t distress you, Agnes, but I
+cannot help asking--to what we spoke of, when we parted last?’
+
+‘No, none,’ she answered.
+
+‘I have thought so much about it.’
+
+‘You must think less about it. Remember that I confide in simple love
+and truth at last. Have no apprehensions for me, Trotwood,’ she added,
+after a moment; ‘the step you dread my taking, I shall never take.’
+
+Although I think I had never really feared it, in any season of cool
+reflection, it was an unspeakable relief to me to have this assurance
+from her own truthful lips. I told her so, earnestly.
+
+‘And when this visit is over,’ said I,--‘for we may not be alone another
+time,--how long is it likely to be, my dear Agnes, before you come to
+London again?’
+
+‘Probably a long time,’ she replied; ‘I think it will be best--for
+papa’s sake--to remain at home. We are not likely to meet often, for
+some time to come; but I shall be a good correspondent of Dora’s, and we
+shall frequently hear of one another that way.’
+
+We were now within the little courtyard of the Doctor’s cottage. It was
+growing late. There was a light in the window of Mrs. Strong’s chamber,
+and Agnes, pointing to it, bade me good night.
+
+‘Do not be troubled,’ she said, giving me her hand, ‘by our misfortunes
+and anxieties. I can be happier in nothing than in your happiness. If
+you can ever give me help, rely upon it I will ask you for it. God
+bless you always!’ In her beaming smile, and in these last tones of her
+cheerful voice, I seemed again to see and hear my little Dora in her
+company. I stood awhile, looking through the porch at the stars, with
+a heart full of love and gratitude, and then walked slowly forth. I had
+engaged a bed at a decent alehouse close by, and was going out at the
+gate, when, happening to turn my head, I saw a light in the Doctor’s
+study. A half-reproachful fancy came into my mind, that he had been
+working at the Dictionary without my help. With the view of seeing if
+this were so, and, in any case, of bidding him good night, if he were
+yet sitting among his books, I turned back, and going softly across the
+hall, and gently opening the door, looked in.
+
+The first person whom I saw, to my surprise, by the sober light of the
+shaded lamp, was Uriah. He was standing close beside it, with one of
+his skeleton hands over his mouth, and the other resting on the Doctor’s
+table. The Doctor sat in his study chair, covering his face with his
+hands. Mr. Wickfield, sorely troubled and distressed, was leaning
+forward, irresolutely touching the Doctor’s arm.
+
+For an instant, I supposed that the Doctor was ill. I hastily advanced a
+step under that impression, when I met Uriah’s eye, and saw what was the
+matter. I would have withdrawn, but the Doctor made a gesture to detain
+me, and I remained.
+
+‘At any rate,’ observed Uriah, with a writhe of his ungainly person, ‘we
+may keep the door shut. We needn’t make it known to ALL the town.’
+
+Saying which, he went on his toes to the door, which I had left open,
+and carefully closed it. He then came back, and took up his former
+position. There was an obtrusive show of compassionate zeal in his voice
+and manner, more intolerable--at least to me--than any demeanour he
+could have assumed.
+
+‘I have felt it incumbent upon me, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘to
+point out to Doctor Strong what you and me have already talked about.
+You didn’t exactly understand me, though?’
+
+I gave him a look, but no other answer; and, going to my good old
+master, said a few words that I meant to be words of comfort and
+encouragement. He put his hand upon my shoulder, as it had been his
+custom to do when I was quite a little fellow, but did not lift his grey
+head.
+
+‘As you didn’t understand me, Master Copperfield,’ resumed Uriah in
+the same officious manner, ‘I may take the liberty of umbly mentioning,
+being among friends, that I have called Doctor Strong’s attention to the
+goings-on of Mrs. Strong. It’s much against the grain with me, I assure
+you, Copperfield, to be concerned in anything so unpleasant; but really,
+as it is, we’re all mixing ourselves up with what oughtn’t to be. That
+was what my meaning was, sir, when you didn’t understand me.’ I wonder
+now, when I recall his leer, that I did not collar him, and try to shake
+the breath out of his body.
+
+‘I dare say I didn’t make myself very clear,’ he went on, ‘nor you
+neither. Naturally, we was both of us inclined to give such a subject
+a wide berth. Hows’ever, at last I have made up my mind to speak plain;
+and I have mentioned to Doctor Strong that--did you speak, sir?’
+
+This was to the Doctor, who had moaned. The sound might have touched any
+heart, I thought, but it had no effect upon Uriah’s.
+
+‘--mentioned to Doctor Strong,’ he proceeded, ‘that anyone may see that
+Mr. Maldon, and the lovely and agreeable lady as is Doctor Strong’s
+wife, are too sweet on one another. Really the time is come (we being at
+present all mixing ourselves up with what oughtn’t to be), when Doctor
+Strong must be told that this was full as plain to everybody as the sun,
+before Mr. Maldon went to India; that Mr. Maldon made excuses to come
+back, for nothing else; and that he’s always here, for nothing else.
+When you come in, sir, I was just putting it to my fellow-partner,’
+towards whom he turned, ‘to say to Doctor Strong upon his word and
+honour, whether he’d ever been of this opinion long ago, or not. Come,
+Mr. Wickfield, sir! Would you be so good as tell us? Yes or no, sir?
+Come, partner!’
+
+‘For God’s sake, my dear Doctor,’ said Mr. Wickfield again laying his
+irresolute hand upon the Doctor’s arm, ‘don’t attach too much weight to
+any suspicions I may have entertained.’
+
+‘There!’ cried Uriah, shaking his head. ‘What a melancholy confirmation:
+ain’t it? Him! Such an old friend! Bless your soul, when I was nothing
+but a clerk in his office, Copperfield, I’ve seen him twenty times, if
+I’ve seen him once, quite in a taking about it--quite put out, you know
+(and very proper in him as a father; I’m sure I can’t blame him), to
+think that Miss Agnes was mixing herself up with what oughtn’t to be.’
+
+‘My dear Strong,’ said Mr. Wickfield in a tremulous voice, ‘my good
+friend, I needn’t tell you that it has been my vice to look for some one
+master motive in everybody, and to try all actions by one narrow test. I
+may have fallen into such doubts as I have had, through this mistake.’
+
+‘You have had doubts, Wickfield,’ said the Doctor, without lifting up
+his head. ‘You have had doubts.’
+
+‘Speak up, fellow-partner,’ urged Uriah.
+
+‘I had, at one time, certainly,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘I--God forgive
+me--I thought YOU had.’
+
+‘No, no, no!’ returned the Doctor, in a tone of most pathetic grief.
+‘I thought, at one time,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘that you wished to send
+Maldon abroad to effect a desirable separation.’
+
+‘No, no, no!’ returned the Doctor. ‘To give Annie pleasure, by making
+some provision for the companion of her childhood. Nothing else.’
+
+‘So I found,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘I couldn’t doubt it, when you told
+me so. But I thought--I implore you to remember the narrow construction
+which has been my besetting sin--that, in a case where there was so much
+disparity in point of years--’
+
+‘That’s the way to put it, you see, Master Copperfield!’ observed Uriah,
+with fawning and offensive pity.
+
+‘--a lady of such youth, and such attractions, however real her
+respect for you, might have been influenced in marrying, by worldly
+considerations only. I make no allowance for innumerable feelings
+and circumstances that may have all tended to good. For Heaven’s sake
+remember that!’
+
+‘How kind he puts it!’ said Uriah, shaking his head.
+
+‘Always observing her from one point of view,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘but
+by all that is dear to you, my old friend, I entreat you to consider
+what it was; I am forced to confess now, having no escape-’
+
+‘No! There’s no way out of it, Mr. Wickfield, sir,’ observed Uriah,
+‘when it’s got to this.’
+
+‘--that I did,’ said Mr. Wickfield, glancing helplessly and distractedly
+at his partner, ‘that I did doubt her, and think her wanting in her
+duty to you; and that I did sometimes, if I must say all, feel averse
+to Agnes being in such a familiar relation towards her, as to see what I
+saw, or in my diseased theory fancied that I saw. I never mentioned
+this to anyone. I never meant it to be known to anyone. And though it
+is terrible to you to hear,’ said Mr. Wickfield, quite subdued, ‘if you
+knew how terrible it is for me to tell, you would feel compassion for
+me!’
+
+The Doctor, in the perfect goodness of his nature, put out his hand. Mr.
+Wickfield held it for a little while in his, with his head bowed down.
+
+‘I am sure,’ said Uriah, writhing himself into the silence like a
+Conger-eel, ‘that this is a subject full of unpleasantness to everybody.
+But since we have got so far, I ought to take the liberty of mentioning
+that Copperfield has noticed it too.’
+
+I turned upon him, and asked him how he dared refer to me!
+
+‘Oh! it’s very kind of you, Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, undulating all
+over, ‘and we all know what an amiable character yours is; but you know
+that the moment I spoke to you the other night, you knew what I meant.
+You know you knew what I meant, Copperfield. Don’t deny it! You deny it
+with the best intentions; but don’t do it, Copperfield.’
+
+I saw the mild eye of the good old Doctor turned upon me for a moment,
+and I felt that the confession of my old misgivings and remembrances
+was too plainly written in my face to be overlooked. It was of no use
+raging. I could not undo that. Say what I would, I could not unsay it.
+
+We were silent again, and remained so, until the Doctor rose and walked
+twice or thrice across the room. Presently he returned to where his
+chair stood; and, leaning on the back of it, and occasionally putting
+his handkerchief to his eyes, with a simple honesty that did him more
+honour, to my thinking, than any disguise he could have effected, said:
+
+‘I have been much to blame. I believe I have been very much to blame.
+I have exposed one whom I hold in my heart, to trials and aspersions--I
+call them aspersions, even to have been conceived in anybody’s inmost
+mind--of which she never, but for me, could have been the object.’
+
+Uriah Heep gave a kind of snivel. I think to express sympathy.
+
+‘Of which my Annie,’ said the Doctor, ‘never, but for me, could have
+been the object. Gentlemen, I am old now, as you know; I do not feel,
+tonight, that I have much to live for. But my life--my Life--upon the
+truth and honour of the dear lady who has been the subject of this
+conversation!’
+
+I do not think that the best embodiment of chivalry, the realization of
+the handsomest and most romantic figure ever imagined by painter, could
+have said this, with a more impressive and affecting dignity than the
+plain old Doctor did.
+
+‘But I am not prepared,’ he went on, ‘to deny--perhaps I may have been,
+without knowing it, in some degree prepared to admit--that I may have
+unwittingly ensnared that lady into an unhappy marriage. I am a man
+quite unaccustomed to observe; and I cannot but believe that the
+observation of several people, of different ages and positions, all too
+plainly tending in one direction (and that so natural), is better than
+mine.’
+
+I had often admired, as I have elsewhere described, his benignant manner
+towards his youthful wife; but the respectful tenderness he manifested
+in every reference to her on this occasion, and the almost reverential
+manner in which he put away from him the lightest doubt of her
+integrity, exalted him, in my eyes, beyond description.
+
+‘I married that lady,’ said the Doctor, ‘when she was extremely young. I
+took her to myself when her character was scarcely formed. So far as it
+was developed, it had been my happiness to form it. I knew her father
+well. I knew her well. I had taught her what I could, for the love of
+all her beautiful and virtuous qualities. If I did her wrong; as I fear
+I did, in taking advantage (but I never meant it) of her gratitude and
+her affection; I ask pardon of that lady, in my heart!’
+
+He walked across the room, and came back to the same place; holding
+the chair with a grasp that trembled, like his subdued voice, in its
+earnestness.
+
+‘I regarded myself as a refuge, for her, from the dangers and
+vicissitudes of life. I persuaded myself that, unequal though we were in
+years, she would live tranquilly and contentedly with me. I did not shut
+out of my consideration the time when I should leave her free, and still
+young and still beautiful, but with her judgement more matured--no,
+gentlemen--upon my truth!’
+
+His homely figure seemed to be lightened up by his fidelity and
+generosity. Every word he uttered had a force that no other grace could
+have imparted to it.
+
+‘My life with this lady has been very happy. Until tonight, I have
+had uninterrupted occasion to bless the day on which I did her great
+injustice.’
+
+His voice, more and more faltering in the utterance of these words,
+stopped for a few moments; then he went on:
+
+‘Once awakened from my dream--I have been a poor dreamer, in one way or
+other, all my life--I see how natural it is that she should have some
+regretful feeling towards her old companion and her equal. That she does
+regard him with some innocent regret, with some blameless thoughts of
+what might have been, but for me, is, I fear, too true. Much that I have
+seen, but not noted, has come back upon me with new meaning, during
+this last trying hour. But, beyond this, gentlemen, the dear lady’s name
+never must be coupled with a word, a breath, of doubt.’
+
+For a little while, his eye kindled and his voice was firm; for a little
+while he was again silent. Presently, he proceeded as before:
+
+‘It only remains for me, to bear the knowledge of the unhappiness I have
+occasioned, as submissively as I can. It is she who should reproach; not
+I. To save her from misconstruction, cruel misconstruction, that even my
+friends have not been able to avoid, becomes my duty. The more retired
+we live, the better I shall discharge it. And when the time comes--may
+it come soon, if it be His merciful pleasure!--when my death shall
+release her from constraint, I shall close my eyes upon her honoured
+face, with unbounded confidence and love; and leave her, with no sorrow
+then, to happier and brighter days.’
+
+I could not see him for the tears which his earnestness and goodness,
+so adorned by, and so adorning, the perfect simplicity of his manner,
+brought into my eyes. He had moved to the door, when he added:
+
+‘Gentlemen, I have shown you my heart. I am sure you will respect it.
+What we have said tonight is never to be said more. Wickfield, give me
+an old friend’s arm upstairs!’
+
+Mr. Wickfield hastened to him. Without interchanging a word they went
+slowly out of the room together, Uriah looking after them.
+
+‘Well, Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah, meekly turning to me. ‘The thing
+hasn’t took quite the turn that might have been expected, for the old
+Scholar--what an excellent man!--is as blind as a brickbat; but this
+family’s out of the cart, I think!’
+
+I needed but the sound of his voice to be so madly enraged as I never
+was before, and never have been since.
+
+‘You villain,’ said I, ‘what do you mean by entrapping me into your
+schemes? How dare you appeal to me just now, you false rascal, as if we
+had been in discussion together?’
+
+As we stood, front to front, I saw so plainly, in the stealthy
+exultation of his face, what I already so plainly knew; I mean that he
+forced his confidence upon me, expressly to make me miserable, and had
+set a deliberate trap for me in this very matter; that I couldn’t bear
+it. The whole of his lank cheek was invitingly before me, and I struck
+it with my open hand with that force that my fingers tingled as if I had
+burnt them.
+
+He caught the hand in his, and we stood in that connexion, looking at
+each other. We stood so, a long time; long enough for me to see the
+white marks of my fingers die out of the deep red of his cheek, and
+leave it a deeper red.
+
+‘Copperfield,’ he said at length, in a breathless voice, ‘have you taken
+leave of your senses?’
+
+‘I have taken leave of you,’ said I, wresting my hand away. ‘You dog,
+I’ll know no more of you.’
+
+‘Won’t you?’ said he, constrained by the pain of his cheek to put his
+hand there. ‘Perhaps you won’t be able to help it. Isn’t this ungrateful
+of you, now?’
+
+‘I have shown you often enough,’ said I, ‘that I despise you. I have
+shown you now, more plainly, that I do. Why should I dread your doing
+your worst to all about you? What else do you ever do?’
+
+He perfectly understood this allusion to the considerations that had
+hitherto restrained me in my communications with him. I rather think
+that neither the blow, nor the allusion, would have escaped me, but for
+the assurance I had had from Agnes that night. It is no matter.
+
+There was another long pause. His eyes, as he looked at me, seemed to
+take every shade of colour that could make eyes ugly.
+
+‘Copperfield,’ he said, removing his hand from his cheek, ‘you have
+always gone against me. I know you always used to be against me at Mr.
+Wickfield’s.’
+
+‘You may think what you like,’ said I, still in a towering rage. ‘If it
+is not true, so much the worthier you.’
+
+‘And yet I always liked you, Copperfield!’ he rejoined.
+
+I deigned to make him no reply; and, taking up my hat, was going out to
+bed, when he came between me and the door.
+
+‘Copperfield,’ he said, ‘there must be two parties to a quarrel. I won’t
+be one.’
+
+‘You may go to the devil!’ said I.
+
+‘Don’t say that!’ he replied. ‘I know you’ll be sorry afterwards. How
+can you make yourself so inferior to me, as to show such a bad spirit?
+But I forgive you.’
+
+‘You forgive me!’ I repeated disdainfully.
+
+‘I do, and you can’t help yourself,’ replied Uriah. ‘To think of your
+going and attacking me, that have always been a friend to you! But there
+can’t be a quarrel without two parties, and I won’t be one. I will be
+a friend to you, in spite of you. So now you know what you’ve got to
+expect.’
+
+The necessity of carrying on this dialogue (his part in which was
+very slow; mine very quick) in a low tone, that the house might not be
+disturbed at an unseasonable hour, did not improve my temper; though my
+passion was cooling down. Merely telling him that I should expect from
+him what I always had expected, and had never yet been disappointed in,
+I opened the door upon him, as if he had been a great walnut put there
+to be cracked, and went out of the house. But he slept out of the house
+too, at his mother’s lodging; and before I had gone many hundred yards,
+came up with me.
+
+‘You know, Copperfield,’ he said, in my ear (I did not turn my head),
+‘you’re in quite a wrong position’; which I felt to be true, and that
+made me chafe the more; ‘you can’t make this a brave thing, and you
+can’t help being forgiven. I don’t intend to mention it to mother, nor
+to any living soul. I’m determined to forgive you. But I do wonder
+that you should lift your hand against a person that you knew to be so
+umble!’
+
+I felt only less mean than he. He knew me better than I knew myself. If
+he had retorted or openly exasperated me, it would have been a relief
+and a justification; but he had put me on a slow fire, on which I lay
+tormented half the night.
+
+In the morning, when I came out, the early church-bell was ringing,
+and he was walking up and down with his mother. He addressed me as if
+nothing had happened, and I could do no less than reply. I had struck
+him hard enough to give him the toothache, I suppose. At all events
+his face was tied up in a black silk handkerchief, which, with his hat
+perched on the top of it, was far from improving his appearance. I heard
+that he went to a dentist’s in London on the Monday morning, and had a
+tooth out. I hope it was a double one.
+
+The Doctor gave out that he was not quite well; and remained alone, for
+a considerable part of every day, during the remainder of the visit.
+Agnes and her father had been gone a week, before we resumed our usual
+work. On the day preceding its resumption, the Doctor gave me with his
+own hands a folded note not sealed. It was addressed to myself; and laid
+an injunction on me, in a few affectionate words, never to refer to the
+subject of that evening. I had confided it to my aunt, but to no
+one else. It was not a subject I could discuss with Agnes, and Agnes
+certainly had not the least suspicion of what had passed.
+
+Neither, I felt convinced, had Mrs. Strong then. Several weeks elapsed
+before I saw the least change in her. It came on slowly, like a cloud
+when there is no wind. At first, she seemed to wonder at the gentle
+compassion with which the Doctor spoke to her, and at his wish that she
+should have her mother with her, to relieve the dull monotony of her
+life. Often, when we were at work, and she was sitting by, I would see
+her pausing and looking at him with that memorable face. Afterwards, I
+sometimes observed her rise, with her eyes full of tears, and go out
+of the room. Gradually, an unhappy shadow fell upon her beauty, and
+deepened every day. Mrs. Markleham was a regular inmate of the cottage
+then; but she talked and talked, and saw nothing.
+
+As this change stole on Annie, once like sunshine in the Doctor’s house,
+the Doctor became older in appearance, and more grave; but the sweetness
+of his temper, the placid kindness of his manner, and his benevolent
+solicitude for her, if they were capable of any increase, were
+increased. I saw him once, early on the morning of her birthday, when
+she came to sit in the window while we were at work (which she had
+always done, but now began to do with a timid and uncertain air that I
+thought very touching), take her forehead between his hands, kiss it,
+and go hurriedly away, too much moved to remain. I saw her stand where
+he had left her, like a statue; and then bend down her head, and clasp
+her hands, and weep, I cannot say how sorrowfully.
+
+Sometimes, after that, I fancied that she tried to speak even to me,
+in intervals when we were left alone. But she never uttered a word. The
+Doctor always had some new project for her participating in amusements
+away from home, with her mother; and Mrs. Markleham, who was very fond
+of amusements, and very easily dissatisfied with anything else, entered
+into them with great good-will, and was loud in her commendations. But
+Annie, in a spiritless unhappy way, only went whither she was led, and
+seemed to have no care for anything.
+
+I did not know what to think. Neither did my aunt; who must have walked,
+at various times, a hundred miles in her uncertainty. What was strangest
+of all was, that the only real relief which seemed to make its way into
+the secret region of this domestic unhappiness, made its way there in
+the person of Mr. Dick.
+
+What his thoughts were on the subject, or what his observation was, I am
+as unable to explain, as I dare say he would have been to assist me in
+the task. But, as I have recorded in the narrative of my school days,
+his veneration for the Doctor was unbounded; and there is a subtlety of
+perception in real attachment, even when it is borne towards man by one
+of the lower animals, which leaves the highest intellect behind. To this
+mind of the heart, if I may call it so, in Mr. Dick, some bright ray of
+the truth shot straight.
+
+He had proudly resumed his privilege, in many of his spare hours,
+of walking up and down the garden with the Doctor; as he had been
+accustomed to pace up and down The Doctor’s Walk at Canterbury. But
+matters were no sooner in this state, than he devoted all his spare time
+(and got up earlier to make it more) to these perambulations. If he had
+never been so happy as when the Doctor read that marvellous performance,
+the Dictionary, to him; he was now quite miserable unless the Doctor
+pulled it out of his pocket, and began. When the Doctor and I were
+engaged, he now fell into the custom of walking up and down with Mrs.
+Strong, and helping her to trim her favourite flowers, or weed the
+beds. I dare say he rarely spoke a dozen words in an hour: but his quiet
+interest, and his wistful face, found immediate response in both their
+breasts; each knew that the other liked him, and that he loved both; and
+he became what no one else could be--a link between them.
+
+When I think of him, with his impenetrably wise face, walking up and
+down with the Doctor, delighted to be battered by the hard words in the
+Dictionary; when I think of him carrying huge watering-pots after Annie;
+kneeling down, in very paws of gloves, at patient microscopic work among
+the little leaves; expressing as no philosopher could have expressed,
+in everything he did, a delicate desire to be her friend; showering
+sympathy, trustfulness, and affection, out of every hole in the
+watering-pot; when I think of him never wandering in that better mind
+of his to which unhappiness addressed itself, never bringing the
+unfortunate King Charles into the garden, never wavering in his grateful
+service, never diverted from his knowledge that there was something
+wrong, or from his wish to set it right--I really feel almost ashamed
+of having known that he was not quite in his wits, taking account of the
+utmost I have done with mine.
+
+‘Nobody but myself, Trot, knows what that man is!’ my aunt would proudly
+remark, when we conversed about it. ‘Dick will distinguish himself yet!’
+
+I must refer to one other topic before I close this chapter. While the
+visit at the Doctor’s was still in progress, I observed that the postman
+brought two or three letters every morning for Uriah Heep, who remained
+at Highgate until the rest went back, it being a leisure time; and that
+these were always directed in a business-like manner by Mr. Micawber,
+who now assumed a round legal hand. I was glad to infer, from these
+slight premises, that Mr. Micawber was doing well; and consequently was
+much surprised to receive, about this time, the following letter from
+his amiable wife.
+
+
+
+ ‘CANTERBURY, Monday Evening.
+
+‘You will doubtless be surprised, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to receive
+this communication. Still more so, by its contents. Still more so, by
+the stipulation of implicit confidence which I beg to impose. But my
+feelings as a wife and mother require relief; and as I do not wish to
+consult my family (already obnoxious to the feelings of Mr. Micawber),
+I know no one of whom I can better ask advice than my friend and former
+lodger.
+
+‘You may be aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that between myself and Mr.
+Micawber (whom I will never desert), there has always been preserved a
+spirit of mutual confidence. Mr. Micawber may have occasionally given
+a bill without consulting me, or he may have misled me as to the period
+when that obligation would become due. This has actually happened.
+But, in general, Mr. Micawber has had no secrets from the bosom of
+affection--I allude to his wife--and has invariably, on our retirement
+to rest, recalled the events of the day.
+
+‘You will picture to yourself, my dear Mr. Copperfield, what the
+poignancy of my feelings must be, when I inform you that Mr. Micawber is
+entirely changed. He is reserved. He is secret. His life is a mystery to
+the partner of his joys and sorrows--I again allude to his wife--and if
+I should assure you that beyond knowing that it is passed from morning
+to night at the office, I now know less of it than I do of the man in
+the south, connected with whose mouth the thoughtless children repeat
+an idle tale respecting cold plum porridge, I should adopt a popular
+fallacy to express an actual fact.
+
+‘But this is not all. Mr. Micawber is morose. He is severe. He is
+estranged from our eldest son and daughter, he has no pride in his
+twins, he looks with an eye of coldness even on the unoffending stranger
+who last became a member of our circle. The pecuniary means of meeting
+our expenses, kept down to the utmost farthing, are obtained from him
+with great difficulty, and even under fearful threats that he will
+Settle himself (the exact expression); and he inexorably refuses to give
+any explanation whatever of this distracting policy.
+
+‘This is hard to bear. This is heart-breaking. If you will advise me,
+knowing my feeble powers such as they are, how you think it will be best
+to exert them in a dilemma so unwonted, you will add another friendly
+obligation to the many you have already rendered me. With loves from the
+children, and a smile from the happily-unconscious stranger, I remain,
+dear Mr. Copperfield,
+
+ Your afflicted,
+
+ ‘EMMA MICAWBER.’
+
+
+I did not feel justified in giving a wife of Mrs. Micawber’s experience
+any other recommendation, than that she should try to reclaim Mr.
+Micawber by patience and kindness (as I knew she would in any case); but
+the letter set me thinking about him very much.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 43. ANOTHER RETROSPECT
+
+
+Once again, let me pause upon a memorable period of my life. Let me
+stand aside, to see the phantoms of those days go by me, accompanying
+the shadow of myself, in dim procession.
+
+Weeks, months, seasons, pass along. They seem little more than a summer
+day and a winter evening. Now, the Common where I walk with Dora is all
+in bloom, a field of bright gold; and now the unseen heather lies in
+mounds and bunches underneath a covering of snow. In a breath, the river
+that flows through our Sunday walks is sparkling in the summer sun, is
+ruffled by the winter wind, or thickened with drifting heaps of ice.
+Faster than ever river ran towards the sea, it flashes, darkens, and
+rolls away.
+
+Not a thread changes, in the house of the two little bird-like ladies.
+The clock ticks over the fireplace, the weather-glass hangs in the hall.
+Neither clock nor weather-glass is ever right; but we believe in both,
+devoutly.
+
+I have come legally to man’s estate. I have attained the dignity of
+twenty-one. But this is a sort of dignity that may be thrust upon one.
+Let me think what I have achieved.
+
+I have tamed that savage stenographic mystery. I make a respectable
+income by it. I am in high repute for my accomplishment in all
+pertaining to the art, and am joined with eleven others in reporting
+the debates in Parliament for a Morning Newspaper. Night after night, I
+record predictions that never come to pass, professions that are never
+fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify. I wallow in
+words. Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a
+trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound
+hand and foot with red tape. I am sufficiently behind the scenes to know
+the worth of political life. I am quite an Infidel about it, and shall
+never be converted.
+
+My dear old Traddles has tried his hand at the same pursuit, but it
+is not in Traddles’s way. He is perfectly good-humoured respecting his
+failure, and reminds me that he always did consider himself slow. He has
+occasional employment on the same newspaper, in getting up the facts of
+dry subjects, to be written about and embellished by more fertile minds.
+He is called to the bar; and with admirable industry and self-denial
+has scraped another hundred pounds together, to fee a Conveyancer whose
+chambers he attends. A great deal of very hot port wine was consumed at
+his call; and, considering the figure, I should think the Inner Temple
+must have made a profit by it.
+
+I have come out in another way. I have taken with fear and trembling
+to authorship. I wrote a little something, in secret, and sent it to a
+magazine, and it was published in the magazine. Since then, I have taken
+heart to write a good many trifling pieces. Now, I am regularly paid for
+them. Altogether, I am well off, when I tell my income on the fingers
+of my left hand, I pass the third finger and take in the fourth to the
+middle joint.
+
+We have removed, from Buckingham Street, to a pleasant little cottage
+very near the one I looked at, when my enthusiasm first came on. My
+aunt, however (who has sold the house at Dover, to good advantage), is
+not going to remain here, but intends removing herself to a still more
+tiny cottage close at hand. What does this portend? My marriage? Yes!
+
+Yes! I am going to be married to Dora! Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa
+have given their consent; and if ever canary birds were in a flutter,
+they are. Miss Lavinia, self-charged with the superintendence of my
+darling’s wardrobe, is constantly cutting out brown-paper cuirasses, and
+differing in opinion from a highly respectable young man, with a long
+bundle, and a yard measure under his arm. A dressmaker, always stabbed
+in the breast with a needle and thread, boards and lodges in the house;
+and seems to me, eating, drinking, or sleeping, never to take her
+thimble off. They make a lay-figure of my dear. They are always sending
+for her to come and try something on. We can’t be happy together for
+five minutes in the evening, but some intrusive female knocks at the
+door, and says, ‘Oh, if you please, Miss Dora, would you step upstairs!’
+
+Miss Clarissa and my aunt roam all over London, to find out articles of
+furniture for Dora and me to look at. It would be better for them to buy
+the goods at once, without this ceremony of inspection; for, when we go
+to see a kitchen fender and meat-screen, Dora sees a Chinese house for
+Jip, with little bells on the top, and prefers that. And it takes a
+long time to accustom Jip to his new residence, after we have bought it;
+whenever he goes in or out, he makes all the little bells ring, and is
+horribly frightened.
+
+Peggotty comes up to make herself useful, and falls to work immediately.
+Her department appears to be, to clean everything over and over again.
+She rubs everything that can be rubbed, until it shines, like her own
+honest forehead, with perpetual friction. And now it is, that I begin to
+see her solitary brother passing through the dark streets at night, and
+looking, as he goes, among the wandering faces. I never speak to him at
+such an hour. I know too well, as his grave figure passes onward, what
+he seeks, and what he dreads.
+
+Why does Traddles look so important when he calls upon me this afternoon
+in the Commons--where I still occasionally attend, for form’s sake, when
+I have time? The realization of my boyish day-dreams is at hand. I am
+going to take out the licence.
+
+It is a little document to do so much; and Traddles contemplates it,
+as it lies upon my desk, half in admiration, half in awe. There are the
+names, in the sweet old visionary connexion, David Copperfield and Dora
+Spenlow; and there, in the corner, is that Parental Institution,
+the Stamp Office, which is so benignantly interested in the various
+transactions of human life, looking down upon our Union; and there is
+the Archbishop of Canterbury invoking a blessing on us in print, and
+doing it as cheap as could possibly be expected.
+
+Nevertheless, I am in a dream, a flustered, happy, hurried dream. I
+can’t believe that it is going to be; and yet I can’t believe but that
+everyone I pass in the street, must have some kind of perception, that I
+am to be married the day after tomorrow. The Surrogate knows me, when
+I go down to be sworn; and disposes of me easily, as if there were a
+Masonic understanding between us. Traddles is not at all wanted, but is
+in attendance as my general backer.
+
+‘I hope the next time you come here, my dear fellow,’ I say to Traddles,
+‘it will be on the same errand for yourself. And I hope it will be
+soon.’
+
+‘Thank you for your good wishes, my dear Copperfield,’ he replies. ‘I
+hope so too. It’s a satisfaction to know that she’ll wait for me any
+length of time, and that she really is the dearest girl--’
+
+‘When are you to meet her at the coach?’ I ask.
+
+‘At seven,’ says Traddles, looking at his plain old silver watch--the
+very watch he once took a wheel out of, at school, to make a water-mill.
+‘That is about Miss Wickfield’s time, is it not?’
+
+‘A little earlier. Her time is half past eight.’ ‘I assure you, my dear
+boy,’ says Traddles, ‘I am almost as pleased as if I were going to
+be married myself, to think that this event is coming to such a happy
+termination. And really the great friendship and consideration of
+personally associating Sophy with the joyful occasion, and inviting
+her to be a bridesmaid in conjunction with Miss Wickfield, demands my
+warmest thanks. I am extremely sensible of it.’
+
+I hear him, and shake hands with him; and we talk, and walk, and dine,
+and so on; but I don’t believe it. Nothing is real.
+
+Sophy arrives at the house of Dora’s aunts, in due course. She has the
+most agreeable of faces,--not absolutely beautiful, but extraordinarily
+pleasant,--and is one of the most genial, unaffected, frank, engaging
+creatures I have ever seen. Traddles presents her to us with great
+pride; and rubs his hands for ten minutes by the clock, with every
+individual hair upon his head standing on tiptoe, when I congratulate
+him in a corner on his choice.
+
+I have brought Agnes from the Canterbury coach, and her cheerful and
+beautiful face is among us for the second time. Agnes has a great liking
+for Traddles, and it is capital to see them meet, and to observe the
+glory of Traddles as he commends the dearest girl in the world to her
+acquaintance.
+
+Still I don’t believe it. We have a delightful evening, and are
+supremely happy; but I don’t believe it yet. I can’t collect myself. I
+can’t check off my happiness as it takes place. I feel in a misty and
+unsettled kind of state; as if I had got up very early in the morning a
+week or two ago, and had never been to bed since. I can’t make out when
+yesterday was. I seem to have been carrying the licence about, in my
+pocket, many months.
+
+Next day, too, when we all go in a flock to see the house--our
+house--Dora’s and mine--I am quite unable to regard myself as its
+master. I seem to be there, by permission of somebody else. I half
+expect the real master to come home presently, and say he is glad to see
+me. Such a beautiful little house as it is, with everything so bright
+and new; with the flowers on the carpets looking as if freshly gathered,
+and the green leaves on the paper as if they had just come out; with the
+spotless muslin curtains, and the blushing rose-coloured furniture, and
+Dora’s garden hat with the blue ribbon--do I remember, now, how I loved
+her in such another hat when I first knew her!--already hanging on its
+little peg; the guitar-case quite at home on its heels in a corner;
+and everybody tumbling over Jip’s pagoda, which is much too big for the
+establishment. Another happy evening, quite as unreal as all the rest
+of it, and I steal into the usual room before going away. Dora is not
+there. I suppose they have not done trying on yet. Miss Lavinia peeps
+in, and tells me mysteriously that she will not be long. She is rather
+long, notwithstanding; but by and by I hear a rustling at the door, and
+someone taps.
+
+I say, ‘Come in!’ but someone taps again.
+
+I go to the door, wondering who it is; there, I meet a pair of bright
+eyes, and a blushing face; they are Dora’s eyes and face, and Miss
+Lavinia has dressed her in tomorrow’s dress, bonnet and all, for me to
+see. I take my little wife to my heart; and Miss Lavinia gives a little
+scream because I tumble the bonnet, and Dora laughs and cries at once,
+because I am so pleased; and I believe it less than ever.
+
+‘Do you think it pretty, Doady?’ says Dora.
+
+Pretty! I should rather think I did.
+
+‘And are you sure you like me very much?’ says Dora.
+
+The topic is fraught with such danger to the bonnet, that Miss Lavinia
+gives another little scream, and begs me to understand that Dora is only
+to be looked at, and on no account to be touched. So Dora stands in a
+delightful state of confusion for a minute or two, to be admired; and
+then takes off her bonnet--looking so natural without it!--and runs away
+with it in her hand; and comes dancing down again in her own familiar
+dress, and asks Jip if I have got a beautiful little wife, and whether
+he’ll forgive her for being married, and kneels down to make him stand
+upon the cookery-book, for the last time in her single life.
+
+I go home, more incredulous than ever, to a lodging that I have hard by;
+and get up very early in the morning, to ride to the Highgate road and
+fetch my aunt.
+
+I have never seen my aunt in such state. She is dressed in
+lavender-coloured silk, and has a white bonnet on, and is amazing. Janet
+has dressed her, and is there to look at me. Peggotty is ready to go to
+church, intending to behold the ceremony from the gallery. Mr. Dick,
+who is to give my darling to me at the altar, has had his hair curled.
+Traddles, whom I have taken up by appointment at the turnpike, presents
+a dazzling combination of cream colour and light blue; and both he and
+Mr. Dick have a general effect about them of being all gloves.
+
+No doubt I see this, because I know it is so; but I am astray, and seem
+to see nothing. Nor do I believe anything whatever. Still, as we drive
+along in an open carriage, this fairy marriage is real enough to fill
+me with a sort of wondering pity for the unfortunate people who have
+no part in it, but are sweeping out the shops, and going to their daily
+occupations.
+
+My aunt sits with my hand in hers all the way. When we stop a little way
+short of the church, to put down Peggotty, whom we have brought on the
+box, she gives it a squeeze, and me a kiss.
+
+‘God bless you, Trot! My own boy never could be dearer. I think of poor
+dear Baby this morning.’ ‘So do I. And of all I owe to you, dear aunt.’
+
+‘Tut, child!’ says my aunt; and gives her hand in overflowing cordiality
+to Traddles, who then gives his to Mr. Dick, who then gives his to me,
+who then gives mine to Traddles, and then we come to the church door.
+
+The church is calm enough, I am sure; but it might be a steam-power loom
+in full action, for any sedative effect it has on me. I am too far gone
+for that.
+
+The rest is all a more or less incoherent dream.
+
+A dream of their coming in with Dora; of the pew-opener arranging us,
+like a drill-sergeant, before the altar rails; of my wondering, even
+then, why pew-openers must always be the most disagreeable females
+procurable, and whether there is any religious dread of a disastrous
+infection of good-humour which renders it indispensable to set those
+vessels of vinegar upon the road to Heaven.
+
+Of the clergyman and clerk appearing; of a few boatmen and some
+other people strolling in; of an ancient mariner behind me, strongly
+flavouring the church with rum; of the service beginning in a deep
+voice, and our all being very attentive.
+
+Of Miss Lavinia, who acts as a semi-auxiliary bridesmaid, being the
+first to cry, and of her doing homage (as I take it) to the memory of
+Pidger, in sobs; of Miss Clarissa applying a smelling-bottle; of Agnes
+taking care of Dora; of my aunt endeavouring to represent herself as
+a model of sternness, with tears rolling down her face; of little Dora
+trembling very much, and making her responses in faint whispers.
+
+Of our kneeling down together, side by side; of Dora’s trembling less
+and less, but always clasping Agnes by the hand; of the service being
+got through, quietly and gravely; of our all looking at each other in an
+April state of smiles and tears, when it is over; of my young wife being
+hysterical in the vestry, and crying for her poor papa, her dear papa.
+
+Of her soon cheering up again, and our signing the register all round.
+Of my going into the gallery for Peggotty to bring her to sign it; of
+Peggotty’s hugging me in a corner, and telling me she saw my own dear
+mother married; of its being over, and our going away.
+
+Of my walking so proudly and lovingly down the aisle with my sweet wife
+upon my arm, through a mist of half-seen people, pulpits, monuments,
+pews, fonts, organs, and church windows, in which there flutter faint
+airs of association with my childish church at home, so long ago.
+
+Of their whispering, as we pass, what a youthful couple we are, and what
+a pretty little wife she is. Of our all being so merry and talkative in
+the carriage going back. Of Sophy telling us that when she saw Traddles
+(whom I had entrusted with the licence) asked for it, she almost
+fainted, having been convinced that he would contrive to lose it, or to
+have his pocket picked. Of Agnes laughing gaily; and of Dora being so
+fond of Agnes that she will not be separated from her, but still keeps
+her hand.
+
+Of there being a breakfast, with abundance of things, pretty and
+substantial, to eat and drink, whereof I partake, as I should do in any
+other dream, without the least perception of their flavour; eating
+and drinking, as I may say, nothing but love and marriage, and no more
+believing in the viands than in anything else.
+
+Of my making a speech in the same dreamy fashion, without having an idea
+of what I want to say, beyond such as may be comprehended in the full
+conviction that I haven’t said it. Of our being very sociably and simply
+happy (always in a dream though); and of Jip’s having wedding cake, and
+its not agreeing with him afterwards.
+
+Of the pair of hired post-horses being ready, and of Dora’s going away
+to change her dress. Of my aunt and Miss Clarissa remaining with us; and
+our walking in the garden; and my aunt, who has made quite a speech at
+breakfast touching Dora’s aunts, being mightily amused with herself, but
+a little proud of it too.
+
+Of Dora’s being ready, and of Miss Lavinia’s hovering about her, loth to
+lose the pretty toy that has given her so much pleasant occupation.
+Of Dora’s making a long series of surprised discoveries that she
+has forgotten all sorts of little things; and of everybody’s running
+everywhere to fetch them.
+
+Of their all closing about Dora, when at last she begins to say
+good-bye, looking, with their bright colours and ribbons, like a bed
+of flowers. Of my darling being almost smothered among the flowers, and
+coming out, laughing and crying both together, to my jealous arms.
+
+Of my wanting to carry Jip (who is to go along with us), and Dora’s
+saying no, that she must carry him, or else he’ll think she don’t like
+him any more, now she is married, and will break his heart. Of our
+going, arm in arm, and Dora stopping and looking back, and saying, ‘If
+I have ever been cross or ungrateful to anybody, don’t remember it!’ and
+bursting into tears.
+
+Of her waving her little hand, and our going away once more. Of her
+once more stopping, and looking back, and hurrying to Agnes, and giving
+Agnes, above all the others, her last kisses and farewells.
+
+We drive away together, and I awake from the dream. I believe it at
+last. It is my dear, dear, little wife beside me, whom I love so well!
+
+‘Are you happy now, you foolish boy?’ says Dora, ‘and sure you don’t
+repent?’
+
+
+I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. They are
+gone, and I resume the journey of my story.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 44. OUR HOUSEKEEPING
+
+
+It was a strange condition of things, the honeymoon being over, and the
+bridesmaids gone home, when I found myself sitting down in my own
+small house with Dora; quite thrown out of employment, as I may say, in
+respect of the delicious old occupation of making love.
+
+It seemed such an extraordinary thing to have Dora always there. It was
+so unaccountable not to be obliged to go out to see her, not to have any
+occasion to be tormenting myself about her, not to have to write to her,
+not to be scheming and devising opportunities of being alone with her.
+Sometimes of an evening, when I looked up from my writing, and saw her
+seated opposite, I would lean back in my chair, and think how queer it
+was that there we were, alone together as a matter of course--nobody’s
+business any more--all the romance of our engagement put away upon a
+shelf, to rust--no one to please but one another--one another to please,
+for life.
+
+When there was a debate, and I was kept out very late, it seemed so
+strange to me, as I was walking home, to think that Dora was at home! It
+was such a wonderful thing, at first, to have her coming softly down to
+talk to me as I ate my supper. It was such a stupendous thing to know
+for certain that she put her hair in papers. It was altogether such an
+astonishing event to see her do it!
+
+I doubt whether two young birds could have known less about keeping
+house, than I and my pretty Dora did. We had a servant, of course. She
+kept house for us. I have still a latent belief that she must have been
+Mrs. Crupp’s daughter in disguise, we had such an awful time of it with
+Mary Anne.
+
+Her name was Paragon. Her nature was represented to us, when we engaged
+her, as being feebly expressed in her name. She had a written character,
+as large as a proclamation; and, according to this document, could do
+everything of a domestic nature that ever I heard of, and a great many
+things that I never did hear of. She was a woman in the prime of life;
+of a severe countenance; and subject (particularly in the arms) to
+a sort of perpetual measles or fiery rash. She had a cousin in the
+Life-Guards, with such long legs that he looked like the afternoon
+shadow of somebody else. His shell-jacket was as much too little for him
+as he was too big for the premises. He made the cottage smaller than it
+need have been, by being so very much out of proportion to it. Besides
+which, the walls were not thick, and, whenever he passed the evening at
+our house, we always knew of it by hearing one continual growl in the
+kitchen.
+
+Our treasure was warranted sober and honest. I am therefore willing to
+believe that she was in a fit when we found her under the boiler; and
+that the deficient tea-spoons were attributable to the dustman.
+
+But she preyed upon our minds dreadfully. We felt our inexperience, and
+were unable to help ourselves. We should have been at her mercy, if she
+had had any; but she was a remorseless woman, and had none. She was the
+cause of our first little quarrel.
+
+‘My dearest life,’ I said one day to Dora, ‘do you think Mary Anne has
+any idea of time?’
+
+‘Why, Doady?’ inquired Dora, looking up, innocently, from her drawing.
+
+‘My love, because it’s five, and we were to have dined at four.’
+
+Dora glanced wistfully at the clock, and hinted that she thought it was
+too fast.
+
+‘On the contrary, my love,’ said I, referring to my watch, ‘it’s a few
+minutes too slow.’
+
+My little wife came and sat upon my knee, to coax me to be quiet, and
+drew a line with her pencil down the middle of my nose; but I couldn’t
+dine off that, though it was very agreeable.
+
+‘Don’t you think, my dear,’ said I, ‘it would be better for you to
+remonstrate with Mary Anne?’
+
+‘Oh no, please! I couldn’t, Doady!’ said Dora.
+
+‘Why not, my love?’ I gently asked.
+
+‘Oh, because I am such a little goose,’ said Dora, ‘and she knows I am!’
+
+I thought this sentiment so incompatible with the establishment of any
+system of check on Mary Anne, that I frowned a little.
+
+‘Oh, what ugly wrinkles in my bad boy’s forehead!’ said Dora, and still
+being on my knee, she traced them with her pencil; putting it to her
+rosy lips to make it mark blacker, and working at my forehead with a
+quaint little mockery of being industrious, that quite delighted me in
+spite of myself.
+
+‘There’s a good child,’ said Dora, ‘it makes its face so much prettier
+to laugh.’ ‘But, my love,’ said I.
+
+‘No, no! please!’ cried Dora, with a kiss, ‘don’t be a naughty Blue
+Beard! Don’t be serious!’
+
+‘My precious wife,’ said I, ‘we must be serious sometimes. Come! Sit
+down on this chair, close beside me! Give me the pencil! There! Now let
+us talk sensibly. You know, dear’; what a little hand it was to hold,
+and what a tiny wedding-ring it was to see! ‘You know, my love, it is
+not exactly comfortable to have to go out without one’s dinner. Now, is
+it?’
+
+‘N-n-no!’ replied Dora, faintly.
+
+‘My love, how you tremble!’
+
+‘Because I KNOW you’re going to scold me,’ exclaimed Dora, in a piteous
+voice.
+
+‘My sweet, I am only going to reason.’
+
+‘Oh, but reasoning is worse than scolding!’ exclaimed Dora, in despair.
+‘I didn’t marry to be reasoned with. If you meant to reason with such a
+poor little thing as I am, you ought to have told me so, you cruel boy!’
+
+I tried to pacify Dora, but she turned away her face, and shook her
+curls from side to side, and said, ‘You cruel, cruel boy!’ so many
+times, that I really did not exactly know what to do: so I took a few
+turns up and down the room in my uncertainty, and came back again.
+
+‘Dora, my darling!’
+
+‘No, I am not your darling. Because you must be sorry that you married
+me, or else you wouldn’t reason with me!’ returned Dora.
+
+I felt so injured by the inconsequential nature of this charge, that it
+gave me courage to be grave.
+
+‘Now, my own Dora,’ said I, ‘you are very childish, and are talking
+nonsense. You must remember, I am sure, that I was obliged to go out
+yesterday when dinner was half over; and that, the day before, I was
+made quite unwell by being obliged to eat underdone veal in a hurry;
+today, I don’t dine at all--and I am afraid to say how long we waited
+for breakfast--and then the water didn’t boil. I don’t mean to reproach
+you, my dear, but this is not comfortable.’
+
+‘Oh, you cruel, cruel boy, to say I am a disagreeable wife!’ cried Dora.
+
+‘Now, my dear Dora, you must know that I never said that!’
+
+‘You said, I wasn’t comfortable!’ cried Dora. ‘I said the housekeeping
+was not comfortable!’
+
+‘It’s exactly the same thing!’ cried Dora. And she evidently thought so,
+for she wept most grievously.
+
+I took another turn across the room, full of love for my pretty wife,
+and distracted by self-accusatory inclinations to knock my head against
+the door. I sat down again, and said:
+
+‘I am not blaming you, Dora. We have both a great deal to learn. I am
+only trying to show you, my dear, that you must--you really must’ (I
+was resolved not to give this up)--‘accustom yourself to look after Mary
+Anne. Likewise to act a little for yourself, and me.’
+
+‘I wonder, I do, at your making such ungrateful speeches,’ sobbed Dora.
+‘When you know that the other day, when you said you would like a little
+bit of fish, I went out myself, miles and miles, and ordered it, to
+surprise you.’
+
+‘And it was very kind of you, my own darling,’ said I. ‘I felt it so
+much that I wouldn’t on any account have even mentioned that you
+bought a Salmon--which was too much for two. Or that it cost one pound
+six--which was more than we can afford.’
+
+‘You enjoyed it very much,’ sobbed Dora. ‘And you said I was a Mouse.’
+
+‘And I’ll say so again, my love,’ I returned, ‘a thousand times!’
+
+But I had wounded Dora’s soft little heart, and she was not to be
+comforted. She was so pathetic in her sobbing and bewailing, that I felt
+as if I had said I don’t know what to hurt her. I was obliged to hurry
+away; I was kept out late; and I felt all night such pangs of remorse as
+made me miserable. I had the conscience of an assassin, and was haunted
+by a vague sense of enormous wickedness.
+
+It was two or three hours past midnight when I got home. I found my
+aunt, in our house, sitting up for me.
+
+‘Is anything the matter, aunt?’ said I, alarmed.
+
+‘Nothing, Trot,’ she replied. ‘Sit down, sit down. Little Blossom has
+been rather out of spirits, and I have been keeping her company. That’s
+all.’
+
+I leaned my head upon my hand; and felt more sorry and downcast, as I
+sat looking at the fire, than I could have supposed possible so soon
+after the fulfilment of my brightest hopes. As I sat thinking, I
+happened to meet my aunt’s eyes, which were resting on my face. There
+was an anxious expression in them, but it cleared directly.
+
+‘I assure you, aunt,’ said I, ‘I have been quite unhappy myself all
+night, to think of Dora’s being so. But I had no other intention than to
+speak to her tenderly and lovingly about our home-affairs.’
+
+My aunt nodded encouragement.
+
+‘You must have patience, Trot,’ said she.
+
+‘Of course. Heaven knows I don’t mean to be unreasonable, aunt!’
+
+‘No, no,’ said my aunt. ‘But Little Blossom is a very tender little
+blossom, and the wind must be gentle with her.’
+
+I thanked my good aunt, in my heart, for her tenderness towards my wife;
+and I was sure that she knew I did.
+
+‘Don’t you think, aunt,’ said I, after some further contemplation of the
+fire, ‘that you could advise and counsel Dora a little, for our mutual
+advantage, now and then?’
+
+‘Trot,’ returned my aunt, with some emotion, ‘no! Don’t ask me such a
+thing.’
+
+Her tone was so very earnest that I raised my eyes in surprise.
+
+‘I look back on my life, child,’ said my aunt, ‘and I think of some who
+are in their graves, with whom I might have been on kinder terms. If I
+judged harshly of other people’s mistakes in marriage, it may have been
+because I had bitter reason to judge harshly of my own. Let that pass. I
+have been a grumpy, frumpy, wayward sort of a woman, a good many years.
+I am still, and I always shall be. But you and I have done one another
+some good, Trot,--at all events, you have done me good, my dear; and
+division must not come between us, at this time of day.’
+
+‘Division between us!’ cried I.
+
+‘Child, child!’ said my aunt, smoothing her dress, ‘how soon it might
+come between us, or how unhappy I might make our Little Blossom, if I
+meddled in anything, a prophet couldn’t say. I want our pet to like me,
+and be as gay as a butterfly. Remember your own home, in that second
+marriage; and never do both me and her the injury you have hinted at!’
+
+I comprehended, at once, that my aunt was right; and I comprehended the
+full extent of her generous feeling towards my dear wife.
+
+‘These are early days, Trot,’ she pursued, ‘and Rome was not built in a
+day, nor in a year. You have chosen freely for yourself’; a cloud passed
+over her face for a moment, I thought; ‘and you have chosen a very
+pretty and a very affectionate creature. It will be your duty, and it
+will be your pleasure too--of course I know that; I am not delivering
+a lecture--to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities she has,
+and not by the qualities she may not have. The latter you must develop
+in her, if you can. And if you cannot, child,’ here my aunt rubbed her
+nose, ‘you must just accustom yourself to do without ‘em. But remember,
+my dear, your future is between you two. No one can assist you; you are
+to work it out for yourselves. This is marriage, Trot; and Heaven bless
+you both, in it, for a pair of babes in the wood as you are!’
+
+My aunt said this in a sprightly way, and gave me a kiss to ratify the
+blessing.
+
+‘Now,’ said she, ‘light my little lantern, and see me into my bandbox by
+the garden path’; for there was a communication between our cottages in
+that direction. ‘Give Betsey Trotwood’s love to Blossom, when you come
+back; and whatever you do, Trot, never dream of setting Betsey up as a
+scarecrow, for if I ever saw her in the glass, she’s quite grim enough
+and gaunt enough in her private capacity!’
+
+With this my aunt tied her head up in a handkerchief, with which she was
+accustomed to make a bundle of it on such occasions; and I escorted her
+home. As she stood in her garden, holding up her little lantern to light
+me back, I thought her observation of me had an anxious air again; but
+I was too much occupied in pondering on what she had said, and too much
+impressed--for the first time, in reality--by the conviction that Dora
+and I had indeed to work out our future for ourselves, and that no one
+could assist us, to take much notice of it.
+
+Dora came stealing down in her little slippers, to meet me, now that I
+was alone; and cried upon my shoulder, and said I had been hard-hearted
+and she had been naughty; and I said much the same thing in effect, I
+believe; and we made it up, and agreed that our first little difference
+was to be our last, and that we were never to have another if we lived a
+hundred years.
+
+The next domestic trial we went through, was the Ordeal of Servants.
+Mary Anne’s cousin deserted into our coal-hole, and was brought out, to
+our great amazement, by a piquet of his companions in arms, who took
+him away handcuffed in a procession that covered our front-garden with
+ignominy. This nerved me to get rid of Mary Anne, who went so mildly,
+on receipt of wages, that I was surprised, until I found out about the
+tea-spoons, and also about the little sums she had borrowed in my
+name of the tradespeople without authority. After an interval of Mrs.
+Kidgerbury--the oldest inhabitant of Kentish Town, I believe, who went
+out charing, but was too feeble to execute her conceptions of that
+art--we found another treasure, who was one of the most amiable of
+women, but who generally made a point of falling either up or down the
+kitchen stairs with the tray, and almost plunged into the parlour,
+as into a bath, with the tea-things. The ravages committed by this
+unfortunate, rendering her dismissal necessary, she was succeeded (with
+intervals of Mrs. Kidgerbury) by a long line of Incapables; terminating
+in a young person of genteel appearance, who went to Greenwich Fair in
+Dora’s bonnet. After whom I remember nothing but an average equality of
+failure.
+
+Everybody we had anything to do with seemed to cheat us. Our appearance
+in a shop was a signal for the damaged goods to be brought out
+immediately. If we bought a lobster, it was full of water. All our meat
+turned out to be tough, and there was hardly any crust to our loaves.
+In search of the principle on which joints ought to be roasted, to be
+roasted enough, and not too much, I myself referred to the Cookery Book,
+and found it there established as the allowance of a quarter of an hour
+to every pound, and say a quarter over. But the principle always failed
+us by some curious fatality, and we never could hit any medium between
+redness and cinders.
+
+I had reason to believe that in accomplishing these failures we incurred
+a far greater expense than if we had achieved a series of triumphs. It
+appeared to me, on looking over the tradesmen’s books, as if we might
+have kept the basement storey paved with butter, such was the extensive
+scale of our consumption of that article. I don’t know whether the
+Excise returns of the period may have exhibited any increase in the
+demand for pepper; but if our performances did not affect the market,
+I should say several families must have left off using it. And the most
+wonderful fact of all was, that we never had anything in the house.
+
+As to the washerwoman pawning the clothes, and coming in a state of
+penitent intoxication to apologize, I suppose that might have happened
+several times to anybody. Also the chimney on fire, the parish engine,
+and perjury on the part of the Beadle. But I apprehend that we were
+personally fortunate in engaging a servant with a taste for cordials,
+who swelled our running account for porter at the public-house by such
+inexplicable items as ‘quartern rum shrub (Mrs. C.)’; ‘Half-quartern
+gin and cloves (Mrs. C.)’; ‘Glass rum and peppermint (Mrs. C.)’--the
+parentheses always referring to Dora, who was supposed, it appeared on
+explanation, to have imbibed the whole of these refreshments.
+
+One of our first feats in the housekeeping way was a little dinner to
+Traddles. I met him in town, and asked him to walk out with me that
+afternoon. He readily consenting, I wrote to Dora, saying I would bring
+him home. It was pleasant weather, and on the road we made my domestic
+happiness the theme of conversation. Traddles was very full of it; and
+said, that, picturing himself with such a home, and Sophy waiting and
+preparing for him, he could think of nothing wanting to complete his
+bliss.
+
+I could not have wished for a prettier little wife at the opposite end
+of the table, but I certainly could have wished, when we sat down, for a
+little more room. I did not know how it was, but though there were only
+two of us, we were at once always cramped for room, and yet had always
+room enough to lose everything in. I suspect it may have been because
+nothing had a place of its own, except Jip’s pagoda, which invariably
+blocked up the main thoroughfare. On the present occasion, Traddles
+was so hemmed in by the pagoda and the guitar-case, and Dora’s
+flower-painting, and my writing-table, that I had serious doubts of the
+possibility of his using his knife and fork; but he protested, with his
+own good-humour, ‘Oceans of room, Copperfield! I assure you, Oceans!’
+
+There was another thing I could have wished, namely, that Jip had never
+been encouraged to walk about the tablecloth during dinner. I began to
+think there was something disorderly in his being there at all, even
+if he had not been in the habit of putting his foot in the salt or the
+melted butter. On this occasion he seemed to think he was introduced
+expressly to keep Traddles at bay; and he barked at my old friend, and
+made short runs at his plate, with such undaunted pertinacity, that he
+may be said to have engrossed the conversation.
+
+However, as I knew how tender-hearted my dear Dora was, and how
+sensitive she would be to any slight upon her favourite, I hinted no
+objection. For similar reasons I made no allusion to the skirmishing
+plates upon the floor; or to the disreputable appearance of the castors,
+which were all at sixes and sevens, and looked drunk; or to the further
+blockade of Traddles by wandering vegetable dishes and jugs. I could
+not help wondering in my own mind, as I contemplated the boiled leg of
+mutton before me, previous to carving it, how it came to pass that
+our joints of meat were of such extraordinary shapes--and whether our
+butcher contracted for all the deformed sheep that came into the world;
+but I kept my reflections to myself.
+
+‘My love,’ said I to Dora, ‘what have you got in that dish?’
+
+I could not imagine why Dora had been making tempting little faces at
+me, as if she wanted to kiss me.
+
+‘Oysters, dear,’ said Dora, timidly.
+
+‘Was that YOUR thought?’ said I, delighted.
+
+‘Ye-yes, Doady,’ said Dora.
+
+‘There never was a happier one!’ I exclaimed, laying down the
+carving-knife and fork. ‘There is nothing Traddles likes so much!’
+
+‘Ye-yes, Doady,’ said Dora, ‘and so I bought a beautiful little barrel
+of them, and the man said they were very good. But I--I am afraid
+there’s something the matter with them. They don’t seem right.’ Here
+Dora shook her head, and diamonds twinkled in her eyes.
+
+‘They are only opened in both shells,’ said I. ‘Take the top one off, my
+love.’
+
+‘But it won’t come off!’ said Dora, trying very hard, and looking very
+much distressed.
+
+‘Do you know, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, cheerfully examining the
+dish, ‘I think it is in consequence--they are capital oysters, but I
+think it is in consequence--of their never having been opened.’
+
+They never had been opened; and we had no oyster-knives--and couldn’t
+have used them if we had; so we looked at the oysters and ate the
+mutton. At least we ate as much of it as was done, and made up with
+capers. If I had permitted him, I am satisfied that Traddles would have
+made a perfect savage of himself, and eaten a plateful of raw meat, to
+express enjoyment of the repast; but I would hear of no such immolation
+on the altar of friendship, and we had a course of bacon instead; there
+happening, by good fortune, to be cold bacon in the larder.
+
+My poor little wife was in such affliction when she thought I should be
+annoyed, and in such a state of joy when she found I was not, that the
+discomfiture I had subdued, very soon vanished, and we passed a happy
+evening; Dora sitting with her arm on my chair while Traddles and I
+discussed a glass of wine, and taking every opportunity of whispering
+in my ear that it was so good of me not to be a cruel, cross old boy. By
+and by she made tea for us; which it was so pretty to see her do, as if
+she was busying herself with a set of doll’s tea-things, that I was not
+particular about the quality of the beverage. Then Traddles and I played
+a game or two at cribbage; and Dora singing to the guitar the while,
+it seemed to me as if our courtship and marriage were a tender dream
+of mine, and the night when I first listened to her voice were not yet
+over.
+
+When Traddles went away, and I came back into the parlour from seeing
+him out, my wife planted her chair close to mine, and sat down by my
+side. ‘I am very sorry,’ she said. ‘Will you try to teach me, Doady?’
+
+‘I must teach myself first, Dora,’ said I. ‘I am as bad as you, love.’
+
+‘Ah! But you can learn,’ she returned; ‘and you are a clever, clever
+man!’
+
+‘Nonsense, mouse!’ said I.
+
+‘I wish,’ resumed my wife, after a long silence, ‘that I could have gone
+down into the country for a whole year, and lived with Agnes!’
+
+Her hands were clasped upon my shoulder, and her chin rested on them,
+and her blue eyes looked quietly into mine.
+
+‘Why so?’ I asked.
+
+‘I think she might have improved me, and I think I might have learned
+from her,’ said Dora.
+
+‘All in good time, my love. Agnes has had her father to take care of for
+these many years, you should remember. Even when she was quite a child,
+she was the Agnes whom we know,’ said I.
+
+‘Will you call me a name I want you to call me?’ inquired Dora, without
+moving.
+
+‘What is it?’ I asked with a smile.
+
+‘It’s a stupid name,’ she said, shaking her curls for a moment.
+‘Child-wife.’
+
+I laughingly asked my child-wife what her fancy was in desiring to be so
+called. She answered without moving, otherwise than as the arm I twined
+about her may have brought her blue eyes nearer to me:
+
+‘I don’t mean, you silly fellow, that you should use the name instead
+of Dora. I only mean that you should think of me that way. When you are
+going to be angry with me, say to yourself, “it’s only my child-wife!”
+ When I am very disappointing, say, “I knew, a long time ago, that she
+would make but a child-wife!” When you miss what I should like to be,
+and I think can never be, say, “still my foolish child-wife loves me!”
+ For indeed I do.’
+
+I had not been serious with her; having no idea until now, that she was
+serious herself. But her affectionate nature was so happy in what I now
+said to her with my whole heart, that her face became a laughing one
+before her glittering eyes were dry. She was soon my child-wife indeed;
+sitting down on the floor outside the Chinese House, ringing all
+the little bells one after another, to punish Jip for his recent bad
+behaviour; while Jip lay blinking in the doorway with his head out, even
+too lazy to be teased.
+
+This appeal of Dora’s made a strong impression on me. I look back on the
+time I write of; I invoke the innocent figure that I dearly loved, to
+come out from the mists and shadows of the past, and turn its gentle
+head towards me once again; and I can still declare that this one little
+speech was constantly in my memory. I may not have used it to the best
+account; I was young and inexperienced; but I never turned a deaf ear to
+its artless pleading.
+
+Dora told me, shortly afterwards, that she was going to be a wonderful
+housekeeper. Accordingly, she polished the tablets, pointed the pencil,
+bought an immense account-book, carefully stitched up with a needle and
+thread all the leaves of the Cookery Book which Jip had torn, and made
+quite a desperate little attempt ‘to be good’, as she called it. But the
+figures had the old obstinate propensity--they WOULD NOT add up. When
+she had entered two or three laborious items in the account-book, Jip
+would walk over the page, wagging his tail, and smear them all out. Her
+own little right-hand middle finger got steeped to the very bone in ink;
+and I think that was the only decided result obtained.
+
+Sometimes, of an evening, when I was at home and at work--for I wrote
+a good deal now, and was beginning in a small way to be known as a
+writer--I would lay down my pen, and watch my child-wife trying to be
+good. First of all, she would bring out the immense account-book, and
+lay it down upon the table, with a deep sigh. Then she would open it at
+the place where Jip had made it illegible last night, and call Jip
+up, to look at his misdeeds. This would occasion a diversion in Jip’s
+favour, and some inking of his nose, perhaps, as a penalty. Then she
+would tell Jip to lie down on the table instantly, ‘like a lion’--which
+was one of his tricks, though I cannot say the likeness was
+striking--and, if he were in an obedient humour, he would obey. Then she
+would take up a pen, and begin to write, and find a hair in it. Then
+she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and find that it
+spluttered. Then she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and
+say in a low voice, ‘Oh, it’s a talking pen, and will disturb Doady!’
+And then she would give it up as a bad job, and put the account-book
+away, after pretending to crush the lion with it.
+
+Or, if she were in a very sedate and serious state of mind, she would
+sit down with the tablets, and a little basket of bills and other
+documents, which looked more like curl-papers than anything else, and
+endeavour to get some result out of them. After severely comparing one
+with another, and making entries on the tablets, and blotting them
+out, and counting all the fingers of her left hand over and over again,
+backwards and forwards, she would be so vexed and discouraged, and
+would look so unhappy, that it gave me pain to see her bright face
+clouded--and for me!--and I would go softly to her, and say:
+
+‘What’s the matter, Dora?’
+
+Dora would look up hopelessly, and reply, ‘They won’t come right. They
+make my head ache so. And they won’t do anything I want!’
+
+Then I would say, ‘Now let us try together. Let me show you, Dora.’
+
+Then I would commence a practical demonstration, to which Dora would pay
+profound attention, perhaps for five minutes; when she would begin to be
+dreadfully tired, and would lighten the subject by curling my hair,
+or trying the effect of my face with my shirt-collar turned down. If
+I tacitly checked this playfulness, and persisted, she would look so
+scared and disconsolate, as she became more and more bewildered, that
+the remembrance of her natural gaiety when I first strayed into her
+path, and of her being my child-wife, would come reproachfully upon me;
+and I would lay the pencil down, and call for the guitar.
+
+I had a great deal of work to do, and had many anxieties, but the same
+considerations made me keep them to myself. I am far from sure, now,
+that it was right to do this, but I did it for my child-wife’s sake. I
+search my breast, and I commit its secrets, if I know them, without any
+reservation to this paper. The old unhappy loss or want of something
+had, I am conscious, some place in my heart; but not to the embitterment
+of my life. When I walked alone in the fine weather, and thought of the
+summer days when all the air had been filled with my boyish enchantment,
+I did miss something of the realization of my dreams; but I thought it
+was a softened glory of the Past, which nothing could have thrown upon
+the present time. I did feel, sometimes, for a little while, that I
+could have wished my wife had been my counsellor; had had more character
+and purpose, to sustain me and improve me by; had been endowed with
+power to fill up the void which somewhere seemed to be about me; but
+I felt as if this were an unearthly consummation of my happiness, that
+never had been meant to be, and never could have been.
+
+I was a boyish husband as to years. I had known the softening influence
+of no other sorrows or experiences than those recorded in these leaves.
+If I did any wrong, as I may have done much, I did it in mistaken love,
+and in my want of wisdom. I write the exact truth. It would avail me
+nothing to extenuate it now.
+
+Thus it was that I took upon myself the toils and cares of our life,
+and had no partner in them. We lived much as before, in reference to our
+scrambling household arrangements; but I had got used to those, and Dora
+I was pleased to see was seldom vexed now. She was bright and cheerful
+in the old childish way, loved me dearly, and was happy with her old
+trifles.
+
+When the debates were heavy--I mean as to length, not quality, for in
+the last respect they were not often otherwise--and I went home late,
+Dora would never rest when she heard my footsteps, but would always come
+downstairs to meet me. When my evenings were unoccupied by the pursuit
+for which I had qualified myself with so much pains, and I was engaged
+in writing at home, she would sit quietly near me, however late the
+hour, and be so mute, that I would often think she had dropped asleep.
+But generally, when I raised my head, I saw her blue eyes looking at me
+with the quiet attention of which I have already spoken.
+
+‘Oh, what a weary boy!’ said Dora one night, when I met her eyes as I
+was shutting up my desk.
+
+‘What a weary girl!’ said I. ‘That’s more to the purpose. You must go to
+bed another time, my love. It’s far too late for you.’
+
+‘No, don’t send me to bed!’ pleaded Dora, coming to my side. ‘Pray,
+don’t do that!’
+
+‘Dora!’ To my amazement she was sobbing on my neck. ‘Not well, my dear!
+not happy!’
+
+‘Yes! quite well, and very happy!’ said Dora. ‘But say you’ll let me
+stop, and see you write.’
+
+‘Why, what a sight for such bright eyes at midnight!’ I replied.
+
+‘Are they bright, though?’ returned Dora, laughing. ‘I’m so glad they’re
+bright.’ ‘Little Vanity!’ said I.
+
+But it was not vanity; it was only harmless delight in my admiration. I
+knew that very well, before she told me so.
+
+‘If you think them pretty, say I may always stop, and see you write!’
+said Dora. ‘Do you think them pretty?’
+
+‘Very pretty.’
+
+‘Then let me always stop and see you write.’
+
+‘I am afraid that won’t improve their brightness, Dora.’
+
+‘Yes, it will! Because, you clever boy, you’ll not forget me then, while
+you are full of silent fancies. Will you mind it, if I say something
+very, very silly?---more than usual?’ inquired Dora, peeping over my
+shoulder into my face.
+
+‘What wonderful thing is that?’ said I.
+
+‘Please let me hold the pens,’ said Dora. ‘I want to have something to
+do with all those many hours when you are so industrious. May I hold the
+pens?’
+
+The remembrance of her pretty joy when I said yes, brings tears into my
+eyes. The next time I sat down to write, and regularly afterwards,
+she sat in her old place, with a spare bundle of pens at her side. Her
+triumph in this connexion with my work, and her delight when I wanted a
+new pen--which I very often feigned to do--suggested to me a new way of
+pleasing my child-wife. I occasionally made a pretence of wanting a
+page or two of manuscript copied. Then Dora was in her glory. The
+preparations she made for this great work, the aprons she put on, the
+bibs she borrowed from the kitchen to keep off the ink, the time she
+took, the innumerable stoppages she made to have a laugh with Jip as if
+he understood it all, her conviction that her work was incomplete unless
+she signed her name at the end, and the way in which she would bring it
+to me, like a school-copy, and then, when I praised it, clasp me round
+the neck, are touching recollections to me, simple as they might appear
+to other men.
+
+She took possession of the keys soon after this, and went jingling about
+the house with the whole bunch in a little basket, tied to her slender
+waist. I seldom found that the places to which they belonged were
+locked, or that they were of any use except as a plaything for Jip--but
+Dora was pleased, and that pleased me. She was quite satisfied that a
+good deal was effected by this make-belief of housekeeping; and was as
+merry as if we had been keeping a baby-house, for a joke.
+
+So we went on. Dora was hardly less affectionate to my aunt than to me,
+and often told her of the time when she was afraid she was ‘a cross old
+thing’. I never saw my aunt unbend more systematically to anyone. She
+courted Jip, though Jip never responded; listened, day after day, to the
+guitar, though I am afraid she had no taste for music; never attacked
+the Incapables, though the temptation must have been severe; went
+wonderful distances on foot to purchase, as surprises, any trifles that
+she found out Dora wanted; and never came in by the garden, and missed
+her from the room, but she would call out, at the foot of the stairs, in
+a voice that sounded cheerfully all over the house:
+
+‘Where’s Little Blossom?’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 45. MR. DICK FULFILS MY AUNT’S PREDICTIONS
+
+
+It was some time now, since I had left the Doctor. Living in his
+neighbourhood, I saw him frequently; and we all went to his house on two
+or three occasions to dinner or tea. The Old Soldier was in permanent
+quarters under the Doctor’s roof. She was exactly the same as ever, and
+the same immortal butterflies hovered over her cap.
+
+Like some other mothers, whom I have known in the course of my life,
+Mrs. Markleham was far more fond of pleasure than her daughter was.
+She required a great deal of amusement, and, like a deep old soldier,
+pretended, in consulting her own inclinations, to be devoting herself
+to her child. The Doctor’s desire that Annie should be entertained,
+was therefore particularly acceptable to this excellent parent; who
+expressed unqualified approval of his discretion.
+
+I have no doubt, indeed, that she probed the Doctor’s wound without
+knowing it. Meaning nothing but a certain matured frivolity and
+selfishness, not always inseparable from full-blown years, I think she
+confirmed him in his fear that he was a constraint upon his young
+wife, and that there was no congeniality of feeling between them, by so
+strongly commending his design of lightening the load of her life.
+
+‘My dear soul,’ she said to him one day when I was present, ‘you know
+there is no doubt it would be a little pokey for Annie to be always shut
+up here.’
+
+The Doctor nodded his benevolent head. ‘When she comes to her mother’s
+age,’ said Mrs. Markleham, with a flourish of her fan, ‘then it’ll be
+another thing. You might put ME into a Jail, with genteel society and
+a rubber, and I should never care to come out. But I am not Annie, you
+know; and Annie is not her mother.’
+
+‘Surely, surely,’ said the Doctor.
+
+‘You are the best of creatures--no, I beg your pardon!’ for the Doctor
+made a gesture of deprecation, ‘I must say before your face, as I always
+say behind your back, you are the best of creatures; but of course you
+don’t--now do you?---enter into the same pursuits and fancies as Annie?’
+
+‘No,’ said the Doctor, in a sorrowful tone.
+
+‘No, of course not,’ retorted the Old Soldier. ‘Take your Dictionary,
+for example. What a useful work a Dictionary is! What a necessary work!
+The meanings of words! Without Doctor Johnson, or somebody of that sort,
+we might have been at this present moment calling an Italian-iron,
+a bedstead. But we can’t expect a Dictionary--especially when it’s
+making--to interest Annie, can we?’
+
+The Doctor shook his head.
+
+‘And that’s why I so much approve,’ said Mrs. Markleham, tapping him
+on the shoulder with her shut-up fan, ‘of your thoughtfulness. It shows
+that you don’t expect, as many elderly people do expect, old heads on
+young shoulders. You have studied Annie’s character, and you understand
+it. That’s what I find so charming!’
+
+Even the calm and patient face of Doctor Strong expressed some little
+sense of pain, I thought, under the infliction of these compliments.
+
+‘Therefore, my dear Doctor,’ said the Old Soldier, giving him several
+affectionate taps, ‘you may command me, at all times and seasons. Now,
+do understand that I am entirely at your service. I am ready to go with
+Annie to operas, concerts, exhibitions, all kinds of places; and you
+shall never find that I am tired. Duty, my dear Doctor, before every
+consideration in the universe!’
+
+She was as good as her word. She was one of those people who can bear
+a great deal of pleasure, and she never flinched in her perseverance
+in the cause. She seldom got hold of the newspaper (which she settled
+herself down in the softest chair in the house to read through an
+eye-glass, every day, for two hours), but she found out something that
+she was certain Annie would like to see. It was in vain for Annie to
+protest that she was weary of such things. Her mother’s remonstrance
+always was, ‘Now, my dear Annie, I am sure you know better; and I must
+tell you, my love, that you are not making a proper return for the
+kindness of Doctor Strong.’
+
+This was usually said in the Doctor’s presence, and appeared to me to
+constitute Annie’s principal inducement for withdrawing her objections
+when she made any. But in general she resigned herself to her mother,
+and went where the Old Soldier would.
+
+It rarely happened now that Mr. Maldon accompanied them. Sometimes
+my aunt and Dora were invited to do so, and accepted the invitation.
+Sometimes Dora only was asked. The time had been, when I should have
+been uneasy in her going; but reflection on what had passed that
+former night in the Doctor’s study, had made a change in my mistrust. I
+believed that the Doctor was right, and I had no worse suspicions.
+
+My aunt rubbed her nose sometimes when she happened to be alone with
+me, and said she couldn’t make it out; she wished they were happier; she
+didn’t think our military friend (so she always called the Old Soldier)
+mended the matter at all. My aunt further expressed her opinion, ‘that
+if our military friend would cut off those butterflies, and give ‘em to
+the chimney-sweepers for May-day, it would look like the beginning of
+something sensible on her part.’
+
+But her abiding reliance was on Mr. Dick. That man had evidently an
+idea in his head, she said; and if he could only once pen it up into a
+corner, which was his great difficulty, he would distinguish himself in
+some extraordinary manner.
+
+Unconscious of this prediction, Mr. Dick continued to occupy precisely
+the same ground in reference to the Doctor and to Mrs. Strong. He seemed
+neither to advance nor to recede. He appeared to have settled into his
+original foundation, like a building; and I must confess that my faith
+in his ever Moving, was not much greater than if he had been a building.
+
+But one night, when I had been married some months, Mr. Dick put his
+head into the parlour, where I was writing alone (Dora having gone out
+with my aunt to take tea with the two little birds), and said, with a
+significant cough:
+
+‘You couldn’t speak to me without inconveniencing yourself, Trotwood, I
+am afraid?’
+
+‘Certainly, Mr. Dick,’ said I; ‘come in!’
+
+‘Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, laying his finger on the side of his nose,
+after he had shaken hands with me. ‘Before I sit down, I wish to make an
+observation. You know your aunt?’
+
+‘A little,’ I replied.
+
+‘She is the most wonderful woman in the world, sir!’
+
+After the delivery of this communication, which he shot out of himself
+as if he were loaded with it, Mr. Dick sat down with greater gravity
+than usual, and looked at me.
+
+‘Now, boy,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘I am going to put a question to you.’
+
+‘As many as you please,’ said I.
+
+‘What do you consider me, sir?’ asked Mr. Dick, folding his arms.
+
+‘A dear old friend,’ said I. ‘Thank you, Trotwood,’ returned Mr. Dick,
+laughing, and reaching across in high glee to shake hands with me. ‘But
+I mean, boy,’ resuming his gravity, ‘what do you consider me in this
+respect?’ touching his forehead.
+
+I was puzzled how to answer, but he helped me with a word.
+
+‘Weak?’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘Well,’ I replied, dubiously. ‘Rather so.’
+
+‘Exactly!’ cried Mr. Dick, who seemed quite enchanted by my reply. ‘That
+is, Trotwood, when they took some of the trouble out of you-know-who’s
+head, and put it you know where, there was a--’ Mr. Dick made his two
+hands revolve very fast about each other a great number of times, and
+then brought them into collision, and rolled them over and over one
+another, to express confusion. ‘There was that sort of thing done to me
+somehow. Eh?’
+
+I nodded at him, and he nodded back again.
+
+‘In short, boy,’ said Mr. Dick, dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘I am
+simple.’
+
+I would have qualified that conclusion, but he stopped me.
+
+‘Yes, I am! She pretends I am not. She won’t hear of it; but I am. I
+know I am. If she hadn’t stood my friend, sir, I should have been shut
+up, to lead a dismal life these many years. But I’ll provide for her!
+I never spend the copying money. I put it in a box. I have made a will.
+I’ll leave it all to her. She shall be rich--noble!’
+
+Mr. Dick took out his pocket-handkerchief, and wiped his eyes. He then
+folded it up with great care, pressed it smooth between his two hands,
+put it in his pocket, and seemed to put my aunt away with it.
+
+‘Now you are a scholar, Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘You are a fine
+scholar. You know what a learned man, what a great man, the Doctor is.
+You know what honour he has always done me. Not proud in his wisdom.
+Humble, humble--condescending even to poor Dick, who is simple and knows
+nothing. I have sent his name up, on a scrap of paper, to the kite,
+along the string, when it has been in the sky, among the larks. The kite
+has been glad to receive it, sir, and the sky has been brighter with
+it.’
+
+I delighted him by saying, most heartily, that the Doctor was deserving
+of our best respect and highest esteem.
+
+‘And his beautiful wife is a star,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘A shining star. I
+have seen her shine, sir. But,’ bringing his chair nearer, and laying
+one hand upon my knee--‘clouds, sir--clouds.’
+
+I answered the solicitude which his face expressed, by conveying the
+same expression into my own, and shaking my head.
+
+‘What clouds?’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+He looked so wistfully into my face, and was so anxious to understand,
+that I took great pains to answer him slowly and distinctly, as I might
+have entered on an explanation to a child.
+
+‘There is some unfortunate division between them,’ I replied. ‘Some
+unhappy cause of separation. A secret. It may be inseparable from the
+discrepancy in their years. It may have grown up out of almost nothing.’
+
+Mr. Dick, who had told off every sentence with a thoughtful nod, paused
+when I had done, and sat considering, with his eyes upon my face, and
+his hand upon my knee.
+
+‘Doctor not angry with her, Trotwood?’ he said, after some time.
+
+‘No. Devoted to her.’
+
+‘Then, I have got it, boy!’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+The sudden exultation with which he slapped me on the knee, and leaned
+back in his chair, with his eyebrows lifted up as high as he could
+possibly lift them, made me think him farther out of his wits than
+ever. He became as suddenly grave again, and leaning forward as before,
+said--first respectfully taking out his pocket-handkerchief, as if it
+really did represent my aunt:
+
+‘Most wonderful woman in the world, Trotwood. Why has she done nothing
+to set things right?’
+
+‘Too delicate and difficult a subject for such interference,’ I replied.
+
+‘Fine scholar,’ said Mr. Dick, touching me with his finger. ‘Why has HE
+done nothing?’
+
+‘For the same reason,’ I returned.
+
+‘Then, I have got it, boy!’ said Mr. Dick. And he stood up before me,
+more exultingly than before, nodding his head, and striking himself
+repeatedly upon the breast, until one might have supposed that he had
+nearly nodded and struck all the breath out of his body.
+
+‘A poor fellow with a craze, sir,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘a simpleton, a
+weak-minded person--present company, you know!’ striking himself again,
+‘may do what wonderful people may not do. I’ll bring them together, boy.
+I’ll try. They’ll not blame me. They’ll not object to me. They’ll not
+mind what I do, if it’s wrong. I’m only Mr. Dick. And who minds Dick?
+Dick’s nobody! Whoo!’ He blew a slight, contemptuous breath, as if he
+blew himself away.
+
+It was fortunate he had proceeded so far with his mystery, for we heard
+the coach stop at the little garden gate, which brought my aunt and Dora
+home.
+
+‘Not a word, boy!’ he pursued in a whisper; ‘leave all the blame with
+Dick--simple Dick--mad Dick. I have been thinking, sir, for some time,
+that I was getting it, and now I have got it. After what you have said
+to me, I am sure I have got it. All right!’ Not another word did Mr.
+Dick utter on the subject; but he made a very telegraph of himself for
+the next half-hour (to the great disturbance of my aunt’s mind), to
+enjoin inviolable secrecy on me.
+
+To my surprise, I heard no more about it for some two or three weeks,
+though I was sufficiently interested in the result of his endeavours;
+descrying a strange gleam of good sense--I say nothing of good feeling,
+for that he always exhibited--in the conclusion to which he had come. At
+last I began to believe, that, in the flighty and unsettled state of his
+mind, he had either forgotten his intention or abandoned it.
+
+One fair evening, when Dora was not inclined to go out, my aunt and I
+strolled up to the Doctor’s cottage. It was autumn, when there were no
+debates to vex the evening air; and I remember how the leaves smelt like
+our garden at Blunderstone as we trod them under foot, and how the old,
+unhappy feeling, seemed to go by, on the sighing wind.
+
+It was twilight when we reached the cottage. Mrs. Strong was just coming
+out of the garden, where Mr. Dick yet lingered, busy with his knife,
+helping the gardener to point some stakes. The Doctor was engaged with
+someone in his study; but the visitor would be gone directly, Mrs.
+Strong said, and begged us to remain and see him. We went into the
+drawing-room with her, and sat down by the darkening window. There was
+never any ceremony about the visits of such old friends and neighbours
+as we were.
+
+We had not sat here many minutes, when Mrs. Markleham, who usually
+contrived to be in a fuss about something, came bustling in, with her
+newspaper in her hand, and said, out of breath, ‘My goodness gracious,
+Annie, why didn’t you tell me there was someone in the Study!’
+
+‘My dear mama,’ she quietly returned, ‘how could I know that you desired
+the information?’
+
+‘Desired the information!’ said Mrs. Markleham, sinking on the sofa. ‘I
+never had such a turn in all my life!’
+
+‘Have you been to the Study, then, mama?’ asked Annie.
+
+‘BEEN to the Study, my dear!’ she returned emphatically. ‘Indeed I have!
+I came upon the amiable creature--if you’ll imagine my feelings, Miss
+Trotwood and David--in the act of making his will.’
+
+Her daughter looked round from the window quickly.
+
+‘In the act, my dear Annie,’ repeated Mrs. Markleham, spreading the
+newspaper on her lap like a table-cloth, and patting her hands upon it,
+‘of making his last Will and Testament. The foresight and affection of
+the dear! I must tell you how it was. I really must, in justice to the
+darling--for he is nothing less!--tell you how it was. Perhaps you know,
+Miss Trotwood, that there is never a candle lighted in this house, until
+one’s eyes are literally falling out of one’s head with being stretched
+to read the paper. And that there is not a chair in this house, in which
+a paper can be what I call, read, except one in the Study. This took me
+to the Study, where I saw a light. I opened the door. In company with
+the dear Doctor were two professional people, evidently connected with
+the law, and they were all three standing at the table: the
+darling Doctor pen in hand. “This simply expresses then,” said the
+Doctor--Annie, my love, attend to the very words--“this simply expresses
+then, gentlemen, the confidence I have in Mrs. Strong, and gives her all
+unconditionally?” One of the professional people replied, “And gives her
+all unconditionally.” Upon that, with the natural feelings of a mother,
+I said, “Good God, I beg your pardon!” fell over the door-step, and came
+away through the little back passage where the pantry is.’
+
+Mrs. Strong opened the window, and went out into the verandah, where she
+stood leaning against a pillar.
+
+‘But now isn’t it, Miss Trotwood, isn’t it, David, invigorating,’ said
+Mrs. Markleham, mechanically following her with her eyes, ‘to find a man
+at Doctor Strong’s time of life, with the strength of mind to do this
+kind of thing? It only shows how right I was. I said to Annie, when
+Doctor Strong paid a very flattering visit to myself, and made her the
+subject of a declaration and an offer, I said, “My dear, there is no
+doubt whatever, in my opinion, with reference to a suitable provision
+for you, that Doctor Strong will do more than he binds himself to do.”’
+
+Here the bell rang, and we heard the sound of the visitors’ feet as they
+went out.
+
+‘It’s all over, no doubt,’ said the Old Soldier, after listening; ‘the
+dear creature has signed, sealed, and delivered, and his mind’s at rest.
+Well it may be! What a mind! Annie, my love, I am going to the Study
+with my paper, for I am a poor creature without news. Miss Trotwood,
+David, pray come and see the Doctor.’
+
+I was conscious of Mr. Dick’s standing in the shadow of the room,
+shutting up his knife, when we accompanied her to the Study; and of my
+aunt’s rubbing her nose violently, by the way, as a mild vent for her
+intolerance of our military friend; but who got first into the Study, or
+how Mrs. Markleham settled herself in a moment in her easy-chair, or how
+my aunt and I came to be left together near the door (unless her eyes
+were quicker than mine, and she held me back), I have forgotten, if I
+ever knew. But this I know,--that we saw the Doctor before he saw us,
+sitting at his table, among the folio volumes in which he delighted,
+resting his head calmly on his hand. That, in the same moment, we saw
+Mrs. Strong glide in, pale and trembling. That Mr. Dick supported her on
+his arm. That he laid his other hand upon the Doctor’s arm, causing him
+to look up with an abstracted air. That, as the Doctor moved his head,
+his wife dropped down on one knee at his feet, and, with her hands
+imploringly lifted, fixed upon his face the memorable look I had never
+forgotten. That at this sight Mrs. Markleham dropped the newspaper,
+and stared more like a figure-head intended for a ship to be called The
+Astonishment, than anything else I can think of.
+
+The gentleness of the Doctor’s manner and surprise, the dignity that
+mingled with the supplicating attitude of his wife, the amiable concern
+of Mr. Dick, and the earnestness with which my aunt said to herself,
+‘That man mad!’ (triumphantly expressive of the misery from which she
+had saved him)--I see and hear, rather than remember, as I write about
+it.
+
+‘Doctor!’ said Mr. Dick. ‘What is it that’s amiss? Look here!’
+
+‘Annie!’ cried the Doctor. ‘Not at my feet, my dear!’
+
+‘Yes!’ she said. ‘I beg and pray that no one will leave the room! Oh, my
+husband and father, break this long silence. Let us both know what it is
+that has come between us!’
+
+Mrs. Markleham, by this time recovering the power of speech, and seeming
+to swell with family pride and motherly indignation, here exclaimed,
+‘Annie, get up immediately, and don’t disgrace everybody belonging to
+you by humbling yourself like that, unless you wish to see me go out of
+my mind on the spot!’
+
+‘Mama!’ returned Annie. ‘Waste no words on me, for my appeal is to my
+husband, and even you are nothing here.’
+
+‘Nothing!’ exclaimed Mrs. Markleham. ‘Me, nothing! The child has taken
+leave of her senses. Please to get me a glass of water!’
+
+I was too attentive to the Doctor and his wife, to give any heed to this
+request; and it made no impression on anybody else; so Mrs. Markleham
+panted, stared, and fanned herself.
+
+‘Annie!’ said the Doctor, tenderly taking her in his hands. ‘My dear!
+If any unavoidable change has come, in the sequence of time, upon our
+married life, you are not to blame. The fault is mine, and only mine.
+There is no change in my affection, admiration, and respect. I wish to
+make you happy. I truly love and honour you. Rise, Annie, pray!’
+
+But she did not rise. After looking at him for a little while, she sank
+down closer to him, laid her arm across his knee, and dropping her head
+upon it, said:
+
+‘If I have any friend here, who can speak one word for me, or for my
+husband in this matter; if I have any friend here, who can give a voice
+to any suspicion that my heart has sometimes whispered to me; if I have
+any friend here, who honours my husband, or has ever cared for me, and
+has anything within his knowledge, no matter what it is, that may help
+to mediate between us, I implore that friend to speak!’
+
+There was a profound silence. After a few moments of painful hesitation,
+I broke the silence.
+
+‘Mrs. Strong,’ I said, ‘there is something within my knowledge, which
+I have been earnestly entreated by Doctor Strong to conceal, and have
+concealed until tonight. But, I believe the time has come when it would
+be mistaken faith and delicacy to conceal it any longer, and when your
+appeal absolves me from his injunction.’
+
+She turned her face towards me for a moment, and I knew that I was
+right. I could not have resisted its entreaty, if the assurance that it
+gave me had been less convincing.
+
+‘Our future peace,’ she said, ‘may be in your hands. I trust it
+confidently to your not suppressing anything. I know beforehand that
+nothing you, or anyone, can tell me, will show my husband’s noble heart
+in any other light than one. Howsoever it may seem to you to touch me,
+disregard that. I will speak for myself, before him, and before God
+afterwards.’
+
+Thus earnestly besought, I made no reference to the Doctor for his
+permission, but, without any other compromise of the truth than a little
+softening of the coarseness of Uriah Heep, related plainly what had
+passed in that same room that night. The staring of Mrs. Markleham
+during the whole narration, and the shrill, sharp interjections with
+which she occasionally interrupted it, defy description.
+
+When I had finished, Annie remained, for some few moments, silent, with
+her head bent down, as I have described. Then, she took the Doctor’s
+hand (he was sitting in the same attitude as when we had entered the
+room), and pressed it to her breast, and kissed it. Mr. Dick softly
+raised her; and she stood, when she began to speak, leaning on him, and
+looking down upon her husband--from whom she never turned her eyes.
+
+‘All that has ever been in my mind, since I was married,’ she said in a
+low, submissive, tender voice, ‘I will lay bare before you. I could not
+live and have one reservation, knowing what I know now.’
+
+‘Nay, Annie,’ said the Doctor, mildly, ‘I have never doubted you, my
+child. There is no need; indeed there is no need, my dear.’
+
+‘There is great need,’ she answered, in the same way, ‘that I should
+open my whole heart before the soul of generosity and truth, whom, year
+by year, and day by day, I have loved and venerated more and more, as
+Heaven knows!’
+
+‘Really,’ interrupted Mrs. Markleham, ‘if I have any discretion at
+all--’
+
+[‘Which you haven’t, you Marplot,’ observed my aunt, in an indignant
+whisper.) --‘I must be permitted to observe that it cannot be requisite
+to enter into these details.’
+
+‘No one but my husband can judge of that, mama,’ said Annie without
+removing her eyes from his face, ‘and he will hear me. If I say anything
+to give you pain, mama, forgive me. I have borne pain first, often and
+long, myself.’
+
+‘Upon my word!’ gasped Mrs. Markleham.
+
+‘When I was very young,’ said Annie, ‘quite a little child, my first
+associations with knowledge of any kind were inseparable from a patient
+friend and teacher--the friend of my dead father--who was always dear
+to me. I can remember nothing that I know, without remembering him. He
+stored my mind with its first treasures, and stamped his character upon
+them all. They never could have been, I think, as good as they have been
+to me, if I had taken them from any other hands.’
+
+‘Makes her mother nothing!’ exclaimed Mrs. Markleham.
+
+‘Not so mama,’ said Annie; ‘but I make him what he was. I must do that.
+As I grew up, he occupied the same place still. I was proud of his
+interest: deeply, fondly, gratefully attached to him. I looked up to
+him, I can hardly describe how--as a father, as a guide, as one whose
+praise was different from all other praise, as one in whom I could have
+trusted and confided, if I had doubted all the world. You know, mama,
+how young and inexperienced I was, when you presented him before me, of
+a sudden, as a lover.’
+
+‘I have mentioned the fact, fifty times at least, to everybody here!’
+said Mrs. Markleham.
+
+[‘Then hold your tongue, for the Lord’s sake, and don’t mention it any
+more!’ muttered my aunt.)
+
+‘It was so great a change: so great a loss, I felt it, at first,’ said
+Annie, still preserving the same look and tone, ‘that I was agitated
+and distressed. I was but a girl; and when so great a change came in the
+character in which I had so long looked up to him, I think I was sorry.
+But nothing could have made him what he used to be again; and I was
+proud that he should think me so worthy, and we were married.’ ‘--At
+Saint Alphage, Canterbury,’ observed Mrs. Markleham.
+
+[‘Confound the woman!’ said my aunt, ‘she WON’T be quiet!’)
+
+‘I never thought,’ proceeded Annie, with a heightened colour, ‘of any
+worldly gain that my husband would bring to me. My young heart had no
+room in its homage for any such poor reference. Mama, forgive me when
+I say that it was you who first presented to my mind the thought that
+anyone could wrong me, and wrong him, by such a cruel suspicion.’
+
+‘Me!’ cried Mrs. Markleham.
+
+[‘Ah! You, to be sure!’ observed my aunt, ‘and you can’t fan it away, my
+military friend!’)
+
+‘It was the first unhappiness of my new life,’ said Annie. ‘It was the
+first occasion of every unhappy moment I have known. These moments have
+been more, of late, than I can count; but not--my generous husband!--not
+for the reason you suppose; for in my heart there is not a thought, a
+recollection, or a hope, that any power could separate from you!’
+
+She raised her eyes, and clasped her hands, and looked as beautiful and
+true, I thought, as any Spirit. The Doctor looked on her, henceforth, as
+steadfastly as she on him.
+
+‘Mama is blameless,’ she went on, ‘of having ever urged you for herself,
+and she is blameless in intention every way, I am sure,--but when I saw
+how many importunate claims were pressed upon you in my name; how you
+were traded on in my name; how generous you were, and how Mr. Wickfield,
+who had your welfare very much at heart, resented it; the first sense
+of my exposure to the mean suspicion that my tenderness was bought--and
+sold to you, of all men on earth--fell upon me like unmerited disgrace,
+in which I forced you to participate. I cannot tell you what it
+was--mama cannot imagine what it was--to have this dread and trouble
+always on my mind, yet know in my own soul that on my marriage-day I
+crowned the love and honour of my life!’
+
+‘A specimen of the thanks one gets,’ cried Mrs. Markleham, in tears,
+‘for taking care of one’s family! I wish I was a Turk!’
+
+[‘I wish you were, with all my heart--and in your native country!’ said
+my aunt.)
+
+‘It was at that time that mama was most solicitous about my Cousin
+Maldon. I had liked him’: she spoke softly, but without any hesitation:
+‘very much. We had been little lovers once. If circumstances had not
+happened otherwise, I might have come to persuade myself that I really
+loved him, and might have married him, and been most wretched. There can
+be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’
+
+I pondered on those words, even while I was studiously attending to
+what followed, as if they had some particular interest, or some strange
+application that I could not divine. ‘There can be no disparity in
+marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose’--‘no disparity in
+marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’
+
+‘There is nothing,’ said Annie, ‘that we have in common. I have long
+found that there is nothing. If I were thankful to my husband for no
+more, instead of for so much, I should be thankful to him for having
+saved me from the first mistaken impulse of my undisciplined heart.’
+
+She stood quite still, before the Doctor, and spoke with an earnestness
+that thrilled me. Yet her voice was just as quiet as before.
+
+‘When he was waiting to be the object of your munificence, so freely
+bestowed for my sake, and when I was unhappy in the mercenary shape
+I was made to wear, I thought it would have become him better to have
+worked his own way on. I thought that if I had been he, I would have
+tried to do it, at the cost of almost any hardship. But I thought no
+worse of him, until the night of his departure for India. That night I
+knew he had a false and thankless heart. I saw a double meaning, then,
+in Mr. Wickfield’s scrutiny of me. I perceived, for the first time, the
+dark suspicion that shadowed my life.’
+
+‘Suspicion, Annie!’ said the Doctor. ‘No, no, no!’
+
+‘In your mind there was none, I know, my husband!’ she returned. ‘And
+when I came to you, that night, to lay down all my load of shame and
+grief, and knew that I had to tell that, underneath your roof, one of my
+own kindred, to whom you had been a benefactor, for the love of me, had
+spoken to me words that should have found no utterance, even if I had
+been the weak and mercenary wretch he thought me--my mind revolted from
+the taint the very tale conveyed. It died upon my lips, and from that
+hour till now has never passed them.’
+
+Mrs. Markleham, with a short groan, leaned back in her easy-chair; and
+retired behind her fan, as if she were never coming out any more.
+
+‘I have never, but in your presence, interchanged a word with him from
+that time; then, only when it has been necessary for the avoidance of
+this explanation. Years have passed since he knew, from me, what his
+situation here was. The kindnesses you have secretly done for his
+advancement, and then disclosed to me, for my surprise and pleasure,
+have been, you will believe, but aggravations of the unhappiness and
+burden of my secret.’
+
+She sunk down gently at the Doctor’s feet, though he did his utmost to
+prevent her; and said, looking up, tearfully, into his face:
+
+‘Do not speak to me yet! Let me say a little more! Right or wrong, if
+this were to be done again, I think I should do just the same. You never
+can know what it was to be devoted to you, with those old associations;
+to find that anyone could be so hard as to suppose that the truth of my
+heart was bartered away, and to be surrounded by appearances confirming
+that belief. I was very young, and had no adviser. Between mama and
+me, in all relating to you, there was a wide division. If I shrunk into
+myself, hiding the disrespect I had undergone, it was because I honoured
+you so much, and so much wished that you should honour me!’
+
+‘Annie, my pure heart!’ said the Doctor, ‘my dear girl!’
+
+‘A little more! a very few words more! I used to think there were so
+many whom you might have married, who would not have brought such charge
+and trouble on you, and who would have made your home a worthier home. I
+used to be afraid that I had better have remained your pupil, and almost
+your child. I used to fear that I was so unsuited to your learning and
+wisdom. If all this made me shrink within myself (as indeed it did),
+when I had that to tell, it was still because I honoured you so much,
+and hoped that you might one day honour me.’
+
+‘That day has shone this long time, Annie,’ said the Doctor, ‘and can
+have but one long night, my dear.’
+
+‘Another word! I afterwards meant--steadfastly meant, and purposed to
+myself--to bear the whole weight of knowing the unworthiness of one
+to whom you had been so good. And now a last word, dearest and best of
+friends! The cause of the late change in you, which I have seen with
+so much pain and sorrow, and have sometimes referred to my old
+apprehension--at other times to lingering suppositions nearer to the
+truth--has been made clear tonight; and by an accident I have also come
+to know, tonight, the full measure of your noble trust in me, even
+under that mistake. I do not hope that any love and duty I may render in
+return, will ever make me worthy of your priceless confidence; but with
+all this knowledge fresh upon me, I can lift my eyes to this dear
+face, revered as a father’s, loved as a husband’s, sacred to me in
+my childhood as a friend’s, and solemnly declare that in my lightest
+thought I have never wronged you; never wavered in the love and the
+fidelity I owe you!’
+
+She had her arms around the Doctor’s neck, and he leant his head down
+over her, mingling his grey hair with her dark brown tresses.
+
+‘Oh, hold me to your heart, my husband! Never cast me out! Do not think
+or speak of disparity between us, for there is none, except in all my
+many imperfections. Every succeeding year I have known this better, as I
+have esteemed you more and more. Oh, take me to your heart, my husband,
+for my love was founded on a rock, and it endures!’
+
+In the silence that ensued, my aunt walked gravely up to Mr. Dick,
+without at all hurrying herself, and gave him a hug and a sounding kiss.
+And it was very fortunate, with a view to his credit, that she did so;
+for I am confident that I detected him at that moment in the act of
+making preparations to stand on one leg, as an appropriate expression of
+delight.
+
+‘You are a very remarkable man, Dick!’ said my aunt, with an air of
+unqualified approbation; ‘and never pretend to be anything else, for I
+know better!’
+
+With that, my aunt pulled him by the sleeve, and nodded to me; and we
+three stole quietly out of the room, and came away.
+
+‘That’s a settler for our military friend, at any rate,’ said my aunt,
+on the way home. ‘I should sleep the better for that, if there was
+nothing else to be glad of!’
+
+‘She was quite overcome, I am afraid,’ said Mr. Dick, with great
+commiseration.
+
+‘What! Did you ever see a crocodile overcome?’ inquired my aunt.
+
+‘I don’t think I ever saw a crocodile,’ returned Mr. Dick, mildly.
+
+‘There never would have been anything the matter, if it hadn’t been for
+that old Animal,’ said my aunt, with strong emphasis. ‘It’s very much
+to be wished that some mothers would leave their daughters alone after
+marriage, and not be so violently affectionate. They seem to think the
+only return that can be made them for bringing an unfortunate young
+woman into the world--God bless my soul, as if she asked to be brought,
+or wanted to come!--is full liberty to worry her out of it again. What
+are you thinking of, Trot?’
+
+I was thinking of all that had been said. My mind was still running on
+some of the expressions used. ‘There can be no disparity in marriage
+like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’ ‘The first mistaken impulse of
+an undisciplined heart.’ ‘My love was founded on a rock.’ But we were at
+home; and the trodden leaves were lying under-foot, and the autumn wind
+was blowing.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 46. INTELLIGENCE
+
+
+I must have been married, if I may trust to my imperfect memory for
+dates, about a year or so, when one evening, as I was returning from a
+solitary walk, thinking of the book I was then writing--for my success
+had steadily increased with my steady application, and I was engaged at
+that time upon my first work of fiction--I came past Mrs. Steerforth’s
+house. I had often passed it before, during my residence in that
+neighbourhood, though never when I could choose another road. Howbeit,
+it did sometimes happen that it was not easy to find another, without
+making a long circuit; and so I had passed that way, upon the whole,
+pretty often.
+
+I had never done more than glance at the house, as I went by with a
+quickened step. It had been uniformly gloomy and dull. None of the best
+rooms abutted on the road; and the narrow, heavily-framed old-fashioned
+windows, never cheerful under any circumstances, looked very dismal,
+close shut, and with their blinds always drawn down. There was a covered
+way across a little paved court, to an entrance that was never used; and
+there was one round staircase window, at odds with all the rest, and the
+only one unshaded by a blind, which had the same unoccupied blank look.
+I do not remember that I ever saw a light in all the house. If I had
+been a casual passer-by, I should have probably supposed that some
+childless person lay dead in it. If I had happily possessed no knowledge
+of the place, and had seen it often in that changeless state, I should
+have pleased my fancy with many ingenious speculations, I dare say.
+
+As it was, I thought as little of it as I might. But my mind could not
+go by it and leave it, as my body did; and it usually awakened a long
+train of meditations. Coming before me, on this particular evening that
+I mention, mingled with the childish recollections and later fancies,
+the ghosts of half-formed hopes, the broken shadows of disappointments
+dimly seen and understood, the blending of experience and imagination,
+incidental to the occupation with which my thoughts had been busy, it
+was more than commonly suggestive. I fell into a brown study as I walked
+on, and a voice at my side made me start.
+
+It was a woman’s voice, too. I was not long in recollecting Mrs.
+Steerforth’s little parlour-maid, who had formerly worn blue ribbons in
+her cap. She had taken them out now, to adapt herself, I suppose, to
+the altered character of the house; and wore but one or two disconsolate
+bows of sober brown.
+
+‘If you please, sir, would you have the goodness to walk in, and speak
+to Miss Dartle?’
+
+‘Has Miss Dartle sent you for me?’ I inquired.
+
+‘Not tonight, sir, but it’s just the same. Miss Dartle saw you pass a
+night or two ago; and I was to sit at work on the staircase, and when I
+saw you pass again, to ask you to step in and speak to her.’
+
+I turned back, and inquired of my conductor, as we went along, how Mrs.
+Steerforth was. She said her lady was but poorly, and kept her own room
+a good deal.
+
+When we arrived at the house, I was directed to Miss Dartle in the
+garden, and left to make my presence known to her myself. She was
+sitting on a seat at one end of a kind of terrace, overlooking the great
+city. It was a sombre evening, with a lurid light in the sky; and as
+I saw the prospect scowling in the distance, with here and there some
+larger object starting up into the sullen glare, I fancied it was no
+inapt companion to the memory of this fierce woman.
+
+She saw me as I advanced, and rose for a moment to receive me. I thought
+her, then, still more colourless and thin than when I had seen her last;
+the flashing eyes still brighter, and the scar still plainer.
+
+Our meeting was not cordial. We had parted angrily on the last occasion;
+and there was an air of disdain about her, which she took no pains to
+conceal.
+
+‘I am told you wish to speak to me, Miss Dartle,’ said I, standing near
+her, with my hand upon the back of the seat, and declining her gesture
+of invitation to sit down.
+
+‘If you please,’ said she. ‘Pray has this girl been found?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘And yet she has run away!’
+
+I saw her thin lips working while she looked at me, as if they were
+eager to load her with reproaches.
+
+‘Run away?’ I repeated.
+
+‘Yes! From him,’ she said, with a laugh. ‘If she is not found, perhaps
+she never will be found. She may be dead!’
+
+The vaunting cruelty with which she met my glance, I never saw expressed
+in any other face that ever I have seen.
+
+‘To wish her dead,’ said I, ‘may be the kindest wish that one of her own
+sex could bestow upon her. I am glad that time has softened you so much,
+Miss Dartle.’
+
+She condescended to make no reply, but, turning on me with another
+scornful laugh, said:
+
+‘The friends of this excellent and much-injured young lady are friends
+of yours. You are their champion, and assert their rights. Do you wish
+to know what is known of her?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said I.
+
+She rose with an ill-favoured smile, and taking a few steps towards
+a wall of holly that was near at hand, dividing the lawn from a
+kitchen-garden, said, in a louder voice, ‘Come here!’--as if she were
+calling to some unclean beast.
+
+‘You will restrain any demonstrative championship or vengeance in this
+place, of course, Mr. Copperfield?’ said she, looking over her shoulder
+at me with the same expression.
+
+I inclined my head, without knowing what she meant; and she said, ‘Come
+here!’ again; and returned, followed by the respectable Mr. Littimer,
+who, with undiminished respectability, made me a bow, and took up his
+position behind her. The air of wicked grace: of triumph, in which,
+strange to say, there was yet something feminine and alluring: with
+which she reclined upon the seat between us, and looked at me, was
+worthy of a cruel Princess in a Legend.
+
+‘Now,’ said she, imperiously, without glancing at him, and touching
+the old wound as it throbbed: perhaps, in this instance, with pleasure
+rather than pain. ‘Tell Mr. Copperfield about the flight.’
+
+‘Mr. James and myself, ma’am--’
+
+‘Don’t address yourself to me!’ she interrupted with a frown.
+
+‘Mr. James and myself, sir--’
+
+‘Nor to me, if you please,’ said I.
+
+Mr. Littimer, without being at all discomposed, signified by a slight
+obeisance, that anything that was most agreeable to us was most
+agreeable to him; and began again.
+
+‘Mr. James and myself have been abroad with the young woman, ever
+since she left Yarmouth under Mr. James’s protection. We have been in a
+variety of places, and seen a deal of foreign country. We have been in
+France, Switzerland, Italy, in fact, almost all parts.’
+
+He looked at the back of the seat, as if he were addressing himself to
+that; and softly played upon it with his hands, as if he were striking
+chords upon a dumb piano.
+
+‘Mr. James took quite uncommonly to the young woman; and was more
+settled, for a length of time, than I have known him to be since I have
+been in his service. The young woman was very improvable, and spoke the
+languages; and wouldn’t have been known for the same country-person. I
+noticed that she was much admired wherever we went.’
+
+Miss Dartle put her hand upon her side. I saw him steal a glance at her,
+and slightly smile to himself.
+
+‘Very much admired, indeed, the young woman was. What with her dress;
+what with the air and sun; what with being made so much of; what with
+this, that, and the other; her merits really attracted general notice.’
+
+He made a short pause. Her eyes wandered restlessly over the distant
+prospect, and she bit her nether lip to stop that busy mouth.
+
+Taking his hands from the seat, and placing one of them within the
+other, as he settled himself on one leg, Mr. Littimer proceeded, with
+his eyes cast down, and his respectable head a little advanced, and a
+little on one side:
+
+‘The young woman went on in this manner for some time, being
+occasionally low in her spirits, until I think she began to weary Mr.
+James by giving way to her low spirits and tempers of that kind; and
+things were not so comfortable. Mr. James he began to be restless again.
+The more restless he got, the worse she got; and I must say, for myself,
+that I had a very difficult time of it indeed between the two. Still
+matters were patched up here, and made good there, over and over again;
+and altogether lasted, I am sure, for a longer time than anybody could
+have expected.’
+
+Recalling her eyes from the distance, she looked at me again now, with
+her former air. Mr. Littimer, clearing his throat behind his hand with a
+respectable short cough, changed legs, and went on:
+
+‘At last, when there had been, upon the whole, a good many words and
+reproaches, Mr. James he set off one morning, from the neighbourhood of
+Naples, where we had a villa (the young woman being very partial to
+the sea), and, under pretence of coming back in a day or so, left it in
+charge with me to break it out, that, for the general happiness of all
+concerned, he was’--here an interruption of the short cough--‘gone. But
+Mr. James, I must say, certainly did behave extremely honourable; for
+he proposed that the young woman should marry a very respectable person,
+who was fully prepared to overlook the past, and who was, at least, as
+good as anybody the young woman could have aspired to in a regular way:
+her connexions being very common.’
+
+He changed legs again, and wetted his lips. I was convinced that the
+scoundrel spoke of himself, and I saw my conviction reflected in Miss
+Dartle’s face.
+
+‘This I also had it in charge to communicate. I was willing to do
+anything to relieve Mr. James from his difficulty, and to restore
+harmony between himself and an affectionate parent, who has undergone
+so much on his account. Therefore I undertook the commission. The
+young woman’s violence when she came to, after I broke the fact of his
+departure, was beyond all expectations. She was quite mad, and had to
+be held by force; or, if she couldn’t have got to a knife, or got to the
+sea, she’d have beaten her head against the marble floor.’
+
+Miss Dartle, leaning back upon the seat, with a light of exultation in
+her face, seemed almost to caress the sounds this fellow had uttered.
+
+‘But when I came to the second part of what had been entrusted to me,’
+said Mr. Littimer, rubbing his hands uneasily, ‘which anybody might
+have supposed would have been, at all events, appreciated as a kind
+intention, then the young woman came out in her true colours. A more
+outrageous person I never did see. Her conduct was surprisingly bad. She
+had no more gratitude, no more feeling, no more patience, no more reason
+in her, than a stock or a stone. If I hadn’t been upon my guard, I am
+convinced she would have had my blood.’
+
+‘I think the better of her for it,’ said I, indignantly.
+
+Mr. Littimer bent his head, as much as to say, ‘Indeed, sir? But you’re
+young!’ and resumed his narrative.
+
+‘It was necessary, in short, for a time, to take away everything nigh
+her, that she could do herself, or anybody else, an injury with, and
+to shut her up close. Notwithstanding which, she got out in the night;
+forced the lattice of a window, that I had nailed up myself; dropped on
+a vine that was trailed below; and never has been seen or heard of, to
+my knowledge, since.’
+
+‘She is dead, perhaps,’ said Miss Dartle, with a smile, as if she could
+have spurned the body of the ruined girl.
+
+‘She may have drowned herself, miss,’ returned Mr. Littimer, catching at
+an excuse for addressing himself to somebody. ‘It’s very possible. Or,
+she may have had assistance from the boatmen, and the boatmen’s wives
+and children. Being given to low company, she was very much in the
+habit of talking to them on the beach, Miss Dartle, and sitting by their
+boats. I have known her do it, when Mr. James has been away, whole days.
+Mr. James was far from pleased to find out, once, that she had told the
+children she was a boatman’s daughter, and that in her own country, long
+ago, she had roamed about the beach, like them.’
+
+Oh, Emily! Unhappy beauty! What a picture rose before me of her sitting
+on the far-off shore, among the children like herself when she was
+innocent, listening to little voices such as might have called her
+Mother had she been a poor man’s wife; and to the great voice of the
+sea, with its eternal ‘Never more!’
+
+‘When it was clear that nothing could be done, Miss Dartle--’
+
+‘Did I tell you not to speak to me?’ she said, with stern contempt.
+
+‘You spoke to me, miss,’ he replied. ‘I beg your pardon. But it is my
+service to obey.’
+
+‘Do your service,’ she returned. ‘Finish your story, and go!’
+
+‘When it was clear,’ he said, with infinite respectability and an
+obedient bow, ‘that she was not to be found, I went to Mr. James, at the
+place where it had been agreed that I should write to him, and informed
+him of what had occurred. Words passed between us in consequence, and
+I felt it due to my character to leave him. I could bear, and I have
+borne, a great deal from Mr. James; but he insulted me too far. He hurt
+me. Knowing the unfortunate difference between himself and his mother,
+and what her anxiety of mind was likely to be, I took the liberty of
+coming home to England, and relating--’
+
+‘For money which I paid him,’ said Miss Dartle to me.
+
+‘Just so, ma’am--and relating what I knew. I am not aware,’ said Mr.
+Littimer, after a moment’s reflection, ‘that there is anything else.
+I am at present out of employment, and should be happy to meet with a
+respectable situation.’
+
+Miss Dartle glanced at me, as though she would inquire if there were
+anything that I desired to ask. As there was something which had
+occurred to my mind, I said in reply:
+
+‘I could wish to know from this--creature,’ I could not bring myself
+to utter any more conciliatory word, ‘whether they intercepted a letter
+that was written to her from home, or whether he supposes that she
+received it.’
+
+He remained calm and silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and the
+tip of every finger of his right hand delicately poised against the tip
+of every finger of his left.
+
+Miss Dartle turned her head disdainfully towards him.
+
+‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ he said, awakening from his abstraction,
+‘but, however submissive to you, I have my position, though a servant.
+Mr. Copperfield and you, miss, are different people. If Mr. Copperfield
+wishes to know anything from me, I take the liberty of reminding Mr.
+Copperfield that he can put a question to me. I have a character to
+maintain.’
+
+After a momentary struggle with myself, I turned my eyes upon him, and
+said, ‘You have heard my question. Consider it addressed to yourself, if
+you choose. What answer do you make?’
+
+‘Sir,’ he rejoined, with an occasional separation and reunion of those
+delicate tips, ‘my answer must be qualified; because, to betray Mr.
+James’s confidence to his mother, and to betray it to you, are two
+different actions. It is not probable, I consider, that Mr. James would
+encourage the receipt of letters likely to increase low spirits and
+unpleasantness; but further than that, sir, I should wish to avoid
+going.’
+
+‘Is that all?’ inquired Miss Dartle of me.
+
+I indicated that I had nothing more to say. ‘Except,’ I added, as I
+saw him moving off, ‘that I understand this fellow’s part in the wicked
+story, and that, as I shall make it known to the honest man who has been
+her father from her childhood, I would recommend him to avoid going too
+much into public.’
+
+He had stopped the moment I began, and had listened with his usual
+repose of manner.
+
+‘Thank you, sir. But you’ll excuse me if I say, sir, that there are
+neither slaves nor slave-drivers in this country, and that people are
+not allowed to take the law into their own hands. If they do, it is
+more to their own peril, I believe, than to other people’s. Consequently
+speaking, I am not at all afraid of going wherever I may wish, sir.’
+
+With that, he made a polite bow; and, with another to Miss Dartle, went
+away through the arch in the wall of holly by which he had come. Miss
+Dartle and I regarded each other for a little while in silence; her
+manner being exactly what it was, when she had produced the man.
+
+‘He says besides,’ she observed, with a slow curling of her lip, ‘that
+his master, as he hears, is coasting Spain; and this done, is away
+to gratify his seafaring tastes till he is weary. But this is of no
+interest to you. Between these two proud persons, mother and son, there
+is a wider breach than before, and little hope of its healing, for they
+are one at heart, and time makes each more obstinate and imperious.
+Neither is this of any interest to you; but it introduces what I wish to
+say. This devil whom you make an angel of. I mean this low girl whom he
+picked out of the tide-mud,’ with her black eyes full upon me, and her
+passionate finger up, ‘may be alive,--for I believe some common things
+are hard to die. If she is, you will desire to have a pearl of such
+price found and taken care of. We desire that, too; that he may not
+by any chance be made her prey again. So far, we are united in one
+interest; and that is why I, who would do her any mischief that so
+coarse a wretch is capable of feeling, have sent for you to hear what
+you have heard.’
+
+I saw, by the change in her face, that someone was advancing behind me.
+It was Mrs. Steerforth, who gave me her hand more coldly than of yore,
+and with an augmentation of her former stateliness of manner, but still,
+I perceived--and I was touched by it--with an ineffaceable remembrance
+of my old love for her son. She was greatly altered. Her fine figure was
+far less upright, her handsome face was deeply marked, and her hair was
+almost white. But when she sat down on the seat, she was a handsome lady
+still; and well I knew the bright eye with its lofty look, that had been
+a light in my very dreams at school.
+
+‘Is Mr. Copperfield informed of everything, Rosa?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘And has he heard Littimer himself?’
+
+‘Yes; I have told him why you wished it.’ ‘You are a good girl. I have
+had some slight correspondence with your former friend, sir,’ addressing
+me, ‘but it has not restored his sense of duty or natural obligation.
+Therefore I have no other object in this, than what Rosa has mentioned.
+If, by the course which may relieve the mind of the decent man you
+brought here (for whom I am sorry--I can say no more), my son may be
+saved from again falling into the snares of a designing enemy, well!’
+
+She drew herself up, and sat looking straight before her, far away.
+
+‘Madam,’ I said respectfully, ‘I understand. I assure you I am in no
+danger of putting any strained construction on your motives. But I must
+say, even to you, having known this injured family from childhood,
+that if you suppose the girl, so deeply wronged, has not been cruelly
+deluded, and would not rather die a hundred deaths than take a cup of
+water from your son’s hand now, you cherish a terrible mistake.’
+
+‘Well, Rosa, well!’ said Mrs. Steerforth, as the other was about to
+interpose, ‘it is no matter. Let it be. You are married, sir, I am
+told?’
+
+I answered that I had been some time married.
+
+‘And are doing well? I hear little in the quiet life I lead, but I
+understand you are beginning to be famous.’
+
+‘I have been very fortunate,’ I said, ‘and find my name connected with
+some praise.’
+
+‘You have no mother?’--in a softened voice.
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘It is a pity,’ she returned. ‘She would have been proud of you. Good
+night!’
+
+I took the hand she held out with a dignified, unbending air, and it
+was as calm in mine as if her breast had been at peace. Her pride could
+still its very pulses, it appeared, and draw the placid veil before
+her face, through which she sat looking straight before her on the far
+distance.
+
+As I moved away from them along the terrace, I could not help observing
+how steadily they both sat gazing on the prospect, and how it thickened
+and closed around them. Here and there, some early lamps were seen to
+twinkle in the distant city; and in the eastern quarter of the sky
+the lurid light still hovered. But, from the greater part of the broad
+valley interposed, a mist was rising like a sea, which, mingling with
+the darkness, made it seem as if the gathering waters would encompass
+them. I have reason to remember this, and think of it with awe; for
+before I looked upon those two again, a stormy sea had risen to their
+feet.
+
+Reflecting on what had been thus told me, I felt it right that it should
+be communicated to Mr. Peggotty. On the following evening I went into
+London in quest of him. He was always wandering about from place to
+place, with his one object of recovering his niece before him; but was
+more in London than elsewhere. Often and often, now, had I seen him in
+the dead of night passing along the streets, searching, among the few
+who loitered out of doors at those untimely hours, for what he dreaded
+to find.
+
+He kept a lodging over the little chandler’s shop in Hungerford Market,
+which I have had occasion to mention more than once, and from which he
+first went forth upon his errand of mercy. Hither I directed my walk. On
+making inquiry for him, I learned from the people of the house that he
+had not gone out yet, and I should find him in his room upstairs.
+
+He was sitting reading by a window in which he kept a few plants. The
+room was very neat and orderly. I saw in a moment that it was always
+kept prepared for her reception, and that he never went out but he
+thought it possible he might bring her home. He had not heard my tap
+at the door, and only raised his eyes when I laid my hand upon his
+shoulder.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy! Thankee, sir! thankee hearty, for this visit! Sit ye down.
+You’re kindly welcome, sir!’
+
+‘Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, taking the chair he handed me, ‘don’t expect
+much! I have heard some news.’
+
+‘Of Em’ly!’
+
+He put his hand, in a nervous manner, on his mouth, and turned pale, as
+he fixed his eyes on mine.
+
+‘It gives no clue to where she is; but she is not with him.’
+
+He sat down, looking intently at me, and listened in profound silence
+to all I had to tell. I well remember the sense of dignity, beauty even,
+with which the patient gravity of his face impressed me, when, having
+gradually removed his eyes from mine, he sat looking downward, leaning
+his forehead on his hand. He offered no interruption, but remained
+throughout perfectly still. He seemed to pursue her figure through
+the narrative, and to let every other shape go by him, as if it were
+nothing.
+
+When I had done, he shaded his face, and continued silent. I looked out
+of the window for a little while, and occupied myself with the plants.
+
+‘How do you fare to feel about it, Mas’r Davy?’ he inquired at length.
+
+‘I think that she is living,’ I replied.
+
+‘I doen’t know. Maybe the first shock was too rough, and in the wildness
+of her art--! That there blue water as she used to speak on. Could she
+have thowt o’ that so many year, because it was to be her grave!’
+
+He said this, musing, in a low, frightened voice; and walked across the
+little room.
+
+‘And yet,’ he added, ‘Mas’r Davy, I have felt so sure as she was
+living--I have know’d, awake and sleeping, as it was so trew that I
+should find her--I have been so led on by it, and held up by it--that I
+doen’t believe I can have been deceived. No! Em’ly’s alive!’
+
+He put his hand down firmly on the table, and set his sunburnt face into
+a resolute expression.
+
+‘My niece, Em’ly, is alive, sir!’ he said, steadfastly. ‘I doen’t know
+wheer it comes from, or how ‘tis, but I am told as she’s alive!’
+
+He looked almost like a man inspired, as he said it. I waited for a
+few moments, until he could give me his undivided attention; and then
+proceeded to explain the precaution, that, it had occurred to me last
+night, it would be wise to take.
+
+‘Now, my dear friend--‘I began.
+
+‘Thankee, thankee, kind sir,’ he said, grasping my hand in both of his.
+
+‘If she should make her way to London, which is likely--for where could
+she lose herself so readily as in this vast city; and what would she
+wish to do, but lose and hide herself, if she does not go home?--’
+
+‘And she won’t go home,’ he interposed, shaking his head mournfully. ‘If
+she had left of her own accord, she might; not as It was, sir.’
+
+‘If she should come here,’ said I, ‘I believe there is one person,
+here, more likely to discover her than any other in the world. Do
+you remember--hear what I say, with fortitude--think of your great
+object!--do you remember Martha?’
+
+‘Of our town?’
+
+I needed no other answer than his face.
+
+‘Do you know that she is in London?’
+
+‘I have seen her in the streets,’ he answered, with a shiver.
+
+‘But you don’t know,’ said I, ‘that Emily was charitable to her, with
+Ham’s help, long before she fled from home. Nor, that, when we met one
+night, and spoke together in the room yonder, over the way, she listened
+at the door.’
+
+‘Mas’r Davy!’ he replied in astonishment. ‘That night when it snew so
+hard?’
+
+‘That night. I have never seen her since. I went back, after parting
+from you, to speak to her, but she was gone. I was unwilling to mention
+her to you then, and I am now; but she is the person of whom I speak,
+and with whom I think we should communicate. Do you understand?’
+
+‘Too well, sir,’ he replied. We had sunk our voices, almost to a
+whisper, and continued to speak in that tone.
+
+‘You say you have seen her. Do you think that you could find her? I
+could only hope to do so by chance.’
+
+‘I think, Mas’r Davy, I know wheer to look.’
+
+‘It is dark. Being together, shall we go out now, and try to find her
+tonight?’
+
+He assented, and prepared to accompany me. Without appearing to observe
+what he was doing, I saw how carefully he adjusted the little room,
+put a candle ready and the means of lighting it, arranged the bed, and
+finally took out of a drawer one of her dresses (I remember to have
+seen her wear it), neatly folded with some other garments, and a bonnet,
+which he placed upon a chair. He made no allusion to these clothes,
+neither did I. There they had been waiting for her, many and many a
+night, no doubt.
+
+‘The time was, Mas’r Davy,’ he said, as we came downstairs, ‘when I
+thowt this girl, Martha, a’most like the dirt underneath my Em’ly’s
+feet. God forgive me, theer’s a difference now!’
+
+As we went along, partly to hold him in conversation, and partly to
+satisfy myself, I asked him about Ham. He said, almost in the same words
+as formerly, that Ham was just the same, ‘wearing away his life with
+kiender no care nohow for ‘t; but never murmuring, and liked by all’.
+
+I asked him what he thought Ham’s state of mind was, in reference to the
+cause of their misfortunes? Whether he believed it was dangerous? What
+he supposed, for example, Ham would do, if he and Steerforth ever should
+encounter?
+
+‘I doen’t know, sir,’ he replied. ‘I have thowt of it oftentimes, but I
+can’t awize myself of it, no matters.’
+
+I recalled to his remembrance the morning after her departure, when we
+were all three on the beach. ‘Do you recollect,’ said I, ‘a certain wild
+way in which he looked out to sea, and spoke about “the end of it”?’
+
+‘Sure I do!’ said he.
+
+‘What do you suppose he meant?’
+
+‘Mas’r Davy,’ he replied, ‘I’ve put the question to myself a mort o’
+times, and never found no answer. And theer’s one curious thing--that,
+though he is so pleasant, I wouldn’t fare to feel comfortable to try and
+get his mind upon ‘t. He never said a wured to me as warn’t as dootiful
+as dootiful could be, and it ain’t likely as he’d begin to speak any
+other ways now; but it’s fur from being fleet water in his mind, where
+them thowts lays. It’s deep, sir, and I can’t see down.’
+
+‘You are right,’ said I, ‘and that has sometimes made me anxious.’
+
+‘And me too, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined. ‘Even more so, I do assure you,
+than his ventersome ways, though both belongs to the alteration in him.
+I doen’t know as he’d do violence under any circumstances, but I hope as
+them two may be kep asunders.’
+
+We had come, through Temple Bar, into the city. Conversing no more now,
+and walking at my side, he yielded himself up to the one aim of his
+devoted life, and went on, with that hushed concentration of his
+faculties which would have made his figure solitary in a multitude.
+We were not far from Blackfriars Bridge, when he turned his head and
+pointed to a solitary female figure flitting along the opposite side of
+the street. I knew it, readily, to be the figure that we sought.
+
+We crossed the road, and were pressing on towards her, when it occurred
+to me that she might be more disposed to feel a woman’s interest in the
+lost girl, if we spoke to her in a quieter place, aloof from the crowd,
+and where we should be less observed. I advised my companion, therefore,
+that we should not address her yet, but follow her; consulting in this,
+likewise, an indistinct desire I had, to know where she went.
+
+He acquiescing, we followed at a distance: never losing sight of her,
+but never caring to come very near, as she frequently looked about.
+Once, she stopped to listen to a band of music; and then we stopped too.
+
+She went on a long way. Still we went on. It was evident, from the
+manner in which she held her course, that she was going to some fixed
+destination; and this, and her keeping in the busy streets, and I
+suppose the strange fascination in the secrecy and mystery of so
+following anyone, made me adhere to my first purpose. At length she
+turned into a dull, dark street, where the noise and crowd were lost;
+and I said, ‘We may speak to her now’; and, mending our pace, we went
+after her.
+
+
+CHAPTER 47. MARTHA
+
+
+We were now down in Westminster. We had turned back to follow her,
+having encountered her coming towards us; and Westminster Abbey was
+the point at which she passed from the lights and noise of the leading
+streets. She proceeded so quickly, when she got free of the two currents
+of passengers setting towards and from the bridge, that, between this
+and the advance she had of us when she struck off, we were in the narrow
+water-side street by Millbank before we came up with her. At that moment
+she crossed the road, as if to avoid the footsteps that she heard so
+close behind; and, without looking back, passed on even more rapidly.
+
+A glimpse of the river through a dull gateway, where some waggons were
+housed for the night, seemed to arrest my feet. I touched my companion
+without speaking, and we both forbore to cross after her, and both
+followed on that opposite side of the way; keeping as quietly as we
+could in the shadow of the houses, but keeping very near her.
+
+There was, and is when I write, at the end of that low-lying street,
+a dilapidated little wooden building, probably an obsolete old
+ferry-house. Its position is just at that point where the street ceases,
+and the road begins to lie between a row of houses and the river. As
+soon as she came here, and saw the water, she stopped as if she had come
+to her destination; and presently went slowly along by the brink of the
+river, looking intently at it.
+
+All the way here, I had supposed that she was going to some house;
+indeed, I had vaguely entertained the hope that the house might be in
+some way associated with the lost girl. But that one dark glimpse of the
+river, through the gateway, had instinctively prepared me for her going
+no farther.
+
+The neighbourhood was a dreary one at that time; as oppressive, sad, and
+solitary by night, as any about London. There were neither wharves nor
+houses on the melancholy waste of road near the great blank Prison. A
+sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls. Coarse grass and
+rank weeds straggled over all the marshy land in the vicinity. In one
+part, carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun and never finished,
+rotted away. In another, the ground was cumbered with rusty iron
+monsters of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles,
+anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, and I know not what strange
+objects, accumulated by some speculator, and grovelling in the dust,
+underneath which--having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet
+weather--they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves.
+The clash and glare of sundry fiery Works upon the river-side, arose
+by night to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that
+poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among
+old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like
+green hair, and the rags of last year’s handbills offering rewards for
+drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze
+and slush to the ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits
+dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout; and
+a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over the whole
+place. Or else it looked as if it had gradually decomposed into that
+nightmare condition, out of the overflowings of the polluted stream.
+
+As if she were a part of the refuse it had cast out, and left to
+corruption and decay, the girl we had followed strayed down to the
+river’s brink, and stood in the midst of this night-picture, lonely and
+still, looking at the water.
+
+There were some boats and barges astrand in the mud, and these enabled
+us to come within a few yards of her without being seen. I then signed
+to Mr. Peggotty to remain where he was, and emerged from their shade to
+speak to her. I did not approach her solitary figure without trembling;
+for this gloomy end to her determined walk, and the way in which she
+stood, almost within the cavernous shadow of the iron bridge, looking
+at the lights crookedly reflected in the strong tide, inspired a dread
+within me.
+
+I think she was talking to herself. I am sure, although absorbed in
+gazing at the water, that her shawl was off her shoulders, and that she
+was muffling her hands in it, in an unsettled and bewildered way, more
+like the action of a sleep-walker than a waking person. I know, and
+never can forget, that there was that in her wild manner which gave me
+no assurance but that she would sink before my eyes, until I had her arm
+within my grasp.
+
+At the same moment I said ‘Martha!’
+
+She uttered a terrified scream, and struggled with me with such strength
+that I doubt if I could have held her alone. But a stronger hand than
+mine was laid upon her; and when she raised her frightened eyes and saw
+whose it was, she made but one more effort and dropped down between us.
+We carried her away from the water to where there were some dry stones,
+and there laid her down, crying and moaning. In a little while she sat
+among the stones, holding her wretched head with both her hands.
+
+‘Oh, the river!’ she cried passionately. ‘Oh, the river!’
+
+‘Hush, hush!’ said I. ‘Calm yourself.’
+
+But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming, ‘Oh, the
+river!’ over and over again.
+
+‘I know it’s like me!’ she exclaimed. ‘I know that I belong to it.
+I know that it’s the natural company of such as I am! It comes from
+country places, where there was once no harm in it--and it creeps
+through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable--and it goes away,
+like my life, to a great sea, that is always troubled--and I feel that
+I must go with it!’ I have never known what despair was, except in the
+tone of those words.
+
+‘I can’t keep away from it. I can’t forget it. It haunts me day and
+night. It’s the only thing in all the world that I am fit for, or that’s
+fit for me. Oh, the dreadful river!’
+
+The thought passed through my mind that in the face of my companion,
+as he looked upon her without speech or motion, I might have read his
+niece’s history, if I had known nothing of it. I never saw, in any
+painting or reality, horror and compassion so impressively blended. He
+shook as if he would have fallen; and his hand--I touched it with my
+own, for his appearance alarmed me--was deadly cold.
+
+‘She is in a state of frenzy,’ I whispered to him. ‘She will speak
+differently in a little time.’
+
+I don’t know what he would have said in answer. He made some motion with
+his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken; but he had only pointed to
+her with his outstretched hand.
+
+A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more hid
+her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of
+humiliation and ruin. Knowing that this state must pass, before we could
+speak to her with any hope, I ventured to restrain him when he would
+have raised her, and we stood by in silence until she became more
+tranquil.
+
+‘Martha,’ said I then, leaning down, and helping her to rise--she seemed
+to want to rise as if with the intention of going away, but she was
+weak, and leaned against a boat. ‘Do you know who this is, who is with
+me?’
+
+She said faintly, ‘Yes.’
+
+‘Do you know that we have followed you a long way tonight?’
+
+She shook her head. She looked neither at him nor at me, but stood in
+a humble attitude, holding her bonnet and shawl in one hand, without
+appearing conscious of them, and pressing the other, clenched, against
+her forehead.
+
+‘Are you composed enough,’ said I, ‘to speak on the subject which so
+interested you--I hope Heaven may remember it!--that snowy night?’
+
+Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to
+me for not having driven her away from the door.
+
+‘I want to say nothing for myself,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘I
+am bad, I am lost. I have no hope at all. But tell him, sir,’ she had
+shrunk away from him, ‘if you don’t feel too hard to me to do it, that
+I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune.’ ‘It has never been
+attributed to you,’ I returned, earnestly responding to her earnestness.
+
+‘It was you, if I don’t deceive myself,’ she said, in a broken voice,
+‘that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so
+gentle to me; didn’t shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me
+such kind help! Was it you, sir?’
+
+‘It was,’ said I.
+
+‘I should have been in the river long ago,’ she said, glancing at it
+with a terrible expression, ‘if any wrong to her had been upon my mind.
+I never could have kept out of it a single winter’s night, if I had not
+been free of any share in that!’
+
+‘The cause of her flight is too well understood,’ I said. ‘You are
+innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe,--we know.’
+
+‘Oh, I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a better
+heart!’ exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret; ‘for she was
+always good to me! She never spoke a word to me but what was pleasant
+and right. Is it likely I would try to make her what I am myself,
+knowing what I am myself, so well? When I lost everything that makes
+life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was that I was parted for ever
+from her!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunwale of the boat, and his
+eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.
+
+‘And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from some
+belonging to our town,’ cried Martha, ‘the bitterest thought in all my
+mind was, that the people would remember she once kept company with me,
+and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven knows, I would have died
+to have brought back her good name!’
+
+Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse and
+grief was terrible.
+
+‘To have died, would not have been much--what can I say?---I would
+have lived!’ she cried. ‘I would have lived to be old, in the wretched
+streets--and to wander about, avoided, in the dark--and to see the day
+break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used
+to shine into my room, and wake me once--I would have done even that, to
+save her!’
+
+Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them
+up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture
+constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as
+though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and
+drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections.
+
+‘What shall I ever do!’ she said, fighting thus with her despair. ‘How
+can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to
+everyone I come near!’ Suddenly she turned to my companion. ‘Stamp upon
+me, kill me! When she was your pride, you would have thought I had
+done her harm if I had brushed against her in the street. You can’t
+believe--why should you?---a syllable that comes out of my lips. It
+would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a
+word. I don’t complain. I don’t say she and I are alike--I know there
+is a long, long way between us. I only say, with all my guilt and
+wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and
+love her. Oh, don’t think that all the power I had of loving anything is
+quite worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does. Kill me for being
+what I am, and having ever known her; but don’t think that of me!’
+
+He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild
+distracted manner; and, when she was silent, gently raised her.
+
+‘Martha,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘God forbid as I should judge you. Forbid
+as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen’t know half the
+change that’s come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it
+likely. Well!’ he paused a moment, then went on. ‘You doen’t understand
+how ‘tis that this here gentleman and me has wished to speak to you. You
+doen’t understand what ‘tis we has afore us. Listen now!’
+
+His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrinkingly, before him,
+as if she were afraid to meet his eyes; but her passionate sorrow was
+quite hushed and mute.
+
+‘If you heerd,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘owt of what passed between Mas’r
+Davy and me, th’ night when it snew so hard, you know as I have
+been--wheer not--fur to seek my dear niece. My dear niece,’ he repeated
+steadily. ‘Fur she’s more dear to me now, Martha, than she was dear
+afore.’
+
+She put her hands before her face; but otherwise remained quiet.
+
+‘I have heerd her tell,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘as you was early left
+fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough
+seafaring-way, their place. Maybe you can guess that if you’d had such
+a friend, you’d have got into a way of being fond of him in course of
+time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me.’
+
+As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her,
+taking it up from the ground for that purpose.
+
+‘Whereby,’ said he, ‘I know, both as she would go to the wureld’s
+furdest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she would
+fly to the wureld’s furdest end to keep off seeing me. For though she
+ain’t no call to doubt my love, and doen’t--and doen’t,’ he repeated,
+with a quiet assurance of the truth of what he said, ‘there’s shame
+steps in, and keeps betwixt us.’
+
+I read, in every word of his plain impressive way of delivering himself,
+new evidence of his having thought of this one topic, in every feature
+it presented.
+
+‘According to our reckoning,’ he proceeded, ‘Mas’r Davy’s here, and
+mine, she is like, one day, to make her own poor solitary course to
+London. We believe--Mas’r Davy, me, and all of us--that you are as
+innocent of everything that has befell her, as the unborn child. You’ve
+spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you. Bless her, I knew
+she was! I knew she always was, to all. You’re thankful to her, and you
+love her. Help us all you can to find her, and may Heaven reward you!’
+
+She looked at him hastily, and for the first time, as if she were
+doubtful of what he had said.
+
+‘Will you trust me?’ she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.
+
+‘Full and free!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘To speak to her, if I should ever find her; shelter her, if I have any
+shelter to divide with her; and then, without her knowledge, come to
+you, and bring you to her?’ she asked hurriedly.
+
+We both replied together, ‘Yes!’
+
+She lifted up her eyes, and solemnly declared that she would devote
+herself to this task, fervently and faithfully. That she would never
+waver in it, never be diverted from it, never relinquish it, while there
+was any chance of hope. If she were not true to it, might the object
+she now had in life, which bound her to something devoid of evil, in its
+passing away from her, leave her more forlorn and more despairing, if
+that were possible, than she had been upon the river’s brink that night;
+and then might all help, human and Divine, renounce her evermore!
+
+She did not raise her voice above her breath, or address us, but said
+this to the night sky; then stood profoundly quiet, looking at the
+gloomy water.
+
+We judged it expedient, now, to tell her all we knew; which I recounted
+at length. She listened with great attention, and with a face that often
+changed, but had the same purpose in all its varying expressions. Her
+eyes occasionally filled with tears, but those she repressed. It seemed
+as if her spirit were quite altered, and she could not be too quiet.
+
+She asked, when all was told, where we were to be communicated with, if
+occasion should arise. Under a dull lamp in the road, I wrote our two
+addresses on a leaf of my pocket-book, which I tore out and gave to
+her, and which she put in her poor bosom. I asked her where she lived
+herself. She said, after a pause, in no place long. It were better not
+to know.
+
+Mr. Peggotty suggesting to me, in a whisper, what had already occurred
+to myself, I took out my purse; but I could not prevail upon her to
+accept any money, nor could I exact any promise from her that she would
+do so at another time. I represented to her that Mr. Peggotty could
+not be called, for one in his condition, poor; and that the idea of her
+engaging in this search, while depending on her own resources, shocked
+us both. She continued steadfast. In this particular, his influence
+upon her was equally powerless with mine. She gratefully thanked him but
+remained inexorable.
+
+‘There may be work to be got,’ she said. ‘I’ll try.’
+
+‘At least take some assistance,’ I returned, ‘until you have tried.’
+
+‘I could not do what I have promised, for money,’ she replied. ‘I could
+not take it, if I was starving. To give me money would be to take away
+your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away
+the only certain thing that saves me from the river.’
+
+‘In the name of the great judge,’ said I, ‘before whom you and all of us
+must stand at His dread time, dismiss that terrible idea! We can all do
+some good, if we will.’
+
+She trembled, and her lip shook, and her face was paler, as she
+answered:
+
+‘It has been put into your hearts, perhaps, to save a wretched creature
+for repentance. I am afraid to think so; it seems too bold. If any good
+should come of me, I might begin to hope; for nothing but harm has ever
+come of my deeds yet. I am to be trusted, for the first time in a long
+while, with my miserable life, on account of what you have given me to
+try for. I know no more, and I can say no more.’
+
+Again she repressed the tears that had begun to flow; and, putting out
+her trembling hand, and touching Mr. Peggotty, as if there was some
+healing virtue in him, went away along the desolate road. She had been
+ill, probably for a long time. I observed, upon that closer opportunity
+of observation, that she was worn and haggard, and that her sunken eyes
+expressed privation and endurance.
+
+We followed her at a short distance, our way lying in the same
+direction, until we came back into the lighted and populous streets. I
+had such implicit confidence in her declaration, that I then put it to
+Mr. Peggotty, whether it would not seem, in the onset, like distrusting
+her, to follow her any farther. He being of the same mind, and equally
+reliant on her, we suffered her to take her own road, and took ours,
+which was towards Highgate. He accompanied me a good part of the way;
+and when we parted, with a prayer for the success of this fresh effort,
+there was a new and thoughtful compassion in him that I was at no loss
+to interpret.
+
+It was midnight when I arrived at home. I had reached my own gate, and
+was standing listening for the deep bell of St. Paul’s, the sound
+of which I thought had been borne towards me among the multitude of
+striking clocks, when I was rather surprised to see that the door of my
+aunt’s cottage was open, and that a faint light in the entry was shining
+out across the road.
+
+Thinking that my aunt might have relapsed into one of her old alarms,
+and might be watching the progress of some imaginary conflagration in
+the distance, I went to speak to her. It was with very great surprise
+that I saw a man standing in her little garden.
+
+He had a glass and bottle in his hand, and was in the act of drinking. I
+stopped short, among the thick foliage outside, for the moon was up now,
+though obscured; and I recognized the man whom I had once supposed to be
+a delusion of Mr. Dick’s, and had once encountered with my aunt in the
+streets of the city.
+
+He was eating as well as drinking, and seemed to eat with a hungry
+appetite. He seemed curious regarding the cottage, too, as if it were
+the first time he had seen it. After stooping to put the bottle on the
+ground, he looked up at the windows, and looked about; though with a
+covert and impatient air, as if he was anxious to be gone.
+
+The light in the passage was obscured for a moment, and my aunt came
+out. She was agitated, and told some money into his hand. I heard it
+chink.
+
+‘What’s the use of this?’ he demanded.
+
+‘I can spare no more,’ returned my aunt.
+
+‘Then I can’t go,’ said he. ‘Here! You may take it back!’
+
+‘You bad man,’ returned my aunt, with great emotion; ‘how can you use me
+so? But why do I ask? It is because you know how weak I am! What have
+I to do, to free myself for ever of your visits, but to abandon you to
+your deserts?’
+
+‘And why don’t you abandon me to my deserts?’ said he.
+
+‘You ask me why!’ returned my aunt. ‘What a heart you must have!’
+
+He stood moodily rattling the money, and shaking his head, until at
+length he said:
+
+‘Is this all you mean to give me, then?’
+
+‘It is all I CAN give you,’ said my aunt. ‘You know I have had losses,
+and am poorer than I used to be. I have told you so. Having got it, why
+do you give me the pain of looking at you for another moment, and seeing
+what you have become?’
+
+‘I have become shabby enough, if you mean that,’ he said. ‘I lead the
+life of an owl.’
+
+‘You stripped me of the greater part of all I ever had,’ said my aunt.
+‘You closed my heart against the whole world, years and years. You
+treated me falsely, ungratefully, and cruelly. Go, and repent of it.
+Don’t add new injuries to the long, long list of injuries you have done
+me!’
+
+‘Aye!’ he returned. ‘It’s all very fine--Well! I must do the best I can,
+for the present, I suppose.’
+
+In spite of himself, he appeared abashed by my aunt’s indignant tears,
+and came slouching out of the garden. Taking two or three quick steps,
+as if I had just come up, I met him at the gate, and went in as he came
+out. We eyed one another narrowly in passing, and with no favour.
+
+‘Aunt,’ said I, hurriedly. ‘This man alarming you again! Let me speak to
+him. Who is he?’
+
+‘Child,’ returned my aunt, taking my arm, ‘come in, and don’t speak to
+me for ten minutes.’
+
+We sat down in her little parlour. My aunt retired behind the round
+green fan of former days, which was screwed on the back of a chair, and
+occasionally wiped her eyes, for about a quarter of an hour. Then she
+came out, and took a seat beside me.
+
+‘Trot,’ said my aunt, calmly, ‘it’s my husband.’
+
+‘Your husband, aunt? I thought he had been dead!’
+
+‘Dead to me,’ returned my aunt, ‘but living.’
+
+I sat in silent amazement.
+
+‘Betsey Trotwood don’t look a likely subject for the tender passion,’
+said my aunt, composedly, ‘but the time was, Trot, when she believed in
+that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there
+was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given
+him. He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly breaking her
+heart. So she put all that sort of sentiment, once and for ever, in a
+grave, and filled it up, and flattened it down.’
+
+‘My dear, good aunt!’
+
+‘I left him,’ my aunt proceeded, laying her hand as usual on the back of
+mine, ‘generously. I may say at this distance of time, Trot, that I left
+him generously. He had been so cruel to me, that I might have effected
+a separation on easy terms for myself; but I did not. He soon made ducks
+and drakes of what I gave him, sank lower and lower, married another
+woman, I believe, became an adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat. What he
+is now, you see. But he was a fine-looking man when I married him,’ said
+my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone; ‘and
+I believed him--I was a fool!--to be the soul of honour!’
+
+She gave my hand a squeeze, and shook her head.
+
+‘He is nothing to me now, Trot--less than nothing. But, sooner than have
+him punished for his offences (as he would be if he prowled about in
+this country), I give him more money than I can afford, at intervals
+when he reappears, to go away. I was a fool when I married him; and I am
+so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what
+I once believed him to be, I wouldn’t have even this shadow of my idle
+fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman
+was.’
+
+My aunt dismissed the matter with a heavy sigh, and smoothed her dress.
+
+‘There, my dear!’ she said. ‘Now you know the beginning, middle, and
+end, and all about it. We won’t mention the subject to one another any
+more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is
+my grumpy, frumpy story, and we’ll keep it to ourselves, Trot!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 48. DOMESTIC
+
+
+I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with the
+punctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and was very
+successful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears,
+notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and thought better of
+my own performance, I have little doubt, than anybody else did. It has
+always been in my observation of human nature, that a man who has any
+good reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before the
+faces of other people in order that they may believe in him. For this
+reason, I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and the more praise
+I got, the more I tried to deserve.
+
+It is not my purpose, in this record, though in all other essentials
+it is my written memory, to pursue the history of my own fictions. They
+express themselves, and I leave them to themselves. When I refer to
+them, incidentally, it is only as a part of my progress.
+
+Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and
+accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence.
+Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone, and
+bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find
+out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and
+nothing else. I had been writing, in the newspaper and elsewhere, so
+prosperously, that when my new success was achieved, I considered myself
+reasonably entitled to escape from the dreary debates. One joyful night,
+therefore, I noted down the music of the parliamentary bagpipes for the
+last time, and I have never heard it since; though I still recognize the
+old drone in the newspapers, without any substantial variation (except,
+perhaps, that there is more of it), all the livelong session.
+
+I now write of the time when I had been married, I suppose, about a year
+and a half. After several varieties of experiment, we had given up the
+housekeeping as a bad job. The house kept itself, and we kept a page.
+The principal function of this retainer was to quarrel with the cook;
+in which respect he was a perfect Whittington, without his cat, or the
+remotest chance of being made Lord Mayor.
+
+He appears to me to have lived in a hail of saucepan-lids. His whole
+existence was a scuffle. He would shriek for help on the most improper
+occasions,--as when we had a little dinner-party, or a few friends in
+the evening,--and would come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron
+missiles flying after him. We wanted to get rid of him, but he was very
+much attached to us, and wouldn’t go. He was a tearful boy, and broke
+into such deplorable lamentations, when a cessation of our connexion
+was hinted at, that we were obliged to keep him. He had no mother--no
+anything in the way of a relative, that I could discover, except a
+sister, who fled to America the moment we had taken him off her hands;
+and he became quartered on us like a horrible young changeling. He had
+a lively perception of his own unfortunate state, and was always rubbing
+his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on
+the extreme corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which he never would
+take completely out of his pocket, but always economized and secreted.
+
+This unlucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six pounds ten per annum,
+was a source of continual trouble to me. I watched him as he grew--and
+he grew like scarlet beans--with painful apprehensions of the time when
+he would begin to shave; even of the days when he would be bald or grey.
+I saw no prospect of ever getting rid of him; and, projecting myself
+into the future, used to think what an inconvenience he would be when he
+was an old man.
+
+I never expected anything less, than this unfortunate’s manner of
+getting me out of my difficulty. He stole Dora’s watch, which, like
+everything else belonging to us, had no particular place of its own;
+and, converting it into money, spent the produce (he was always a
+weak-minded boy) in incessantly riding up and down between London and
+Uxbridge outside the coach. He was taken to Bow Street, as well as
+I remember, on the completion of his fifteenth journey; when
+four-and-sixpence, and a second-hand fife which he couldn’t play, were
+found upon his person.
+
+The surprise and its consequences would have been much less disagreeable
+to me if he had not been penitent. But he was very penitent indeed, and
+in a peculiar way--not in the lump, but by instalments. For example:
+the day after that on which I was obliged to appear against him, he made
+certain revelations touching a hamper in the cellar, which we believed
+to be full of wine, but which had nothing in it except bottles and
+corks. We supposed he had now eased his mind, and told the worst he knew
+of the cook; but, a day or two afterwards, his conscience sustained a
+new twinge, and he disclosed how she had a little girl, who, early every
+morning, took away our bread; and also how he himself had been suborned
+to maintain the milkman in coals. In two or three days more, I was
+informed by the authorities of his having led to the discovery of
+sirloins of beef among the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. A
+little while afterwards, he broke out in an entirely new direction, and
+confessed to a knowledge of burglarious intentions as to our premises,
+on the part of the pot-boy, who was immediately taken up. I got to be so
+ashamed of being such a victim, that I would have given him any money
+to hold his tongue, or would have offered a round bribe for his being
+permitted to run away. It was an aggravating circumstance in the case
+that he had no idea of this, but conceived that he was making me amends
+in every new discovery: not to say, heaping obligations on my head.
+
+At last I ran away myself, whenever I saw an emissary of the police
+approaching with some new intelligence; and lived a stealthy life until
+he was tried and ordered to be transported. Even then he couldn’t be
+quiet, but was always writing us letters; and wanted so much to see Dora
+before he went away, that Dora went to visit him, and fainted when she
+found herself inside the iron bars. In short, I had no peace of my life
+until he was expatriated, and made (as I afterwards heard) a shepherd
+of, ‘up the country’ somewhere; I have no geographical idea where.
+
+All this led me into some serious reflections, and presented our
+mistakes in a new aspect; as I could not help communicating to Dora one
+evening, in spite of my tenderness for her.
+
+‘My love,’ said I, ‘it is very painful to me to think that our want of
+system and management, involves not only ourselves (which we have got
+used to), but other people.’
+
+‘You have been silent for a long time, and now you are going to be
+cross!’ said Dora.
+
+‘No, my dear, indeed! Let me explain to you what I mean.’
+
+‘I think I don’t want to know,’ said Dora.
+
+‘But I want you to know, my love. Put Jip down.’
+
+Dora put his nose to mine, and said ‘Boh!’ to drive my seriousness away;
+but, not succeeding, ordered him into his Pagoda, and sat looking at
+me, with her hands folded, and a most resigned little expression of
+countenance.
+
+‘The fact is, my dear,’ I began, ‘there is contagion in us. We infect
+everyone about us.’
+
+I might have gone on in this figurative manner, if Dora’s face had not
+admonished me that she was wondering with all her might whether I was
+going to propose any new kind of vaccination, or other medical remedy,
+for this unwholesome state of ours. Therefore I checked myself, and made
+my meaning plainer.
+
+‘It is not merely, my pet,’ said I, ‘that we lose money and comfort, and
+even temper sometimes, by not learning to be more careful; but that we
+incur the serious responsibility of spoiling everyone who comes into
+our service, or has any dealings with us. I begin to be afraid that the
+fault is not entirely on one side, but that these people all turn out
+ill because we don’t turn out very well ourselves.’
+
+‘Oh, what an accusation,’ exclaimed Dora, opening her eyes wide; ‘to say
+that you ever saw me take gold watches! Oh!’
+
+‘My dearest,’ I remonstrated, ‘don’t talk preposterous nonsense! Who has
+made the least allusion to gold watches?’
+
+‘You did,’ returned Dora. ‘You know you did. You said I hadn’t turned
+out well, and compared me to him.’
+
+‘To whom?’ I asked.
+
+‘To the page,’ sobbed Dora. ‘Oh, you cruel fellow, to compare your
+affectionate wife to a transported page! Why didn’t you tell me
+your opinion of me before we were married? Why didn’t you say,
+you hard-hearted thing, that you were convinced I was worse than a
+transported page? Oh, what a dreadful opinion to have of me! Oh, my
+goodness!’
+
+‘Now, Dora, my love,’ I returned, gently trying to remove the
+handkerchief she pressed to her eyes, ‘this is not only very ridiculous
+of you, but very wrong. In the first place, it’s not true.’
+
+‘You always said he was a story-teller,’ sobbed Dora. ‘And now you say
+the same of me! Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!’
+
+‘My darling girl,’ I retorted, ‘I really must entreat you to be
+reasonable, and listen to what I did say, and do say. My dear Dora,
+unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never
+learn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to
+people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we were
+as lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice--which we are
+not--even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so--which we
+don’t--I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. We
+are positively corrupting people. We are bound to think of that. I can’t
+help thinking of it, Dora. It is a reflection I am unable to dismiss,
+and it sometimes makes me very uneasy. There, dear, that’s all. Come
+now. Don’t be foolish!’
+
+Dora would not allow me, for a long time, to remove the handkerchief.
+She sat sobbing and murmuring behind it, that, if I was uneasy, why had
+I ever been married? Why hadn’t I said, even the day before we went to
+church, that I knew I should be uneasy, and I would rather not? If I
+couldn’t bear her, why didn’t I send her away to her aunts at Putney, or
+to Julia Mills in India? Julia would be glad to see her, and would not
+call her a transported page; Julia never had called her anything of the
+sort. In short, Dora was so afflicted, and so afflicted me by being
+in that condition, that I felt it was of no use repeating this kind of
+effort, though never so mildly, and I must take some other course.
+
+What other course was left to take? To ‘form her mind’? This was a
+common phrase of words which had a fair and promising sound, and I
+resolved to form Dora’s mind.
+
+I began immediately. When Dora was very childish, and I would
+have infinitely preferred to humour her, I tried to be grave--and
+disconcerted her, and myself too. I talked to her on the subjects which
+occupied my thoughts; and I read Shakespeare to her--and fatigued her
+to the last degree. I accustomed myself to giving her, as it were quite
+casually, little scraps of useful information, or sound opinion--and she
+started from them when I let them off, as if they had been crackers.
+No matter how incidentally or naturally I endeavoured to form my little
+wife’s mind, I could not help seeing that she always had an instinctive
+perception of what I was about, and became a prey to the keenest
+apprehensions. In particular, it was clear to me, that she thought
+Shakespeare a terrible fellow. The formation went on very slowly.
+
+I pressed Traddles into the service without his knowledge; and whenever
+he came to see us, exploded my mines upon him for the edification of
+Dora at second hand. The amount of practical wisdom I bestowed upon
+Traddles in this manner was immense, and of the best quality; but it
+had no other effect upon Dora than to depress her spirits, and make her
+always nervous with the dread that it would be her turn next. I found
+myself in the condition of a schoolmaster, a trap, a pitfall; of always
+playing spider to Dora’s fly, and always pouncing out of my hole to her
+infinite disturbance.
+
+Still, looking forward through this intermediate stage, to the time
+when there should be a perfect sympathy between Dora and me, and when I
+should have ‘formed her mind’ to my entire satisfaction, I persevered,
+even for months. Finding at last, however, that, although I had been
+all this time a very porcupine or hedgehog, bristling all over with
+determination, I had effected nothing, it began to occur to me that
+perhaps Dora’s mind was already formed.
+
+On further consideration this appeared so likely, that I abandoned
+my scheme, which had had a more promising appearance in words than in
+action; resolving henceforth to be satisfied with my child-wife, and to
+try to change her into nothing else by any process. I was heartily tired
+of being sagacious and prudent by myself, and of seeing my darling under
+restraint; so I bought a pretty pair of ear-rings for her, and a collar
+for Jip, and went home one day to make myself agreeable.
+
+Dora was delighted with the little presents, and kissed me joyfully; but
+there was a shadow between us, however slight, and I had made up my mind
+that it should not be there. If there must be such a shadow anywhere, I
+would keep it for the future in my own breast.
+
+I sat down by my wife on the sofa, and put the ear-rings in her ears;
+and then I told her that I feared we had not been quite as good company
+lately, as we used to be, and that the fault was mine. Which I sincerely
+felt, and which indeed it was.
+
+‘The truth is, Dora, my life,’ I said; ‘I have been trying to be wise.’
+
+‘And to make me wise too,’ said Dora, timidly. ‘Haven’t you, Doady?’
+
+I nodded assent to the pretty inquiry of the raised eyebrows, and kissed
+the parted lips.
+
+‘It’s of not a bit of use,’ said Dora, shaking her head, until the
+ear-rings rang again. ‘You know what a little thing I am, and what I
+wanted you to call me from the first. If you can’t do so, I am afraid
+you’ll never like me. Are you sure you don’t think, sometimes, it would
+have been better to have--’
+
+‘Done what, my dear?’ For she made no effort to proceed.
+
+‘Nothing!’ said Dora.
+
+‘Nothing?’ I repeated.
+
+She put her arms round my neck, and laughed, and called herself by her
+favourite name of a goose, and hid her face on my shoulder in such a
+profusion of curls that it was quite a task to clear them away and see
+it.
+
+‘Don’t I think it would have been better to have done nothing, than to
+have tried to form my little wife’s mind?’ said I, laughing at myself.
+‘Is that the question? Yes, indeed, I do.’
+
+‘Is that what you have been trying?’ cried Dora. ‘Oh what a shocking
+boy!’
+
+‘But I shall never try any more,’ said I. ‘For I love her dearly as she
+is.’
+
+‘Without a story--really?’ inquired Dora, creeping closer to me.
+
+‘Why should I seek to change,’ said I, ‘what has been so precious to me
+for so long! You never can show better than as your own natural self, my
+sweet Dora; and we’ll try no conceited experiments, but go back to our
+old way, and be happy.’
+
+‘And be happy!’ returned Dora. ‘Yes! All day! And you won’t mind things
+going a tiny morsel wrong, sometimes?’
+
+‘No, no,’ said I. ‘We must do the best we can.’
+
+‘And you won’t tell me, any more, that we make other people bad,’ coaxed
+Dora; ‘will you? Because you know it’s so dreadfully cross!’
+
+‘No, no,’ said I.
+
+‘It’s better for me to be stupid than uncomfortable, isn’t it?’ said
+Dora.
+
+‘Better to be naturally Dora than anything else in the world.’
+
+‘In the world! Ah, Doady, it’s a large place!’
+
+She shook her head, turned her delighted bright eyes up to mine, kissed
+me, broke into a merry laugh, and sprang away to put on Jip’s new
+collar.
+
+So ended my last attempt to make any change in Dora. I had been unhappy
+in trying it; I could not endure my own solitary wisdom; I could not
+reconcile it with her former appeal to me as my child-wife. I resolved
+to do what I could, in a quiet way, to improve our proceedings myself,
+but I foresaw that my utmost would be very little, or I must degenerate
+into the spider again, and be for ever lying in wait.
+
+And the shadow I have mentioned, that was not to be between us any more,
+but was to rest wholly on my own heart? How did that fall?
+
+The old unhappy feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were
+changed at all; but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like
+a strain of sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife
+dearly, and I was happy; but the happiness I had vaguely anticipated,
+once, was not the happiness I enjoyed, and there was always something
+wanting.
+
+In fulfilment of the compact I have made with myself, to reflect my mind
+on this paper, I again examine it, closely, and bring its secrets to the
+light. What I missed, I still regarded--I always regarded--as something
+that had been a dream of my youthful fancy; that was incapable of
+realization; that I was now discovering to be so, with some natural
+pain, as all men did. But that it would have been better for me if my
+wife could have helped me more, and shared the many thoughts in which I
+had no partner; and that this might have been; I knew.
+
+Between these two irreconcilable conclusions: the one, that what I felt
+was general and unavoidable; the other, that it was particular to me,
+and might have been different: I balanced curiously, with no distinct
+sense of their opposition to each other. When I thought of the airy
+dreams of youth that are incapable of realization, I thought of the
+better state preceding manhood that I had outgrown; and then the
+contented days with Agnes, in the dear old house, arose before me, like
+spectres of the dead, that might have some renewal in another world, but
+never more could be reanimated here.
+
+Sometimes, the speculation came into my thoughts, What might have
+happened, or what would have happened, if Dora and I had never known
+each other? But she was so incorporated with my existence, that it
+was the idlest of all fancies, and would soon rise out of my reach and
+sight, like gossamer floating in the air.
+
+I always loved her. What I am describing, slumbered, and half awoke, and
+slept again, in the innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence
+of it in me; I know of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I
+bore the weight of all our little cares, and all my projects; Dora held
+the pens; and we both felt that our shares were adjusted as the case
+required. She was truly fond of me, and proud of me; and when Agnes
+wrote a few earnest words in her letters to Dora, of the pride and
+interest with which my old friends heard of my growing reputation, and
+read my book as if they heard me speaking its contents, Dora read them
+out to me with tears of joy in her bright eyes, and said I was a dear
+old clever, famous boy.
+
+‘The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.’ Those words of
+Mrs. Strong’s were constantly recurring to me, at this time; were almost
+always present to my mind. I awoke with them, often, in the night; I
+remember to have even read them, in dreams, inscribed upon the walls
+of houses. For I knew, now, that my own heart was undisciplined when it
+first loved Dora; and that if it had been disciplined, it never
+could have felt, when we were married, what it had felt in its secret
+experience.
+
+‘There can be no disparity in marriage, like unsuitability of mind and
+purpose.’ Those words I remembered too. I had endeavoured to adapt
+Dora to myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt
+myself to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear
+on my own shoulders what I must, and be happy still. This was the
+discipline to which I tried to bring my heart, when I began to think.
+It made my second year much happier than my first; and, what was better
+still, made Dora’s life all sunshine.
+
+But, as that year wore on, Dora was not strong. I had hoped that lighter
+hands than mine would help to mould her character, and that a baby-smile
+upon her breast might change my child-wife to a woman. It was not to be.
+The spirit fluttered for a moment on the threshold of its little prison,
+and, unconscious of captivity, took wing.
+
+‘When I can run about again, as I used to do, aunt,’ said Dora, ‘I shall
+make Jip race. He is getting quite slow and lazy.’
+
+‘I suspect, my dear,’ said my aunt quietly working by her side, ‘he has
+a worse disorder than that. Age, Dora.’
+
+‘Do you think he is old?’ said Dora, astonished. ‘Oh, how strange it
+seems that Jip should be old!’
+
+‘It’s a complaint we are all liable to, Little One, as we get on in
+life,’ said my aunt, cheerfully; ‘I don’t feel more free from it than I
+used to be, I assure you.’
+
+‘But Jip,’ said Dora, looking at him with compassion, ‘even little Jip!
+Oh, poor fellow!’
+
+‘I dare say he’ll last a long time yet, Blossom,’ said my aunt, patting
+Dora on the cheek, as she leaned out of her couch to look at Jip, who
+responded by standing on his hind legs, and baulking himself in various
+asthmatic attempts to scramble up by the head and shoulders. ‘He must
+have a piece of flannel in his house this winter, and I shouldn’t wonder
+if he came out quite fresh again, with the flowers in the spring. Bless
+the little dog!’ exclaimed my aunt, ‘if he had as many lives as a cat,
+and was on the point of losing ‘em all, he’d bark at me with his last
+breath, I believe!’
+
+Dora had helped him up on the sofa; where he really was defying my aunt
+to such a furious extent, that he couldn’t keep straight, but barked
+himself sideways. The more my aunt looked at him, the more he reproached
+her; for she had lately taken to spectacles, and for some inscrutable
+reason he considered the glasses personal.
+
+Dora made him lie down by her, with a good deal of persuasion; and when
+he was quiet, drew one of his long ears through and through her hand,
+repeating thoughtfully, ‘Even little Jip! Oh, poor fellow!’
+
+‘His lungs are good enough,’ said my aunt, gaily, ‘and his dislikes are
+not at all feeble. He has a good many years before him, no doubt. But if
+you want a dog to race with, Little Blossom, he has lived too well for
+that, and I’ll give you one.’
+
+‘Thank you, aunt,’ said Dora, faintly. ‘But don’t, please!’
+
+‘No?’ said my aunt, taking off her spectacles.
+
+‘I couldn’t have any other dog but Jip,’ said Dora. ‘It would be so
+unkind to Jip! Besides, I couldn’t be such friends with any other dog
+but Jip; because he wouldn’t have known me before I was married,
+and wouldn’t have barked at Doady when he first came to our house. I
+couldn’t care for any other dog but Jip, I am afraid, aunt.’
+
+‘To be sure!’ said my aunt, patting her cheek again. ‘You are right.’
+
+‘You are not offended,’ said Dora. ‘Are you?’
+
+‘Why, what a sensitive pet it is!’ cried my aunt, bending over her
+affectionately. ‘To think that I could be offended!’
+
+‘No, no, I didn’t really think so,’ returned Dora; ‘but I am a little
+tired, and it made me silly for a moment--I am always a silly little
+thing, you know, but it made me more silly--to talk about Jip. He
+has known me in all that has happened to me, haven’t you, Jip? And I
+couldn’t bear to slight him, because he was a little altered--could I,
+Jip?’
+
+Jip nestled closer to his mistress, and lazily licked her hand.
+
+‘You are not so old, Jip, are you, that you’ll leave your mistress yet?’
+said Dora. ‘We may keep one another company a little longer!’
+
+My pretty Dora! When she came down to dinner on the ensuing Sunday, and
+was so glad to see old Traddles (who always dined with us on Sunday), we
+thought she would be ‘running about as she used to do’, in a few days.
+But they said, wait a few days more; and then, wait a few days more; and
+still she neither ran nor walked. She looked very pretty, and was very
+merry; but the little feet that used to be so nimble when they danced
+round Jip, were dull and motionless.
+
+I began to carry her downstairs every morning, and upstairs every night.
+She would clasp me round the neck and laugh, the while, as if I did it
+for a wager. Jip would bark and caper round us, and go on before, and
+look back on the landing, breathing short, to see that we were coming.
+My aunt, the best and most cheerful of nurses, would trudge after us, a
+moving mass of shawls and pillows. Mr. Dick would not have relinquished
+his post of candle-bearer to anyone alive. Traddles would be often at
+the bottom of the staircase, looking on, and taking charge of sportive
+messages from Dora to the dearest girl in the world. We made quite a gay
+procession of it, and my child-wife was the gayest there.
+
+But, sometimes, when I took her up, and felt that she was lighter in
+my arms, a dead blank feeling came upon me, as if I were approaching
+to some frozen region yet unseen, that numbed my life. I avoided the
+recognition of this feeling by any name, or by any communing with
+myself; until one night, when it was very strong upon me, and my aunt
+had left her with a parting cry of ‘Good night, Little Blossom,’ I sat
+down at my desk alone, and tried to think, Oh what a fatal name it was,
+and how the blossom withered in its bloom upon the tree!
+
+
+CHAPTER 49. I AM INVOLVED IN MYSTERY
+
+
+I received one morning by the post, the following letter, dated
+Canterbury, and addressed to me at Doctor’s Commons; which I read with
+some surprise:
+
+
+‘MY DEAR SIR,
+
+‘Circumstances beyond my individual control have, for a considerable
+lapse of time, effected a severance of that intimacy which, in the
+limited opportunities conceded to me in the midst of my professional
+duties, of contemplating the scenes and events of the past, tinged by
+the prismatic hues of memory, has ever afforded me, as it ever must
+continue to afford, gratifying emotions of no common description. This
+fact, my dear sir, combined with the distinguished elevation to which
+your talents have raised you, deters me from presuming to aspire to
+the liberty of addressing the companion of my youth, by the familiar
+appellation of Copperfield! It is sufficient to know that the name to
+which I do myself the honour to refer, will ever be treasured among
+the muniments of our house (I allude to the archives connected with our
+former lodgers, preserved by Mrs. Micawber), with sentiments of personal
+esteem amounting to affection.
+
+‘It is not for one, situated, through his original errors and a
+fortuitous combination of unpropitious events, as is the foundered Bark
+(if he may be allowed to assume so maritime a denomination), who
+now takes up the pen to address you--it is not, I repeat, for one
+so circumstanced, to adopt the language of compliment, or of
+congratulation. That he leaves to abler and to purer hands.
+
+‘If your more important avocations should admit of your ever tracing
+these imperfect characters thus far--which may be, or may not be, as
+circumstances arise--you will naturally inquire by what object am I
+influenced, then, in inditing the present missive? Allow me to say that
+I fully defer to the reasonable character of that inquiry, and proceed
+to develop it; premising that it is not an object of a pecuniary nature.
+
+‘Without more directly referring to any latent ability that may
+possibly exist on my part, of wielding the thunderbolt, or directing
+the devouring and avenging flame in any quarter, I may be permitted
+to observe, in passing, that my brightest visions are for ever
+dispelled--that my peace is shattered and my power of enjoyment
+destroyed--that my heart is no longer in the right place--and that I no
+more walk erect before my fellow man. The canker is in the flower.
+The cup is bitter to the brim. The worm is at his work, and will soon
+dispose of his victim. The sooner the better. But I will not digress.
+‘Placed in a mental position of peculiar painfulness, beyond the
+assuaging reach even of Mrs. Micawber’s influence, though exercised in
+the tripartite character of woman, wife, and mother, it is my intention
+to fly from myself for a short period, and devote a respite of
+eight-and-forty hours to revisiting some metropolitan scenes of past
+enjoyment. Among other havens of domestic tranquillity and peace of
+mind, my feet will naturally tend towards the King’s Bench Prison. In
+stating that I shall be (D. V.) on the outside of the south wall of
+that place of incarceration on civil process, the day after tomorrow,
+at seven in the evening, precisely, my object in this epistolary
+communication is accomplished.
+
+‘I do not feel warranted in soliciting my former friend Mr. Copperfield,
+or my former friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple, if that
+gentleman is still existent and forthcoming, to condescend to meet me,
+and renew (so far as may be) our past relations of the olden time. I
+confine myself to throwing out the observation, that, at the hour and
+place I have indicated, may be found such ruined vestiges as yet
+
+ ‘Remain,
+ ‘Of
+ ‘A
+ ‘Fallen Tower,
+ ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.
+
+‘P.S. It may be advisable to superadd to the above, the statement that
+Mrs. Micawber is not in confidential possession of my intentions.’
+
+
+I read the letter over several times. Making due allowance for Mr.
+Micawber’s lofty style of composition, and for the extraordinary relish
+with which he sat down and wrote long letters on all possible and
+impossible occasions, I still believed that something important lay
+hidden at the bottom of this roundabout communication. I put it down,
+to think about it; and took it up again, to read it once more; and
+was still pursuing it, when Traddles found me in the height of my
+perplexity.
+
+‘My dear fellow,’ said I, ‘I never was better pleased to see you. You
+come to give me the benefit of your sober judgement at a most opportune
+time. I have received a very singular letter, Traddles, from Mr.
+Micawber.’
+
+‘No?’ cried Traddles. ‘You don’t say so? And I have received one from
+Mrs. Micawber!’
+
+With that, Traddles, who was flushed with walking, and whose hair, under
+the combined effects of exercise and excitement, stood on end as if he
+saw a cheerful ghost, produced his letter and made an exchange with me.
+I watched him into the heart of Mr. Micawber’s letter, and returned the
+elevation of eyebrows with which he said “‘Wielding the thunderbolt,
+or directing the devouring and avenging flame!” Bless me,
+Copperfield!’--and then entered on the perusal of Mrs. Micawber’s
+epistle.
+
+It ran thus:
+
+
+‘My best regards to Mr. Thomas Traddles, and if he should still remember
+one who formerly had the happiness of being well acquainted with him,
+may I beg a few moments of his leisure time? I assure Mr. T. T. that I
+would not intrude upon his kindness, were I in any other position than
+on the confines of distraction.
+
+‘Though harrowing to myself to mention, the alienation of Mr. Micawber
+(formerly so domesticated) from his wife and family, is the cause of my
+addressing my unhappy appeal to Mr. Traddles, and soliciting his best
+indulgence. Mr. T. can form no adequate idea of the change in Mr.
+Micawber’s conduct, of his wildness, of his violence. It has gradually
+augmented, until it assumes the appearance of aberration of intellect.
+Scarcely a day passes, I assure Mr. Traddles, on which some paroxysm
+does not take place. Mr. T. will not require me to depict my feelings,
+when I inform him that I have become accustomed to hear Mr. Micawber
+assert that he has sold himself to the D. Mystery and secrecy have
+long been his principal characteristic, have long replaced unlimited
+confidence. The slightest provocation, even being asked if there is
+anything he would prefer for dinner, causes him to express a wish for a
+separation. Last night, on being childishly solicited for twopence, to
+buy ‘lemon-stunners’--a local sweetmeat--he presented an oyster-knife at
+the twins!
+
+‘I entreat Mr. Traddles to bear with me in entering into these details.
+Without them, Mr. T. would indeed find it difficult to form the faintest
+conception of my heart-rending situation.
+
+‘May I now venture to confide to Mr. T. the purport of my letter? Will
+he now allow me to throw myself on his friendly consideration? Oh yes,
+for I know his heart!
+
+‘The quick eye of affection is not easily blinded, when of the female
+sex. Mr. Micawber is going to London. Though he studiously concealed his
+hand, this morning before breakfast, in writing the direction-card which
+he attached to the little brown valise of happier days, the eagle-glance
+of matrimonial anxiety detected, d, o, n, distinctly traced. The
+West-End destination of the coach, is the Golden Cross. Dare I fervently
+implore Mr. T. to see my misguided husband, and to reason with him?
+Dare I ask Mr. T. to endeavour to step in between Mr. Micawber and his
+agonized family? Oh no, for that would be too much!
+
+‘If Mr. Copperfield should yet remember one unknown to fame, will Mr.
+T. take charge of my unalterable regards and similar entreaties? In
+any case, he will have the benevolence to consider this communication
+strictly private, and on no account whatever to be alluded to, however
+distantly, in the presence of Mr. Micawber. If Mr. T. should ever
+reply to it (which I cannot but feel to be most improbable), a letter
+addressed to M. E., Post Office, Canterbury, will be fraught with
+less painful consequences than any addressed immediately to one, who
+subscribes herself, in extreme distress,
+
+‘Mr. Thomas Traddles’s respectful friend and suppliant,
+
+ ‘EMMA MICAWBER.’
+
+
+‘What do you think of that letter?’ said Traddles, casting his eyes upon
+me, when I had read it twice.
+
+‘What do you think of the other?’ said I. For he was still reading it
+with knitted brows.
+
+‘I think that the two together, Copperfield,’ replied Traddles,
+‘mean more than Mr. and Mrs. Micawber usually mean in their
+correspondence--but I don’t know what. They are both written in good
+faith, I have no doubt, and without any collusion. Poor thing!’ he was
+now alluding to Mrs. Micawber’s letter, and we were standing side by
+side comparing the two; ‘it will be a charity to write to her, at all
+events, and tell her that we will not fail to see Mr. Micawber.’
+
+I acceded to this the more readily, because I now reproached myself with
+having treated her former letter rather lightly. It had set me thinking
+a good deal at the time, as I have mentioned in its place; but my
+absorption in my own affairs, my experience of the family, and my
+hearing nothing more, had gradually ended in my dismissing the subject.
+I had often thought of the Micawbers, but chiefly to wonder what
+‘pecuniary liabilities’ they were establishing in Canterbury, and to
+recall how shy Mr. Micawber was of me when he became clerk to Uriah
+Heep.
+
+However, I now wrote a comforting letter to Mrs. Micawber, in our
+joint names, and we both signed it. As we walked into town to post it,
+Traddles and I held a long conference, and launched into a number of
+speculations, which I need not repeat. We took my aunt into our counsels
+in the afternoon; but our only decided conclusion was, that we would be
+very punctual in keeping Mr. Micawber’s appointment.
+
+Although we appeared at the stipulated place a quarter of an hour before
+the time, we found Mr. Micawber already there. He was standing with his
+arms folded, over against the wall, looking at the spikes on the top,
+with a sentimental expression, as if they were the interlacing boughs of
+trees that had shaded him in his youth.
+
+When we accosted him, his manner was something more confused, and
+something less genteel, than of yore. He had relinquished his legal suit
+of black for the purposes of this excursion, and wore the old surtout
+and tights, but not quite with the old air. He gradually picked up more
+and more of it as we conversed with him; but, his very eye-glass seemed
+to hang less easily, and his shirt-collar, though still of the old
+formidable dimensions, rather drooped.
+
+‘Gentlemen!’ said Mr. Micawber, after the first salutations, ‘you are
+friends in need, and friends indeed. Allow me to offer my inquiries with
+reference to the physical welfare of Mrs. Copperfield in esse, and
+Mrs. Traddles in posse,--presuming, that is to say, that my friend Mr.
+Traddles is not yet united to the object of his affections, for weal and
+for woe.’
+
+We acknowledged his politeness, and made suitable replies. He then
+directed our attention to the wall, and was beginning, ‘I assure you,
+gentlemen,’ when I ventured to object to that ceremonious form of
+address, and to beg that he would speak to us in the old way.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ he returned, pressing my hand, ‘your cordiality
+overpowers me. This reception of a shattered fragment of the Temple once
+called Man--if I may be permitted so to express myself--bespeaks a heart
+that is an honour to our common nature. I was about to observe that
+I again behold the serene spot where some of the happiest hours of my
+existence fleeted by.’
+
+‘Made so, I am sure, by Mrs. Micawber,’ said I. ‘I hope she is well?’
+
+‘Thank you,’ returned Mr. Micawber, whose face clouded at this
+reference, ‘she is but so-so. And this,’ said Mr. Micawber, nodding
+his head sorrowfully, ‘is the Bench! Where, for the first time in many
+revolving years, the overwhelming pressure of pecuniary liabilities was
+not proclaimed, from day to day, by importune voices declining to vacate
+the passage; where there was no knocker on the door for any creditor
+to appeal to; where personal service of process was not required, and
+detainees were merely lodged at the gate! Gentlemen,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+‘when the shadow of that iron-work on the summit of the brick structure
+has been reflected on the gravel of the Parade, I have seen my children
+thread the mazes of the intricate pattern, avoiding the dark marks. I
+have been familiar with every stone in the place. If I betray weakness,
+you will know how to excuse me.’
+
+‘We have all got on in life since then, Mr. Micawber,’ said I.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, bitterly, ‘when I was an
+inmate of that retreat I could look my fellow-man in the face, and punch
+his head if he offended me. My fellow-man and myself are no longer on
+those glorious terms!’
+
+Turning from the building in a downcast manner, Mr. Micawber accepted
+my proffered arm on one side, and the proffered arm of Traddles on the
+other, and walked away between us.
+
+‘There are some landmarks,’ observed Mr. Micawber, looking fondly back
+over his shoulder, ‘on the road to the tomb, which, but for the impiety
+of the aspiration, a man would wish never to have passed. Such is the
+Bench in my chequered career.’
+
+‘Oh, you are in low spirits, Mr. Micawber,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘I am, sir,’ interposed Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘I hope,’ said Traddles, ‘it is not because you have conceived a dislike
+to the law--for I am a lawyer myself, you know.’
+
+Mr. Micawber answered not a word.
+
+‘How is our friend Heep, Mr. Micawber?’ said I, after a silence.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, bursting into a state of
+much excitement, and turning pale, ‘if you ask after my employer as
+YOUR friend, I am sorry for it; if you ask after him as MY friend,
+I sardonically smile at it. In whatever capacity you ask after my
+employer, I beg, without offence to you, to limit my reply to this--that
+whatever his state of health may be, his appearance is foxy: not to
+say diabolical. You will allow me, as a private individual, to
+decline pursuing a subject which has lashed me to the utmost verge of
+desperation in my professional capacity.’
+
+I expressed my regret for having innocently touched upon a theme
+that roused him so much. ‘May I ask,’ said I, ‘without any hazard of
+repeating the mistake, how my old friends Mr. and Miss Wickfield are?’
+
+‘Miss Wickfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, now turning red, ‘is, as she always
+is, a pattern, and a bright example. My dear Copperfield, she is the
+only starry spot in a miserable existence. My respect for that young
+lady, my admiration of her character, my devotion to her for her love
+and truth, and goodness!--Take me,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘down a turning,
+for, upon my soul, in my present state of mind I am not equal to this!’
+
+We wheeled him off into a narrow street, where he took out his
+pocket-handkerchief, and stood with his back to a wall. If I looked as
+gravely at him as Traddles did, he must have found our company by no
+means inspiriting.
+
+‘It is my fate,’ said Mr. Micawber, unfeignedly sobbing, but doing even
+that, with a shadow of the old expression of doing something genteel;
+‘it is my fate, gentlemen, that the finer feelings of our nature have
+become reproaches to me. My homage to Miss Wickfield, is a flight of
+arrows in my bosom. You had better leave me, if you please, to walk the
+earth as a vagabond. The worm will settle my business in double-quick
+time.’
+
+Without attending to this invocation, we stood by, until he put up his
+pocket-handkerchief, pulled up his shirt-collar, and, to delude any
+person in the neighbourhood who might have been observing him, hummed a
+tune with his hat very much on one side. I then mentioned--not knowing
+what might be lost if we lost sight of him yet--that it would give me
+great pleasure to introduce him to my aunt, if he would ride out to
+Highgate, where a bed was at his service.
+
+‘You shall make us a glass of your own punch, Mr. Micawber,’ said
+I, ‘and forget whatever you have on your mind, in pleasanter
+reminiscences.’
+
+‘Or, if confiding anything to friends will be more likely to relieve
+you, you shall impart it to us, Mr. Micawber,’ said Traddles, prudently.
+
+‘Gentlemen,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘do with me as you will! I am a
+straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by
+the elephants--I beg your pardon; I should have said the elements.’
+
+We walked on, arm-in-arm, again; found the coach in the act of starting;
+and arrived at Highgate without encountering any difficulties by the
+way. I was very uneasy and very uncertain in my mind what to say or do
+for the best--so was Traddles, evidently. Mr. Micawber was for the most
+part plunged into deep gloom. He occasionally made an attempt to smarten
+himself, and hum the fag-end of a tune; but his relapses into profound
+melancholy were only made the more impressive by the mockery of a hat
+exceedingly on one side, and a shirt-collar pulled up to his eyes.
+
+We went to my aunt’s house rather than to mine, because of Dora’s not
+being well. My aunt presented herself on being sent for, and welcomed
+Mr. Micawber with gracious cordiality. Mr. Micawber kissed her hand,
+retired to the window, and pulling out his pocket-handkerchief, had a
+mental wrestle with himself.
+
+Mr. Dick was at home. He was by nature so exceedingly compassionate of
+anyone who seemed to be ill at ease, and was so quick to find any such
+person out, that he shook hands with Mr. Micawber, at least half-a-dozen
+times in five minutes. To Mr. Micawber, in his trouble, this warmth, on
+the part of a stranger, was so extremely touching, that he could
+only say, on the occasion of each successive shake, ‘My dear sir, you
+overpower me!’ Which gratified Mr. Dick so much, that he went at it
+again with greater vigour than before.
+
+‘The friendliness of this gentleman,’ said Mr. Micawber to my aunt, ‘if
+you will allow me, ma’am, to cull a figure of speech from the vocabulary
+of our coarser national sports--floors me. To a man who is struggling
+with a complicated burden of perplexity and disquiet, such a reception
+is trying, I assure you.’
+
+‘My friend Mr. Dick,’ replied my aunt proudly, ‘is not a common man.’
+
+‘That I am convinced of,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘My dear sir!’ for Mr.
+Dick was shaking hands with him again; ‘I am deeply sensible of your
+cordiality!’
+
+‘How do you find yourself?’ said Mr. Dick, with an anxious look.
+
+‘Indifferent, my dear sir,’ returned Mr. Micawber, sighing.
+
+‘You must keep up your spirits,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘and make yourself as
+comfortable as possible.’
+
+Mr. Micawber was quite overcome by these friendly words, and by finding
+Mr. Dick’s hand again within his own. ‘It has been my lot,’ he observed,
+‘to meet, in the diversified panorama of human existence, with an
+occasional oasis, but never with one so green, so gushing, as the
+present!’
+
+At another time I should have been amused by this; but I felt that
+we were all constrained and uneasy, and I watched Mr. Micawber so
+anxiously, in his vacillations between an evident disposition to reveal
+something, and a counter-disposition to reveal nothing, that I was in a
+perfect fever. Traddles, sitting on the edge of his chair, with his eyes
+wide open, and his hair more emphatically erect than ever, stared by
+turns at the ground and at Mr. Micawber, without so much as attempting
+to put in a word. My aunt, though I saw that her shrewdest observation
+was concentrated on her new guest, had more useful possession of her
+wits than either of us; for she held him in conversation, and made it
+necessary for him to talk, whether he liked it or not.
+
+‘You are a very old friend of my nephew’s, Mr. Micawber,’ said my aunt.
+‘I wish I had had the pleasure of seeing you before.’
+
+‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘I wish I had had the honour of knowing
+you at an earlier period. I was not always the wreck you at present
+behold.’
+
+‘I hope Mrs. Micawber and your family are well, sir,’ said my aunt.
+
+Mr. Micawber inclined his head. ‘They are as well, ma’am,’ he
+desperately observed after a pause, ‘as Aliens and Outcasts can ever
+hope to be.’
+
+‘Lord bless you, sir!’ exclaimed my aunt, in her abrupt way. ‘What are
+you talking about?’
+
+‘The subsistence of my family, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘trembles
+in the balance. My employer--’
+
+Here Mr. Micawber provokingly left off; and began to peel the lemons
+that had been under my directions set before him, together with all the
+other appliances he used in making punch.
+
+‘Your employer, you know,’ said Mr. Dick, jogging his arm as a gentle
+reminder.
+
+‘My good sir,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘you recall me, I am obliged to
+you.’ They shook hands again. ‘My employer, ma’am--Mr. Heep--once did
+me the favour to observe to me, that if I were not in the receipt of the
+stipendiary emoluments appertaining to my engagement with him, I should
+probably be a mountebank about the country, swallowing a sword-blade,
+and eating the devouring element. For anything that I can perceive to
+the contrary, it is still probable that my children may be reduced to
+seek a livelihood by personal contortion, while Mrs. Micawber abets
+their unnatural feats by playing the barrel-organ.’
+
+Mr. Micawber, with a random but expressive flourish of his knife,
+signified that these performances might be expected to take place after
+he was no more; then resumed his peeling with a desperate air.
+
+My aunt leaned her elbow on the little round table that she usually kept
+beside her, and eyed him attentively. Notwithstanding the aversion with
+which I regarded the idea of entrapping him into any disclosure he was
+not prepared to make voluntarily, I should have taken him up at this
+point, but for the strange proceedings in which I saw him engaged;
+whereof his putting the lemon-peel into the kettle, the sugar into the
+snuffer-tray, the spirit into the empty jug, and confidently attempting
+to pour boiling water out of a candlestick, were among the most
+remarkable. I saw that a crisis was at hand, and it came. He clattered
+all his means and implements together, rose from his chair, pulled out
+his pocket-handkerchief, and burst into tears.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, behind his handkerchief,
+‘this is an occupation, of all others, requiring an untroubled mind, and
+self-respect. I cannot perform it. It is out of the question.’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘what is the matter? Pray speak out. You are
+among friends.’
+
+‘Among friends, sir!’ repeated Mr. Micawber; and all he had reserved
+came breaking out of him. ‘Good heavens, it is principally because I AM
+among friends that my state of mind is what it is. What is the matter,
+gentlemen? What is NOT the matter? Villainy is the matter; baseness is
+the matter; deception, fraud, conspiracy, are the matter; and the name
+of the whole atrocious mass is--HEEP!’
+
+My aunt clapped her hands, and we all started up as if we were
+possessed.
+
+‘The struggle is over!’ said Mr. Micawber violently gesticulating with
+his pocket-handkerchief, and fairly striking out from time to time with
+both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman difficulties. ‘I will
+lead this life no longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from everything
+that makes life tolerable. I have been under a Taboo in that infernal
+scoundrel’s service. Give me back my wife, give me back my family,
+substitute Micawber for the petty wretch who walks about in the boots
+at present on my feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and
+I’ll do it. With an appetite!’
+
+I never saw a man so hot in my life. I tried to calm him, that we might
+come to something rational; but he got hotter and hotter, and wouldn’t
+hear a word.
+
+‘I’ll put my hand in no man’s hand,’ said Mr. Micawber, gasping,
+puffing, and sobbing, to that degree that he was like a man
+fighting with cold water, ‘until I have--blown to
+fragments--the--a--detestable--serpent--HEEP! I’ll partake of no
+one’s hospitality, until I have--a--moved Mount Vesuvius--to
+eruption--on--a--the abandoned rascal--HEEP! Refreshment--a--underneath
+this roof--particularly punch--would--a--choke me--unless--I
+had--previously--choked the eyes--out of the head--a--of--interminable
+cheat, and liar--HEEP! I--a--I’ll know nobody--and--a--say
+nothing--and--a--live nowhere--until I have
+crushed--to--a--undiscoverable atoms--the--transcendent and immortal
+hypocrite and perjurer--HEEP!’
+
+I really had some fear of Mr. Micawber’s dying on the spot. The manner
+in which he struggled through these inarticulate sentences, and,
+whenever he found himself getting near the name of Heep, fought his way
+on to it, dashed at it in a fainting state, and brought it out with a
+vehemence little less than marvellous, was frightful; but now, when
+he sank into a chair, steaming, and looked at us, with every possible
+colour in his face that had no business there, and an endless procession
+of lumps following one another in hot haste up his throat, whence they
+seemed to shoot into his forehead, he had the appearance of being in
+the last extremity. I would have gone to his assistance, but he waved me
+off, and wouldn’t hear a word.
+
+‘No, Copperfield!--No communication--a--until--Miss
+Wickfield--a--redress from wrongs inflicted by consummate
+scoundrel--HEEP!’ (I am quite convinced he could not have uttered three
+words, but for the amazing energy with which this word inspired him when
+he felt it coming.) ‘Inviolable secret--a--from the whole world--a--no
+exceptions--this day week--a--at breakfast-time--a--everybody
+present--including aunt--a--and extremely friendly gentleman--to be at
+the hotel at Canterbury--a--where--Mrs. Micawber and myself--Auld Lang
+Syne in chorus--and--a--will expose intolerable ruffian--HEEP! No more
+to say--a--or listen to persuasion--go immediately--not capable--a--bear
+society--upon the track of devoted and doomed traitor--HEEP!’
+
+With this last repetition of the magic word that had kept him going at
+all, and in which he surpassed all his previous efforts, Mr. Micawber
+rushed out of the house; leaving us in a state of excitement, hope, and
+wonder, that reduced us to a condition little better than his own. But
+even then his passion for writing letters was too strong to be resisted;
+for while we were yet in the height of our excitement, hope, and wonder,
+the following pastoral note was brought to me from a neighbouring
+tavern, at which he had called to write it:--
+
+
+ ‘Most secret and confidential.
+‘MY DEAR SIR,
+
+‘I beg to be allowed to convey, through you, my apologies to your
+excellent aunt for my late excitement. An explosion of a smouldering
+volcano long suppressed, was the result of an internal contest more
+easily conceived than described.
+
+‘I trust I rendered tolerably intelligible my appointment for the
+morning of this day week, at the house of public entertainment at
+Canterbury, where Mrs. Micawber and myself had once the honour of
+uniting our voices to yours, in the well-known strain of the Immortal
+exciseman nurtured beyond the Tweed.
+
+‘The duty done, and act of reparation performed, which can alone enable
+me to contemplate my fellow mortal, I shall be known no more. I shall
+simply require to be deposited in that place of universal resort, where
+
+ Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
+ The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,
+
+ ‘--With the plain Inscription,
+
+ ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 50. Mr. PEGGOTTY’S DREAM COMES TRUE
+
+
+By this time, some months had passed since our interview on the bank
+of the river with Martha. I had never seen her since, but she had
+communicated with Mr. Peggotty on several occasions. Nothing had come of
+her zealous intervention; nor could I infer, from what he told me, that
+any clue had been obtained, for a moment, to Emily’s fate. I confess
+that I began to despair of her recovery, and gradually to sink deeper
+and deeper into the belief that she was dead.
+
+His conviction remained unchanged. So far as I know--and I believe
+his honest heart was transparent to me--he never wavered again, in his
+solemn certainty of finding her. His patience never tired. And, although
+I trembled for the agony it might one day be to him to have his strong
+assurance shivered at a blow, there was something so religious in it, so
+affectingly expressive of its anchor being in the purest depths of
+his fine nature, that the respect and honour in which I held him were
+exalted every day.
+
+His was not a lazy trustfulness that hoped, and did no more. He had
+been a man of sturdy action all his life, and he knew that in all things
+wherein he wanted help he must do his own part faithfully, and help
+himself. I have known him set out in the night, on a misgiving that the
+light might not be, by some accident, in the window of the old boat,
+and walk to Yarmouth. I have known him, on reading something in the
+newspaper that might apply to her, take up his stick, and go forth on a
+journey of three--or four-score miles. He made his way by sea to Naples,
+and back, after hearing the narrative to which Miss Dartle had assisted
+me. All his journeys were ruggedly performed; for he was always
+steadfast in a purpose of saving money for Emily’s sake, when she should
+be found. In all this long pursuit, I never heard him repine; I never
+heard him say he was fatigued, or out of heart.
+
+Dora had often seen him since our marriage, and was quite fond of him.
+I fancy his figure before me now, standing near her sofa, with his rough
+cap in his hand, and the blue eyes of my child-wife raised, with a timid
+wonder, to his face. Sometimes of an evening, about twilight, when
+he came to talk with me, I would induce him to smoke his pipe in the
+garden, as we slowly paced to and fro together; and then, the picture
+of his deserted home, and the comfortable air it used to have in my
+childish eyes of an evening when the fire was burning, and the wind
+moaning round it, came most vividly into my mind.
+
+One evening, at this hour, he told me that he had found Martha waiting
+near his lodging on the preceding night when he came out, and that she
+had asked him not to leave London on any account, until he should have
+seen her again.
+
+‘Did she tell you why?’ I inquired.
+
+‘I asked her, Mas’r Davy,’ he replied, ‘but it is but few words as she
+ever says, and she on’y got my promise and so went away.’
+
+‘Did she say when you might expect to see her again?’ I demanded.
+
+‘No, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned, drawing his hand thoughtfully down his
+face. ‘I asked that too; but it was more (she said) than she could
+tell.’
+
+As I had long forborne to encourage him with hopes that hung on threads,
+I made no other comment on this information than that I supposed he
+would see her soon. Such speculations as it engendered within me I kept
+to myself, and those were faint enough.
+
+I was walking alone in the garden, one evening, about a fortnight
+afterwards. I remember that evening well. It was the second in Mr.
+Micawber’s week of suspense. There had been rain all day, and there was
+a damp feeling in the air. The leaves were thick upon the trees, and
+heavy with wet; but the rain had ceased, though the sky was still dark;
+and the hopeful birds were singing cheerfully. As I walked to and fro
+in the garden, and the twilight began to close around me, their little
+voices were hushed; and that peculiar silence which belongs to such an
+evening in the country when the lightest trees are quite still, save for
+the occasional droppings from their boughs, prevailed.
+
+There was a little green perspective of trellis-work and ivy at the side
+of our cottage, through which I could see, from the garden where I was
+walking, into the road before the house. I happened to turn my eyes
+towards this place, as I was thinking of many things; and I saw a figure
+beyond, dressed in a plain cloak. It was bending eagerly towards me, and
+beckoning.
+
+‘Martha!’ said I, going to it.
+
+‘Can you come with me?’ she inquired, in an agitated whisper. ‘I have
+been to him, and he is not at home. I wrote down where he was to come,
+and left it on his table with my own hand. They said he would not be out
+long. I have tidings for him. Can you come directly?’
+
+My answer was, to pass out at the gate immediately. She made a hasty
+gesture with her hand, as if to entreat my patience and my silence,
+and turned towards London, whence, as her dress betokened, she had come
+expeditiously on foot.
+
+I asked her if that were not our destination? On her motioning Yes,
+with the same hasty gesture as before, I stopped an empty coach that was
+coming by, and we got into it. When I asked her where the coachman was
+to drive, she answered, ‘Anywhere near Golden Square! And quick!’--then
+shrunk into a corner, with one trembling hand before her face, and the
+other making the former gesture, as if she could not bear a voice.
+
+Now much disturbed, and dazzled with conflicting gleams of hope and
+dread, I looked at her for some explanation. But seeing how strongly
+she desired to remain quiet, and feeling that it was my own natural
+inclination too, at such a time, I did not attempt to break the silence.
+We proceeded without a word being spoken. Sometimes she glanced out of
+the window, as though she thought we were going slowly, though indeed we
+were going fast; but otherwise remained exactly as at first.
+
+We alighted at one of the entrances to the Square she had mentioned,
+where I directed the coach to wait, not knowing but that we might have
+some occasion for it. She laid her hand on my arm, and hurried me on
+to one of the sombre streets, of which there are several in that part,
+where the houses were once fair dwellings in the occupation of single
+families, but have, and had, long degenerated into poor lodgings let off
+in rooms. Entering at the open door of one of these, and releasing my
+arm, she beckoned me to follow her up the common staircase, which was
+like a tributary channel to the street.
+
+The house swarmed with inmates. As we went up, doors of rooms were
+opened and people’s heads put out; and we passed other people on the
+stairs, who were coming down. In glancing up from the outside, before
+we entered, I had seen women and children lolling at the windows over
+flower-pots; and we seemed to have attracted their curiosity, for these
+were principally the observers who looked out of their doors. It was a
+broad panelled staircase, with massive balustrades of some dark wood;
+cornices above the doors, ornamented with carved fruit and flowers; and
+broad seats in the windows. But all these tokens of past grandeur
+were miserably decayed and dirty; rot, damp, and age, had weakened
+the flooring, which in many places was unsound and even unsafe. Some
+attempts had been made, I noticed, to infuse new blood into this
+dwindling frame, by repairing the costly old wood-work here and there
+with common deal; but it was like the marriage of a reduced old noble to
+a plebeian pauper, and each party to the ill-assorted union shrunk away
+from the other. Several of the back windows on the staircase had
+been darkened or wholly blocked up. In those that remained, there was
+scarcely any glass; and, through the crumbling frames by which the bad
+air seemed always to come in, and never to go out, I saw, through other
+glassless windows, into other houses in a similar condition, and looked
+giddily down into a wretched yard, which was the common dust-heap of the
+mansion.
+
+We proceeded to the top-storey of the house. Two or three times, by the
+way, I thought I observed in the indistinct light the skirts of a female
+figure going up before us. As we turned to ascend the last flight of
+stairs between us and the roof, we caught a full view of this figure
+pausing for a moment, at a door. Then it turned the handle, and went in.
+
+‘What’s this!’ said Martha, in a whisper. ‘She has gone into my room. I
+don’t know her!’
+
+I knew her. I had recognized her with amazement, for Miss Dartle.
+
+I said something to the effect that it was a lady whom I had seen
+before, in a few words, to my conductress; and had scarcely done so,
+when we heard her voice in the room, though not, from where we stood,
+what she was saying. Martha, with an astonished look, repeated her
+former action, and softly led me up the stairs; and then, by a little
+back-door which seemed to have no lock, and which she pushed open with a
+touch, into a small empty garret with a low sloping roof, little better
+than a cupboard. Between this, and the room she had called hers,
+there was a small door of communication, standing partly open. Here we
+stopped, breathless with our ascent, and she placed her hand lightly on
+my lips. I could only see, of the room beyond, that it was pretty large;
+that there was a bed in it; and that there were some common pictures of
+ships upon the walls. I could not see Miss Dartle, or the person whom
+we had heard her address. Certainly, my companion could not, for my
+position was the best. A dead silence prevailed for some moments. Martha
+kept one hand on my lips, and raised the other in a listening attitude.
+
+‘It matters little to me her not being at home,’ said Rosa Dartle
+haughtily, ‘I know nothing of her. It is you I come to see.’
+
+‘Me?’ replied a soft voice.
+
+At the sound of it, a thrill went through my frame. For it was Emily’s!
+
+‘Yes,’ returned Miss Dartle, ‘I have come to look at you. What? You are
+not ashamed of the face that has done so much?’
+
+The resolute and unrelenting hatred of her tone, its cold stern
+sharpness, and its mastered rage, presented her before me, as if I had
+seen her standing in the light. I saw the flashing black eyes, and the
+passion-wasted figure; and I saw the scar, with its white track cutting
+through her lips, quivering and throbbing as she spoke.
+
+‘I have come to see,’ she said, ‘James Steerforth’s fancy; the girl who
+ran away with him, and is the town-talk of the commonest people of her
+native place; the bold, flaunting, practised companion of persons like
+James Steerforth. I want to know what such a thing is like.’
+
+There was a rustle, as if the unhappy girl, on whom she heaped these
+taunts, ran towards the door, and the speaker swiftly interposed herself
+before it. It was succeeded by a moment’s pause.
+
+When Miss Dartle spoke again, it was through her set teeth, and with a
+stamp upon the ground.
+
+‘Stay there!’ she said, ‘or I’ll proclaim you to the house, and the
+whole street! If you try to evade me, I’ll stop you, if it’s by the
+hair, and raise the very stones against you!’
+
+A frightened murmur was the only reply that reached my ears. A silence
+succeeded. I did not know what to do. Much as I desired to put an end to
+the interview, I felt that I had no right to present myself; that it was
+for Mr. Peggotty alone to see her and recover her. Would he never come?
+I thought impatiently.
+
+‘So!’ said Rosa Dartle, with a contemptuous laugh, ‘I see her at last!
+Why, he was a poor creature to be taken by that delicate mock-modesty,
+and that hanging head!’
+
+‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, spare me!’ exclaimed Emily. ‘Whoever you are,
+you know my pitiable story, and for Heaven’s sake spare me, if you would
+be spared yourself!’
+
+‘If I would be spared!’ returned the other fiercely; ‘what is there in
+common between US, do you think!’
+
+‘Nothing but our sex,’ said Emily, with a burst of tears.
+
+‘And that,’ said Rosa Dartle, ‘is so strong a claim, preferred by one
+so infamous, that if I had any feeling in my breast but scorn and
+abhorrence of you, it would freeze it up. Our sex! You are an honour to
+our sex!’
+
+‘I have deserved this,’ said Emily, ‘but it’s dreadful! Dear, dear lady,
+think what I have suffered, and how I am fallen! Oh, Martha, come back!
+Oh, home, home!’
+
+Miss Dartle placed herself in a chair, within view of the door, and
+looked downward, as if Emily were crouching on the floor before her.
+Being now between me and the light, I could see her curled lip, and her
+cruel eyes intently fixed on one place, with a greedy triumph.
+
+‘Listen to what I say!’ she said; ‘and reserve your false arts for your
+dupes. Do you hope to move me by your tears? No more than you could
+charm me by your smiles, you purchased slave.’
+
+‘Oh, have some mercy on me!’ cried Emily. ‘Show me some compassion, or I
+shall die mad!’
+
+‘It would be no great penance,’ said Rosa Dartle, ‘for your crimes. Do
+you know what you have done? Do you ever think of the home you have laid
+waste?’
+
+‘Oh, is there ever night or day, when I don’t think of it!’ cried Emily;
+and now I could just see her, on her knees, with her head thrown back,
+her pale face looking upward, her hands wildly clasped and held out,
+and her hair streaming about her. ‘Has there ever been a single minute,
+waking or sleeping, when it hasn’t been before me, just as it used to
+be in the lost days when I turned my back upon it for ever and for ever!
+Oh, home, home! Oh dear, dear uncle, if you ever could have known the
+agony your love would cause me when I fell away from good, you never
+would have shown it to me so constant, much as you felt it; but would
+have been angry to me, at least once in my life, that I might have had
+some comfort! I have none, none, no comfort upon earth, for all of them
+were always fond of me!’ She dropped on her face, before the imperious
+figure in the chair, with an imploring effort to clasp the skirt of her
+dress.
+
+Rosa Dartle sat looking down upon her, as inflexible as a figure of
+brass. Her lips were tightly compressed, as if she knew that she
+must keep a strong constraint upon herself--I write what I sincerely
+believe--or she would be tempted to strike the beautiful form with
+her foot. I saw her, distinctly, and the whole power of her face and
+character seemed forced into that expression.---Would he never come?
+
+‘The miserable vanity of these earth-worms!’ she said, when she had so
+far controlled the angry heavings of her breast, that she could trust
+herself to speak. ‘YOUR home! Do you imagine that I bestow a thought
+on it, or suppose you could do any harm to that low place, which money
+would not pay for, and handsomely? YOUR home! You were a part of the
+trade of your home, and were bought and sold like any other vendible
+thing your people dealt in.’
+
+‘Oh, not that!’ cried Emily. ‘Say anything of me; but don’t visit
+my disgrace and shame, more than I have done, on folks who are as
+honourable as you! Have some respect for them, as you are a lady, if you
+have no mercy for me.’
+
+‘I speak,’ she said, not deigning to take any heed of this appeal, and
+drawing away her dress from the contamination of Emily’s touch, ‘I speak
+of HIS home--where I live. Here,’ she said, stretching out her hand with
+her contemptuous laugh, and looking down upon the prostrate girl, ‘is a
+worthy cause of division between lady-mother and gentleman-son; of grief
+in a house where she wouldn’t have been admitted as a kitchen-girl; of
+anger, and repining, and reproach. This piece of pollution, picked up
+from the water-side, to be made much of for an hour, and then tossed
+back to her original place!’
+
+‘No! no!’ cried Emily, clasping her hands together. ‘When he first came
+into my way--that the day had never dawned upon me, and he had met me
+being carried to my grave!--I had been brought up as virtuous as you or
+any lady, and was going to be the wife of as good a man as you or any
+lady in the world can ever marry. If you live in his home and know him,
+you know, perhaps, what his power with a weak, vain girl might be. I
+don’t defend myself, but I know well, and he knows well, or he will know
+when he comes to die, and his mind is troubled with it, that he used all
+his power to deceive me, and that I believed him, trusted him, and loved
+him!’
+
+Rosa Dartle sprang up from her seat; recoiled; and in recoiling struck
+at her, with a face of such malignity, so darkened and disfigured by
+passion, that I had almost thrown myself between them. The blow, which
+had no aim, fell upon the air. As she now stood panting, looking at
+her with the utmost detestation that she was capable of expressing, and
+trembling from head to foot with rage and scorn, I thought I had never
+seen such a sight, and never could see such another.
+
+‘YOU love him? You?’ she cried, with her clenched hand, quivering as if
+it only wanted a weapon to stab the object of her wrath.
+
+Emily had shrunk out of my view. There was no reply.
+
+‘And tell that to ME,’ she added, ‘with your shameful lips? Why don’t
+they whip these creatures? If I could order it to be done, I would have
+this girl whipped to death.’
+
+And so she would, I have no doubt. I would not have trusted her with the
+rack itself, while that furious look lasted. She slowly, very slowly,
+broke into a laugh, and pointed at Emily with her hand, as if she were a
+sight of shame for gods and men.
+
+‘SHE love!’ she said. ‘THAT carrion! And he ever cared for her, she’d
+tell me. Ha, ha! The liars that these traders are!’
+
+Her mockery was worse than her undisguised rage. Of the two, I would
+have much preferred to be the object of the latter. But, when she
+suffered it to break loose, it was only for a moment. She had chained
+it up again, and however it might tear her within, she subdued it to
+herself.
+
+‘I came here, you pure fountain of love,’ she said, ‘to see--as I began
+by telling you--what such a thing as you was like. I was curious. I am
+satisfied. Also to tell you, that you had best seek that home of yours,
+with all speed, and hide your head among those excellent people who are
+expecting you, and whom your money will console. When it’s all gone, you
+can believe, and trust, and love again, you know! I thought you a broken
+toy that had lasted its time; a worthless spangle that was tarnished,
+and thrown away. But, finding you true gold, a very lady, and
+an ill-used innocent, with a fresh heart full of love and
+trustfulness--which you look like, and is quite consistent with your
+story!--I have something more to say. Attend to it; for what I say I’ll
+do. Do you hear me, you fairy spirit? What I say, I mean to do!’
+
+Her rage got the better of her again, for a moment; but it passed over
+her face like a spasm, and left her smiling.
+
+‘Hide yourself,’ she pursued, ‘if not at home, somewhere. Let it be
+somewhere beyond reach; in some obscure life--or, better still, in some
+obscure death. I wonder, if your loving heart will not break, you have
+found no way of helping it to be still! I have heard of such means
+sometimes. I believe they may be easily found.’
+
+A low crying, on the part of Emily, interrupted her here. She stopped,
+and listened to it as if it were music.
+
+‘I am of a strange nature, perhaps,’ Rosa Dartle went on; ‘but I can’t
+breathe freely in the air you breathe. I find it sickly. Therefore, I
+will have it cleared; I will have it purified of you. If you live here
+tomorrow, I’ll have your story and your character proclaimed on the
+common stair. There are decent women in the house, I am told; and it
+is a pity such a light as you should be among them, and concealed. If,
+leaving here, you seek any refuge in this town in any character but your
+true one (which you are welcome to bear, without molestation from me),
+the same service shall be done you, if I hear of your retreat. Being
+assisted by a gentleman who not long ago aspired to the favour of your
+hand, I am sanguine as to that.’
+
+Would he never, never come? How long was I to bear this? How long could
+I bear it? ‘Oh me, oh me!’ exclaimed the wretched Emily, in a tone that
+might have touched the hardest heart, I should have thought; but there
+was no relenting in Rosa Dartle’s smile. ‘What, what, shall I do!’
+
+‘Do?’ returned the other. ‘Live happy in your own reflections!
+Consecrate your existence to the recollection of James Steerforth’s
+tenderness--he would have made you his serving-man’s wife, would he
+not?---or to feeling grateful to the upright and deserving creature who
+would have taken you as his gift. Or, if those proud remembrances, and
+the consciousness of your own virtues, and the honourable position to
+which they have raised you in the eyes of everything that wears the
+human shape, will not sustain you, marry that good man, and be happy in
+his condescension. If this will not do either, die! There are doorways
+and dust-heaps for such deaths, and such despair--find one, and take
+your flight to Heaven!’
+
+I heard a distant foot upon the stairs. I knew it, I was certain. It was
+his, thank God!
+
+She moved slowly from before the door when she said this, and passed out
+of my sight.
+
+‘But mark!’ she added, slowly and sternly, opening the other door to
+go away, ‘I am resolved, for reasons that I have and hatreds that
+I entertain, to cast you out, unless you withdraw from my reach
+altogether, or drop your pretty mask. This is what I had to say; and
+what I say, I mean to do!’
+
+The foot upon the stairs came nearer--nearer--passed her as she went
+down--rushed into the room!
+
+‘Uncle!’
+
+A fearful cry followed the word. I paused a moment, and looking in, saw
+him supporting her insensible figure in his arms. He gazed for a few
+seconds in the face; then stooped to kiss it--oh, how tenderly!--and
+drew a handkerchief before it.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy,’ he said, in a low tremulous voice, when it was covered, ‘I
+thank my Heav’nly Father as my dream’s come true! I thank Him hearty for
+having guided of me, in His own ways, to my darling!’
+
+With those words he took her up in his arms; and, with the veiled
+face lying on his bosom, and addressed towards his own, carried her,
+motionless and unconscious, down the stairs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 51. THE BEGINNING OF A LONGER JOURNEY
+
+
+It was yet early in the morning of the following day, when, as I was
+walking in my garden with my aunt (who took little other exercise
+now, being so much in attendance on my dear Dora), I was told that Mr.
+Peggotty desired to speak with me. He came into the garden to meet me
+half-way, on my going towards the gate; and bared his head, as it was
+always his custom to do when he saw my aunt, for whom he had a high
+respect. I had been telling her all that had happened overnight. Without
+saying a word, she walked up with a cordial face, shook hands with him,
+and patted him on the arm. It was so expressively done, that she had no
+need to say a word. Mr. Peggotty understood her quite as well as if she
+had said a thousand.
+
+‘I’ll go in now, Trot,’ said my aunt, ‘and look after Little Blossom,
+who will be getting up presently.’
+
+‘Not along of my being heer, ma’am, I hope?’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Unless
+my wits is gone a bahd’s neezing’--by which Mr. Peggotty meant to say,
+bird’s-nesting--‘this morning, ‘tis along of me as you’re a-going to
+quit us?’
+
+‘You have something to say, my good friend,’ returned my aunt, ‘and will
+do better without me.’
+
+‘By your leave, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘I should take it kind,
+pervising you doen’t mind my clicketten, if you’d bide heer.’
+
+‘Would you?’ said my aunt, with short good-nature. ‘Then I am sure I
+will!’
+
+So, she drew her arm through Mr. Peggotty’s, and walked with him to a
+leafy little summer-house there was at the bottom of the garden, where
+she sat down on a bench, and I beside her. There was a seat for Mr.
+Peggotty too, but he preferred to stand, leaning his hand on the small
+rustic table. As he stood, looking at his cap for a little while before
+beginning to speak, I could not help observing what power and force
+of character his sinewy hand expressed, and what a good and trusty
+companion it was to his honest brow and iron-grey hair.
+
+‘I took my dear child away last night,’ Mr. Peggotty began, as he
+raised his eyes to ours, ‘to my lodging, wheer I have a long time been
+expecting of her and preparing fur her. It was hours afore she knowed me
+right; and when she did, she kneeled down at my feet, and kiender said
+to me, as if it was her prayers, how it all come to be. You may believe
+me, when I heerd her voice, as I had heerd at home so playful--and see
+her humbled, as it might be in the dust our Saviour wrote in with his
+blessed hand--I felt a wownd go to my ‘art, in the midst of all its
+thankfulness.’
+
+He drew his sleeve across his face, without any pretence of concealing
+why; and then cleared his voice.
+
+‘It warn’t for long as I felt that; for she was found. I had on’y to
+think as she was found, and it was gone. I doen’t know why I do so much
+as mention of it now, I’m sure. I didn’t have it in my mind a minute
+ago, to say a word about myself; but it come up so nat’ral, that I
+yielded to it afore I was aweer.’
+
+‘You are a self-denying soul,’ said my aunt, ‘and will have your
+reward.’
+
+Mr. Peggotty, with the shadows of the leaves playing athwart his
+face, made a surprised inclination of the head towards my aunt, as an
+acknowledgement of her good opinion; then took up the thread he had
+relinquished.
+
+‘When my Em’ly took flight,’ he said, in stern wrath for the moment,
+‘from the house wheer she was made a prisoner by that theer spotted
+snake as Mas’r Davy see,--and his story’s trew, and may GOD confound
+him!--she took flight in the night. It was a dark night, with a many
+stars a-shining. She was wild. She ran along the sea beach, believing
+the old boat was theer; and calling out to us to turn away our faces,
+for she was a-coming by. She heerd herself a-crying out, like as if
+it was another person; and cut herself on them sharp-pinted stones and
+rocks, and felt it no more than if she had been rock herself. Ever so
+fur she run, and there was fire afore her eyes, and roarings in her
+ears. Of a sudden--or so she thowt, you unnerstand--the day broke, wet
+and windy, and she was lying b’low a heap of stone upon the shore, and
+a woman was a-speaking to her, saying, in the language of that country,
+what was it as had gone so much amiss?’
+
+He saw everything he related. It passed before him, as he spoke, so
+vividly, that, in the intensity of his earnestness, he presented what
+he described to me, with greater distinctness than I can express. I can
+hardly believe, writing now long afterwards, but that I was actually
+present in these scenes; they are impressed upon me with such an
+astonishing air of fidelity.
+
+‘As Em’ly’s eyes--which was heavy--see this woman better,’ Mr. Peggotty
+went on, ‘she know’d as she was one of them as she had often talked to
+on the beach. Fur, though she had run (as I have said) ever so fur in
+the night, she had oftentimes wandered long ways, partly afoot, partly
+in boats and carriages, and know’d all that country, ‘long the coast,
+miles and miles. She hadn’t no children of her own, this woman, being
+a young wife; but she was a-looking to have one afore long. And may
+my prayers go up to Heaven that ‘twill be a happiness to her, and a
+comfort, and a honour, all her life! May it love her and be dootiful to
+her, in her old age; helpful of her at the last; a Angel to her heer,
+and heerafter!’
+
+‘Amen!’ said my aunt.
+
+‘She had been summat timorous and down,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and had sat,
+at first, a little way off, at her spinning, or such work as it was,
+when Em’ly talked to the children. But Em’ly had took notice of her,
+and had gone and spoke to her; and as the young woman was partial to
+the children herself, they had soon made friends. Sermuchser, that when
+Em’ly went that way, she always giv Em’ly flowers. This was her as
+now asked what it was that had gone so much amiss. Em’ly told her,
+and she--took her home. She did indeed. She took her home,’ said Mr.
+Peggotty, covering his face.
+
+He was more affected by this act of kindness, than I had ever seen him
+affected by anything since the night she went away. My aunt and I did
+not attempt to disturb him.
+
+‘It was a little cottage, you may suppose,’ he said, presently, ‘but she
+found space for Em’ly in it,--her husband was away at sea,--and she kep
+it secret, and prevailed upon such neighbours as she had (they was not
+many near) to keep it secret too. Em’ly was took bad with fever,
+and, what is very strange to me is,--maybe ‘tis not so strange to
+scholars,--the language of that country went out of her head, and she
+could only speak her own, that no one unnerstood. She recollects, as if
+she had dreamed it, that she lay there always a-talking her own tongue,
+always believing as the old boat was round the next pint in the bay, and
+begging and imploring of ‘em to send theer and tell how she was dying,
+and bring back a message of forgiveness, if it was on’y a wured. A’most
+the whole time, she thowt,--now, that him as I made mention on just now
+was lurking for her unnerneath the winder; now that him as had brought
+her to this was in the room,--and cried to the good young woman not to
+give her up, and know’d, at the same time, that she couldn’t unnerstand,
+and dreaded that she must be took away. Likewise the fire was afore
+her eyes, and the roarings in her ears; and theer was no today, nor
+yesterday, nor yet tomorrow; but everything in her life as ever had
+been, or as ever could be, and everything as never had been, and as
+never could be, was a crowding on her all at once, and nothing clear nor
+welcome, and yet she sang and laughed about it! How long this lasted, I
+doen’t know; but then theer come a sleep; and in that sleep, from being
+a many times stronger than her own self, she fell into the weakness of
+the littlest child.’
+
+Here he stopped, as if for relief from the terrors of his own
+description. After being silent for a few moments, he pursued his story.
+
+‘It was a pleasant arternoon when she awoke; and so quiet, that there
+warn’t a sound but the rippling of that blue sea without a tide, upon
+the shore. It was her belief, at first, that she was at home upon a
+Sunday morning; but the vine leaves as she see at the winder, and the
+hills beyond, warn’t home, and contradicted of her. Then, come in her
+friend to watch alongside of her bed; and then she know’d as the old
+boat warn’t round that next pint in the bay no more, but was fur off;
+and know’d where she was, and why; and broke out a-crying on that good
+young woman’s bosom, wheer I hope her baby is a-lying now, a-cheering of
+her with its pretty eyes!’
+
+He could not speak of this good friend of Emily’s without a flow of
+tears. It was in vain to try. He broke down again, endeavouring to bless
+her!
+
+‘That done my Em’ly good,’ he resumed, after such emotion as I could
+not behold without sharing in; and as to my aunt, she wept with all her
+heart; ‘that done Em’ly good, and she begun to mend. But, the language
+of that country was quite gone from her, and she was forced to make
+signs. So she went on, getting better from day to day, slow, but sure,
+and trying to learn the names of common things--names as she seemed
+never to have heerd in all her life--till one evening come, when she
+was a-setting at her window, looking at a little girl at play upon the
+beach. And of a sudden this child held out her hand, and said, what
+would be in English, “Fisherman’s daughter, here’s a shell!”--for you
+are to unnerstand that they used at first to call her “Pretty lady”, as
+the general way in that country is, and that she had taught ‘em to
+call her “Fisherman’s daughter” instead. The child says of a sudden,
+“Fisherman’s daughter, here’s a shell!” Then Em’ly unnerstands her; and
+she answers, bursting out a-crying; and it all comes back!
+
+‘When Em’ly got strong again,’ said Mr. Peggotty, after another short
+interval of silence, ‘she cast about to leave that good young creetur,
+and get to her own country. The husband was come home, then; and the two
+together put her aboard a small trader bound to Leghorn, and from that
+to France. She had a little money, but it was less than little as they
+would take for all they done. I’m a’most glad on it, though they was
+so poor! What they done, is laid up wheer neither moth or rust doth
+corrupt, and wheer thieves do not break through nor steal. Mas’r Davy,
+it’ll outlast all the treasure in the wureld.
+
+‘Em’ly got to France, and took service to wait on travelling ladies at a
+inn in the port. Theer, theer come, one day, that snake. --Let him never
+come nigh me. I doen’t know what hurt I might do him!--Soon as she see
+him, without him seeing her, all her fear and wildness returned upon
+her, and she fled afore the very breath he draw’d. She come to England,
+and was set ashore at Dover.
+
+‘I doen’t know,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘for sure, when her ‘art begun to
+fail her; but all the way to England she had thowt to come to her dear
+home. Soon as she got to England she turned her face tow’rds it. But,
+fear of not being forgiv, fear of being pinted at, fear of some of
+us being dead along of her, fear of many things, turned her from it,
+kiender by force, upon the road: “Uncle, uncle,” she says to me, “the
+fear of not being worthy to do what my torn and bleeding breast so
+longed to do, was the most fright’ning fear of all! I turned back, when
+my ‘art was full of prayers that I might crawl to the old door-step, in
+the night, kiss it, lay my wicked face upon it, and theer be found dead
+in the morning.”
+
+‘She come,’ said Mr. Peggotty, dropping his voice to an
+awe-stricken whisper, ‘to London. She--as had never seen it in her
+life--alone--without a penny--young--so pretty--come to London. A’most
+the moment as she lighted heer, all so desolate, she found (as she
+believed) a friend; a decent woman as spoke to her about the needle-work
+as she had been brought up to do, about finding plenty of it fur her,
+about a lodging fur the night, and making secret inquiration concerning
+of me and all at home, tomorrow. When my child,’ he said aloud, and with
+an energy of gratitude that shook him from head to foot, ‘stood upon the
+brink of more than I can say or think on--Martha, trew to her promise,
+saved her.’
+
+I could not repress a cry of joy.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy!’ said he, gripping my hand in that strong hand of his,
+‘it was you as first made mention of her to me. I thankee, sir! She was
+arnest. She had know’d of her bitter knowledge wheer to watch and what
+to do. She had done it. And the Lord was above all! She come, white and
+hurried, upon Em’ly in her sleep. She says to her, “Rise up from worse
+than death, and come with me!” Them belonging to the house would have
+stopped her, but they might as soon have stopped the sea. “Stand away
+from me,” she says, “I am a ghost that calls her from beside her open
+grave!” She told Em’ly she had seen me, and know’d I loved her, and
+forgive her. She wrapped her, hasty, in her clothes. She took her, faint
+and trembling, on her arm. She heeded no more what they said, than if
+she had had no ears. She walked among ‘em with my child, minding only
+her; and brought her safe out, in the dead of the night, from that black
+pit of ruin!
+
+‘She attended on Em’ly,’ said Mr. Peggotty, who had released my hand,
+and put his own hand on his heaving chest; ‘she attended to my Em’ly,
+lying wearied out, and wandering betwixt whiles, till late next day.
+Then she went in search of me; then in search of you, Mas’r Davy. She
+didn’t tell Em’ly what she come out fur, lest her ‘art should fail, and
+she should think of hiding of herself. How the cruel lady know’d of
+her being theer, I can’t say. Whether him as I have spoke so much of,
+chanced to see ‘em going theer, or whether (which is most like, to my
+thinking) he had heerd it from the woman, I doen’t greatly ask myself.
+My niece is found.
+
+‘All night long,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘we have been together, Em’ly
+and me. ‘Tis little (considering the time) as she has said, in wureds,
+through them broken-hearted tears; ‘tis less as I have seen of her dear
+face, as grow’d into a woman’s at my hearth. But, all night long, her
+arms has been about my neck; and her head has laid heer; and we knows
+full well, as we can put our trust in one another, ever more.’
+
+He ceased to speak, and his hand upon the table rested there in perfect
+repose, with a resolution in it that might have conquered lions.
+
+‘It was a gleam of light upon me, Trot,’ said my aunt, drying her eyes,
+‘when I formed the resolution of being godmother to your sister Betsey
+Trotwood, who disappointed me; but, next to that, hardly anything would
+have given me greater pleasure, than to be godmother to that good young
+creature’s baby!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty nodded his understanding of my aunt’s feelings, but could
+not trust himself with any verbal reference to the subject of her
+commendation. We all remained silent, and occupied with our own
+reflections (my aunt drying her eyes, and now sobbing convulsively, and
+now laughing and calling herself a fool); until I spoke.
+
+‘You have quite made up your mind,’ said I to Mr. Peggotty, ‘as to the
+future, good friend? I need scarcely ask you.’
+
+‘Quite, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned; ‘and told Em’ly. Theer’s mighty
+countries, fur from heer. Our future life lays over the sea.’
+
+‘They will emigrate together, aunt,’ said I.
+
+‘Yes!’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a hopeful smile. ‘No one can’t reproach
+my darling in Australia. We will begin a new life over theer!’
+
+I asked him if he yet proposed to himself any time for going away.
+
+‘I was down at the Docks early this morning, sir,’ he returned, ‘to get
+information concerning of them ships. In about six weeks or two
+months from now, there’ll be one sailing--I see her this morning--went
+aboard--and we shall take our passage in her.’
+
+‘Quite alone?’ I asked.
+
+‘Aye, Mas’r Davy!’ he returned. ‘My sister, you see, she’s that fond
+of you and yourn, and that accustomed to think on’y of her own country,
+that it wouldn’t be hardly fair to let her go. Besides which, theer’s
+one she has in charge, Mas’r Davy, as doen’t ought to be forgot.’
+
+‘Poor Ham!’ said I.
+
+‘My good sister takes care of his house, you see, ma’am, and he takes
+kindly to her,’ Mr. Peggotty explained for my aunt’s better information.
+‘He’ll set and talk to her, with a calm spirit, wen it’s like he
+couldn’t bring himself to open his lips to another. Poor fellow!’ said
+Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, ‘theer’s not so much left him, that he
+could spare the little as he has!’
+
+‘And Mrs. Gummidge?’ said I.
+
+‘Well, I’ve had a mort of consideration, I do tell you,’ returned Mr.
+Peggotty, with a perplexed look which gradually cleared as he went
+on, ‘concerning of Missis Gummidge. You see, wen Missis Gummidge falls
+a-thinking of the old ‘un, she an’t what you may call good company.
+Betwixt you and me, Mas’r Davy--and you, ma’am--wen Mrs. Gummidge takes
+to wimicking,’--our old country word for crying,--‘she’s liable to be
+considered to be, by them as didn’t know the old ‘un, peevish-like. Now
+I DID know the old ‘un,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and I know’d his merits,
+so I unnerstan’ her; but ‘tan’t entirely so, you see, with
+others--nat’rally can’t be!’
+
+My aunt and I both acquiesced.
+
+‘Wheerby,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘my sister might--I doen’t say she would,
+but might--find Missis Gummidge give her a leetle trouble now-and-again.
+Theerfur ‘tan’t my intentions to moor Missis Gummidge ‘long with them,
+but to find a Beein’ fur her wheer she can fisherate for herself.’
+(A Beein’ signifies, in that dialect, a home, and to fisherate is to
+provide.) ‘Fur which purpose,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I means to make her
+a ‘lowance afore I go, as’ll leave her pretty comfort’ble. She’s the
+faithfullest of creeturs. ‘Tan’t to be expected, of course, at her
+time of life, and being lone and lorn, as the good old Mawther is to
+be knocked about aboardship, and in the woods and wilds of a new and
+fur-away country. So that’s what I’m a-going to do with her.’
+
+He forgot nobody. He thought of everybody’s claims and strivings, but
+his own.
+
+‘Em’ly,’ he continued, ‘will keep along with me--poor child, she’s sore
+in need of peace and rest!--until such time as we goes upon our voyage.
+She’ll work at them clothes, as must be made; and I hope her troubles
+will begin to seem longer ago than they was, wen she finds herself once
+more by her rough but loving uncle.’
+
+My aunt nodded confirmation of this hope, and imparted great
+satisfaction to Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Theer’s one thing furder, Mas’r Davy,’ said he, putting his hand in his
+breast-pocket, and gravely taking out the little paper bundle I had
+seen before, which he unrolled on the table. ‘Theer’s these here
+banknotes--fifty pound, and ten. To them I wish to add the money as she
+come away with. I’ve asked her about that (but not saying why), and have
+added of it up. I an’t a scholar. Would you be so kind as see how ‘tis?’
+
+He handed me, apologetically for his scholarship, a piece of paper, and
+observed me while I looked it over. It was quite right.
+
+‘Thankee, sir,’ he said, taking it back. ‘This money, if you doen’t
+see objections, Mas’r Davy, I shall put up jest afore I go, in a cover
+directed to him; and put that up in another, directed to his mother.
+I shall tell her, in no more wureds than I speak to you, what it’s the
+price on; and that I’m gone, and past receiving of it back.’
+
+I told him that I thought it would be right to do so--that I was
+thoroughly convinced it would be, since he felt it to be right.
+
+‘I said that theer was on’y one thing furder,’ he proceeded with a grave
+smile, when he had made up his little bundle again, and put it in his
+pocket; ‘but theer was two. I warn’t sure in my mind, wen I come out
+this morning, as I could go and break to Ham, of my own self, what had
+so thankfully happened. So I writ a letter while I was out, and put
+it in the post-office, telling of ‘em how all was as ‘tis; and that I
+should come down tomorrow to unload my mind of what little needs a-doing
+of down theer, and, most-like, take my farewell leave of Yarmouth.’
+
+‘And do you wish me to go with you?’ said I, seeing that he left
+something unsaid.
+
+‘If you could do me that kind favour, Mas’r Davy,’ he replied. ‘I know
+the sight on you would cheer ‘em up a bit.’
+
+My little Dora being in good spirits, and very desirous that I should
+go--as I found on talking it over with her--I readily pledged myself to
+accompany him in accordance with his wish. Next morning, consequently,
+we were on the Yarmouth coach, and again travelling over the old ground.
+
+As we passed along the familiar street at night--Mr. Peggotty, in
+despite of all my remonstrances, carrying my bag--I glanced into Omer
+and Joram’s shop, and saw my old friend Mr. Omer there, smoking his
+pipe. I felt reluctant to be present, when Mr. Peggotty first met his
+sister and Ham; and made Mr. Omer my excuse for lingering behind.
+
+‘How is Mr. Omer, after this long time?’ said I, going in.
+
+He fanned away the smoke of his pipe, that he might get a better view of
+me, and soon recognized me with great delight.
+
+‘I should get up, sir, to acknowledge such an honour as this visit,’
+said he, ‘only my limbs are rather out of sorts, and I am wheeled about.
+With the exception of my limbs and my breath, howsoever, I am as hearty
+as a man can be, I’m thankful to say.’
+
+I congratulated him on his contented looks and his good spirits, and
+saw, now, that his easy-chair went on wheels.
+
+‘It’s an ingenious thing, ain’t it?’ he inquired, following the
+direction of my glance, and polishing the elbow with his arm. ‘It runs
+as light as a feather, and tracks as true as a mail-coach. Bless you,
+my little Minnie--my grand-daughter you know, Minnie’s child--puts her
+little strength against the back, gives it a shove, and away we go, as
+clever and merry as ever you see anything! And I tell you what--it’s a
+most uncommon chair to smoke a pipe in.’
+
+I never saw such a good old fellow to make the best of a thing, and
+find out the enjoyment of it, as Mr. Omer. He was as radiant, as if
+his chair, his asthma, and the failure of his limbs, were the various
+branches of a great invention for enhancing the luxury of a pipe.
+
+‘I see more of the world, I can assure you,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘in this
+chair, than ever I see out of it. You’d be surprised at the number of
+people that looks in of a day to have a chat. You really would! There’s
+twice as much in the newspaper, since I’ve taken to this chair, as there
+used to be. As to general reading, dear me, what a lot of it I do get
+through! That’s what I feel so strong, you know! If it had been my eyes,
+what should I have done? If it had been my ears, what should I have
+done? Being my limbs, what does it signify? Why, my limbs only made my
+breath shorter when I used ‘em. And now, if I want to go out into
+the street or down to the sands, I’ve only got to call Dick, Joram’s
+youngest ‘prentice, and away I go in my own carriage, like the Lord
+Mayor of London.’
+
+He half suffocated himself with laughing here.
+
+‘Lord bless you!’ said Mr. Omer, resuming his pipe, ‘a man must take
+the fat with the lean; that’s what he must make up his mind to, in this
+life. Joram does a fine business. Ex-cellent business!’
+
+‘I am very glad to hear it,’ said I.
+
+‘I knew you would be,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘And Joram and Minnie are like
+Valentines. What more can a man expect? What’s his limbs to that!’
+
+His supreme contempt for his own limbs, as he sat smoking, was one of
+the pleasantest oddities I have ever encountered.
+
+‘And since I’ve took to general reading, you’ve took to general writing,
+eh, sir?’ said Mr. Omer, surveying me admiringly. ‘What a lovely work
+that was of yours! What expressions in it! I read it every word--every
+word. And as to feeling sleepy! Not at all!’
+
+I laughingly expressed my satisfaction, but I must confess that I
+thought this association of ideas significant.
+
+‘I give you my word and honour, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘that when I lay
+that book upon the table, and look at it outside; compact in three
+separate and indiwidual wollumes--one, two, three; I am as proud as
+Punch to think that I once had the honour of being connected with
+your family. And dear me, it’s a long time ago, now, ain’t it? Over
+at Blunderstone. With a pretty little party laid along with the other
+party. And you quite a small party then, yourself. Dear, dear!’
+
+I changed the subject by referring to Emily. After assuring him that I
+did not forget how interested he had always been in her, and how
+kindly he had always treated her, I gave him a general account of her
+restoration to her uncle by the aid of Martha; which I knew would please
+the old man. He listened with the utmost attention, and said, feelingly,
+when I had done:
+
+‘I am rejoiced at it, sir! It’s the best news I have heard for many
+a day. Dear, dear, dear! And what’s going to be undertook for that
+unfortunate young woman, Martha, now?’
+
+‘You touch a point that my thoughts have been dwelling on since
+yesterday,’ said I, ‘but on which I can give you no information yet, Mr.
+Omer. Mr. Peggotty has not alluded to it, and I have a delicacy in
+doing so. I am sure he has not forgotten it. He forgets nothing that is
+disinterested and good.’
+
+‘Because you know,’ said Mr. Omer, taking himself up, where he had left
+off, ‘whatever is done, I should wish to be a member of. Put me down for
+anything you may consider right, and let me know. I never could think
+the girl all bad, and I am glad to find she’s not. So will my daughter
+Minnie be. Young women are contradictory creatures in some things--her
+mother was just the same as her--but their hearts are soft and kind.
+It’s all show with Minnie, about Martha. Why she should consider it
+necessary to make any show, I don’t undertake to tell you. But it’s all
+show, bless you. She’d do her any kindness in private. So, put me down
+for whatever you may consider right, will you be so good? and drop me
+a line where to forward it. Dear me!’ said Mr. Omer, ‘when a man is
+drawing on to a time of life, where the two ends of life meet; when he
+finds himself, however hearty he is, being wheeled about for the second
+time, in a speeches of go-cart; he should be over-rejoiced to do a
+kindness if he can. He wants plenty. And I don’t speak of myself,
+particular,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘because, sir, the way I look at it is, that
+we are all drawing on to the bottom of the hill, whatever age we are,
+on account of time never standing still for a single moment. So let us
+always do a kindness, and be over-rejoiced. To be sure!’
+
+He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and put it on a ledge in the back
+of his chair, expressly made for its reception.
+
+‘There’s Em’ly’s cousin, him that she was to have been married to,’ said
+Mr. Omer, rubbing his hands feebly, ‘as fine a fellow as there is in
+Yarmouth! He’ll come and talk or read to me, in the evening, for an hour
+together sometimes. That’s a kindness, I should call it! All his life’s
+a kindness.’
+
+‘I am going to see him now,’ said I.
+
+‘Are you?’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Tell him I was hearty, and sent my respects.
+Minnie and Joram’s at a ball. They would be as proud to see you as I
+am, if they was at home. Minnie won’t hardly go out at all, you see, “on
+account of father”, as she says. So I swore tonight, that if she didn’t
+go, I’d go to bed at six. In consequence of which,’ Mr. Omer shook
+himself and his chair with laughter at the success of his device, ‘she
+and Joram’s at a ball.’
+
+I shook hands with him, and wished him good night.
+
+‘Half a minute, sir,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘If you was to go without seeing
+my little elephant, you’d lose the best of sights. You never see such
+a sight! Minnie!’ A musical little voice answered, from somewhere
+upstairs, ‘I am coming, grandfather!’ and a pretty little girl with
+long, flaxen, curling hair, soon came running into the shop.
+
+‘This is my little elephant, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, fondling the child.
+‘Siamese breed, sir. Now, little elephant!’
+
+The little elephant set the door of the parlour open, enabling me to see
+that, in these latter days, it was converted into a bedroom for Mr.
+Omer who could not be easily conveyed upstairs; and then hid her pretty
+forehead, and tumbled her long hair, against the back of Mr. Omer’s
+chair.
+
+‘The elephant butts, you know, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, winking, ‘when he
+goes at a object. Once, elephant. Twice. Three times!’
+
+At this signal, the little elephant, with a dexterity that was next to
+marvellous in so small an animal, whisked the chair round with Mr. Omer
+in it, and rattled it off, pell-mell, into the parlour, without touching
+the door-post: Mr. Omer indescribably enjoying the performance, and
+looking back at me on the road as if it were the triumphant issue of his
+life’s exertions.
+
+After a stroll about the town I went to Ham’s house. Peggotty had now
+removed here for good; and had let her own house to the successor of
+Mr. Barkis in the carrying business, who had paid her very well for the
+good-will, cart, and horse. I believe the very same slow horse that Mr.
+Barkis drove was still at work.
+
+I found them in the neat kitchen, accompanied by Mrs. Gummidge, who had
+been fetched from the old boat by Mr. Peggotty himself. I doubt if
+she could have been induced to desert her post, by anyone else. He
+had evidently told them all. Both Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge had their
+aprons to their eyes, and Ham had just stepped out ‘to take a turn on
+the beach’. He presently came home, very glad to see me; and I hope they
+were all the better for my being there. We spoke, with some approach to
+cheerfulness, of Mr. Peggotty’s growing rich in a new country, and of
+the wonders he would describe in his letters. We said nothing of Emily
+by name, but distantly referred to her more than once. Ham was the
+serenest of the party.
+
+But, Peggotty told me, when she lighted me to a little chamber where the
+Crocodile book was lying ready for me on the table, that he always was
+the same. She believed (she told me, crying) that he was broken-hearted;
+though he was as full of courage as of sweetness, and worked harder and
+better than any boat-builder in any yard in all that part. There were
+times, she said, of an evening, when he talked of their old life in
+the boat-house; and then he mentioned Emily as a child. But, he never
+mentioned her as a woman.
+
+I thought I had read in his face that he would like to speak to me
+alone. I therefore resolved to put myself in his way next evening, as he
+came home from his work. Having settled this with myself, I fell asleep.
+That night, for the first time in all those many nights, the candle was
+taken out of the window, Mr. Peggotty swung in his old hammock in the
+old boat, and the wind murmured with the old sound round his head.
+
+All next day, he was occupied in disposing of his fishing-boat and
+tackle; in packing up, and sending to London by waggon, such of his
+little domestic possessions as he thought would be useful to him; and in
+parting with the rest, or bestowing them on Mrs. Gummidge. She was with
+him all day. As I had a sorrowful wish to see the old place once more,
+before it was locked up, I engaged to meet them there in the evening.
+But I so arranged it, as that I should meet Ham first.
+
+It was easy to come in his way, as I knew where he worked. I met him
+at a retired part of the sands, which I knew he would cross, and turned
+back with him, that he might have leisure to speak to me if he really
+wished. I had not mistaken the expression of his face. We had walked but
+a little way together, when he said, without looking at me:
+
+‘Mas’r Davy, have you seen her?’
+
+‘Only for a moment, when she was in a swoon,’ I softly answered.
+
+We walked a little farther, and he said:
+
+‘Mas’r Davy, shall you see her, d’ye think?’
+
+‘It would be too painful to her, perhaps,’ said I.
+
+‘I have thowt of that,’ he replied. ‘So ‘twould, sir, so ‘twould.’
+
+‘But, Ham,’ said I, gently, ‘if there is anything that I could write
+to her, for you, in case I could not tell it; if there is anything
+you would wish to make known to her through me; I should consider it a
+sacred trust.’
+
+‘I am sure on’t. I thankee, sir, most kind! I think theer is something I
+could wish said or wrote.’
+
+‘What is it?’
+
+We walked a little farther in silence, and then he spoke.
+
+‘’Tan’t that I forgive her. ‘Tan’t that so much. ‘Tis more as I beg of
+her to forgive me, for having pressed my affections upon her. Odd times,
+I think that if I hadn’t had her promise fur to marry me, sir, she was
+that trustful of me, in a friendly way, that she’d have told me what was
+struggling in her mind, and would have counselled with me, and I might
+have saved her.’
+
+I pressed his hand. ‘Is that all?’ ‘Theer’s yet a something else,’ he
+returned, ‘if I can say it, Mas’r Davy.’
+
+We walked on, farther than we had walked yet, before he spoke again. He
+was not crying when he made the pauses I shall express by lines. He was
+merely collecting himself to speak very plainly.
+
+‘I loved her--and I love the mem’ry of her--too deep--to be able to
+lead her to believe of my own self as I’m a happy man. I could only be
+happy--by forgetting of her--and I’m afeerd I couldn’t hardly bear as
+she should be told I done that. But if you, being so full of learning,
+Mas’r Davy, could think of anything to say as might bring her to believe
+I wasn’t greatly hurt: still loving of her, and mourning for her:
+anything as might bring her to believe as I was not tired of my life,
+and yet was hoping fur to see her without blame, wheer the wicked cease
+from troubling and the weary are at rest--anything as would ease her
+sorrowful mind, and yet not make her think as I could ever marry, or as
+‘twas possible that anyone could ever be to me what she was--I should
+ask of you to say that--with my prayers for her--that was so dear.’
+
+I pressed his manly hand again, and told him I would charge myself to do
+this as well as I could.
+
+‘I thankee, sir,’ he answered. ‘’Twas kind of you to meet me. ‘Twas kind
+of you to bear him company down. Mas’r Davy, I unnerstan’ very well,
+though my aunt will come to Lon’on afore they sail, and they’ll unite
+once more, that I am not like to see him agen. I fare to feel sure on’t.
+We doen’t say so, but so ‘twill be, and better so. The last you see on
+him--the very last--will you give him the lovingest duty and thanks of
+the orphan, as he was ever more than a father to?’
+
+This I also promised, faithfully.
+
+‘I thankee agen, sir,’ he said, heartily shaking hands. ‘I know wheer
+you’re a-going. Good-bye!’
+
+With a slight wave of his hand, as though to explain to me that he could
+not enter the old place, he turned away. As I looked after his figure,
+crossing the waste in the moonlight, I saw him turn his face towards a
+strip of silvery light upon the sea, and pass on, looking at it, until
+he was a shadow in the distance.
+
+The door of the boat-house stood open when I approached; and, on
+entering, I found it emptied of all its furniture, saving one of the old
+lockers, on which Mrs. Gummidge, with a basket on her knee, was seated,
+looking at Mr. Peggotty. He leaned his elbow on the rough chimney-piece,
+and gazed upon a few expiring embers in the grate; but he raised his
+head, hopefully, on my coming in, and spoke in a cheery manner.
+
+‘Come, according to promise, to bid farewell to ‘t, eh, Mas’r Davy?’
+he said, taking up the candle. ‘Bare enough, now, an’t it?’ ‘Indeed you
+have made good use of the time,’ said I.
+
+‘Why, we have not been idle, sir. Missis Gummidge has worked like a--I
+doen’t know what Missis Gummidge an’t worked like,’ said Mr. Peggotty,
+looking at her, at a loss for a sufficiently approving simile.
+
+Mrs. Gummidge, leaning on her basket, made no observation.
+
+‘Theer’s the very locker that you used to sit on, ‘long with Em’ly!’
+said Mr. Peggotty, in a whisper. ‘I’m a-going to carry it away with me,
+last of all. And heer’s your old little bedroom, see, Mas’r Davy! A’most
+as bleak tonight, as ‘art could wish!’
+
+In truth, the wind, though it was low, had a solemn sound, and crept
+around the deserted house with a whispered wailing that was very
+mournful. Everything was gone, down to the little mirror with the
+oyster-shell frame. I thought of myself, lying here, when that first
+great change was being wrought at home. I thought of the blue-eyed child
+who had enchanted me. I thought of Steerforth: and a foolish, fearful
+fancy came upon me of his being near at hand, and liable to be met at
+any turn.
+
+‘’Tis like to be long,’ said Mr. Peggotty, in a low voice, ‘afore
+the boat finds new tenants. They look upon ‘t, down heer, as being
+unfortunate now!’
+
+‘Does it belong to anybody in the neighbourhood?’ I asked.
+
+‘To a mast-maker up town,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I’m a-going to give the
+key to him tonight.’
+
+We looked into the other little room, and came back to Mrs. Gummidge,
+sitting on the locker, whom Mr. Peggotty, putting the light on the
+chimney-piece, requested to rise, that he might carry it outside the
+door before extinguishing the candle.
+
+‘Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, suddenly deserting her basket, and clinging
+to his arm ‘my dear Dan’l, the parting words I speak in this house is, I
+mustn’t be left behind. Doen’t ye think of leaving me behind, Dan’l! Oh,
+doen’t ye ever do it!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty, taken aback, looked from Mrs. Gummidge to me, and from me
+to Mrs. Gummidge, as if he had been awakened from a sleep.
+
+‘Doen’t ye, dearest Dan’l, doen’t ye!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, fervently.
+‘Take me ‘long with you, Dan’l, take me ‘long with you and Em’ly! I’ll
+be your servant, constant and trew. If there’s slaves in them parts
+where you’re a-going, I’ll be bound to you for one, and happy, but
+doen’t ye leave me behind, Dan’l, that’s a deary dear!’
+
+‘My good soul,’ said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, ‘you doen’t know
+what a long voyage, and what a hard life ‘tis!’ ‘Yes, I do, Dan’l! I can
+guess!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge. ‘But my parting words under this roof is,
+I shall go into the house and die, if I am not took. I can dig, Dan’l.
+I can work. I can live hard. I can be loving and patient now--more than
+you think, Dan’l, if you’ll on’y try me. I wouldn’t touch the ‘lowance,
+not if I was dying of want, Dan’l Peggotty; but I’ll go with you and
+Em’ly, if you’ll on’y let me, to the world’s end! I know how ‘tis; I
+know you think that I am lone and lorn; but, deary love, ‘tan’t so no
+more! I ain’t sat here, so long, a-watching, and a-thinking of your
+trials, without some good being done me. Mas’r Davy, speak to him for
+me! I knows his ways, and Em’ly’s, and I knows their sorrows, and can be
+a comfort to ‘em, some odd times, and labour for ‘em allus! Dan’l, deary
+Dan’l, let me go ‘long with you!’
+
+And Mrs. Gummidge took his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos and
+affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude, that he well
+deserved.
+
+We brought the locker out, extinguished the candle, fastened the door
+on the outside, and left the old boat close shut up, a dark speck in
+the cloudy night. Next day, when we were returning to London outside the
+coach, Mrs. Gummidge and her basket were on the seat behind, and Mrs.
+Gummidge was happy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 52. I ASSIST AT AN EXPLOSION
+
+
+When the time Mr. Micawber had appointed so mysteriously, was within
+four-and-twenty hours of being come, my aunt and I consulted how we
+should proceed; for my aunt was very unwilling to leave Dora. Ah! how
+easily I carried Dora up and down stairs, now!
+
+We were disposed, notwithstanding Mr. Micawber’s stipulation for my
+aunt’s attendance, to arrange that she should stay at home, and be
+represented by Mr. Dick and me. In short, we had resolved to take this
+course, when Dora again unsettled us by declaring that she never
+would forgive herself, and never would forgive her bad boy, if my aunt
+remained behind, on any pretence.
+
+‘I won’t speak to you,’ said Dora, shaking her curls at my aunt. ‘I’ll
+be disagreeable! I’ll make Jip bark at you all day. I shall be sure that
+you really are a cross old thing, if you don’t go!’
+
+‘Tut, Blossom!’ laughed my aunt. ‘You know you can’t do without me!’
+
+‘Yes, I can,’ said Dora. ‘You are no use to me at all. You never run up
+and down stairs for me, all day long. You never sit and tell me stories
+about Doady, when his shoes were worn out, and he was covered with
+dust--oh, what a poor little mite of a fellow! You never do anything at
+all to please me, do you, dear?’ Dora made haste to kiss my aunt, and
+say, ‘Yes, you do! I’m only joking!’-lest my aunt should think she
+really meant it.
+
+‘But, aunt,’ said Dora, coaxingly, ‘now listen. You must go. I shall
+tease you, ‘till you let me have my own way about it. I shall lead my
+naughty boy such a life, if he don’t make you go. I shall make myself
+so disagreeable--and so will Jip! You’ll wish you had gone, like a good
+thing, for ever and ever so long, if you don’t go. Besides,’ said Dora,
+putting back her hair, and looking wonderingly at my aunt and me, ‘why
+shouldn’t you both go? I am not very ill indeed. Am I?’
+
+‘Why, what a question!’ cried my aunt.
+
+‘What a fancy!’ said I.
+
+‘Yes! I know I am a silly little thing!’ said Dora, slowly looking from
+one of us to the other, and then putting up her pretty lips to kiss us
+as she lay upon her couch. ‘Well, then, you must both go, or I shall not
+believe you; and then I shall cry!’
+
+I saw, in my aunt’s face, that she began to give way now, and Dora
+brightened again, as she saw it too.
+
+‘You’ll come back with so much to tell me, that it’ll take at least
+a week to make me understand!’ said Dora. ‘Because I know I shan’t
+understand, for a length of time, if there’s any business in it. And
+there’s sure to be some business in it! If there’s anything to add up,
+besides, I don’t know when I shall make it out; and my bad boy will look
+so miserable all the time. There! Now you’ll go, won’t you? You’ll only
+be gone one night, and Jip will take care of me while you are gone.
+Doady will carry me upstairs before you go, and I won’t come down again
+till you come back; and you shall take Agnes a dreadfully scolding
+letter from me, because she has never been to see us!’
+
+We agreed, without any more consultation, that we would both go, and
+that Dora was a little Impostor, who feigned to be rather unwell,
+because she liked to be petted. She was greatly pleased, and very merry;
+and we four, that is to say, my aunt, Mr. Dick, Traddles, and I, went
+down to Canterbury by the Dover mail that night.
+
+At the hotel where Mr. Micawber had requested us to await him, which
+we got into, with some trouble, in the middle of the night, I found a
+letter, importing that he would appear in the morning punctually at half
+past nine. After which, we went shivering, at that uncomfortable hour,
+to our respective beds, through various close passages; which smelt as
+if they had been steeped, for ages, in a solution of soup and stables.
+
+Early in the morning, I sauntered through the dear old tranquil streets,
+and again mingled with the shadows of the venerable gateways and
+churches. The rooks were sailing about the cathedral towers; and the
+towers themselves, overlooking many a long unaltered mile of the rich
+country and its pleasant streams, were cutting the bright morning air,
+as if there were no such thing as change on earth. Yet the bells, when
+they sounded, told me sorrowfully of change in everything; told me of
+their own age, and my pretty Dora’s youth; and of the many, never old,
+who had lived and loved and died, while the reverberations of the bells
+had hummed through the rusty armour of the Black Prince hanging up
+within, and, motes upon the deep of Time, had lost themselves in air, as
+circles do in water.
+
+I looked at the old house from the corner of the street, but did not go
+nearer to it, lest, being observed, I might unwittingly do any harm to
+the design I had come to aid. The early sun was striking edgewise on its
+gables and lattice-windows, touching them with gold; and some beams of
+its old peace seemed to touch my heart.
+
+I strolled into the country for an hour or so, and then returned by
+the main street, which in the interval had shaken off its last night’s
+sleep. Among those who were stirring in the shops, I saw my ancient
+enemy the butcher, now advanced to top-boots and a baby, and in business
+for himself. He was nursing the baby, and appeared to be a benignant
+member of society.
+
+We all became very anxious and impatient, when we sat down to breakfast.
+As it approached nearer and nearer to half past nine o’clock, our
+restless expectation of Mr. Micawber increased. At last we made no more
+pretence of attending to the meal, which, except with Mr. Dick, had been
+a mere form from the first; but my aunt walked up and down the room.
+Traddles sat upon the sofa affecting to read the paper with his eyes on
+the ceiling; and I looked out of the window to give early notice of Mr.
+Micawber’s coming. Nor had I long to watch, for, at the first chime of
+the half hour, he appeared in the street.
+
+‘Here he is,’ said I, ‘and not in his legal attire!’
+
+My aunt tied the strings of her bonnet (she had come down to breakfast
+in it), and put on her shawl, as if she were ready for anything that
+was resolute and uncompromising. Traddles buttoned his coat with a
+determined air. Mr. Dick, disturbed by these formidable appearances, but
+feeling it necessary to imitate them, pulled his hat, with both hands,
+as firmly over his ears as he possibly could; and instantly took it off
+again, to welcome Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘Gentlemen, and madam,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘good morning! My dear sir,’
+to Mr. Dick, who shook hands with him violently, ‘you are extremely
+good.’
+
+‘Have you breakfasted?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Have a chop!’
+
+‘Not for the world, my good sir!’ cried Mr. Micawber, stopping him on
+his way to the bell; ‘appetite and myself, Mr. Dixon, have long been
+strangers.’
+
+Mr. Dixon was so well pleased with his new name, and appeared to think
+it so obliging in Mr. Micawber to confer it upon him, that he shook
+hands with him again, and laughed rather childishly.
+
+‘Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘attention!’
+
+Mr. Dick recovered himself, with a blush.
+
+‘Now, sir,’ said my aunt to Mr. Micawber, as she put on her gloves, ‘we
+are ready for Mount Vesuvius, or anything else, as soon as YOU please.’
+
+‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘I trust you will shortly witness an
+eruption. Mr. Traddles, I have your permission, I believe, to mention
+here that we have been in communication together?’
+
+‘It is undoubtedly the fact, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, to whom I
+looked in surprise. ‘Mr. Micawber has consulted me in reference to
+what he has in contemplation; and I have advised him to the best of my
+judgement.’
+
+‘Unless I deceive myself, Mr. Traddles,’ pursued Mr. Micawber, ‘what I
+contemplate is a disclosure of an important nature.’
+
+‘Highly so,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘Perhaps, under such circumstances, madam and gentlemen,’ said Mr.
+Micawber, ‘you will do me the favour to submit yourselves, for the
+moment, to the direction of one who, however unworthy to be regarded in
+any other light but as a Waif and Stray upon the shore of human nature,
+is still your fellow-man, though crushed out of his original form
+by individual errors, and the accumulative force of a combination of
+circumstances?’
+
+‘We have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘and will do
+what you please.’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘your confidence is not, at
+the existing juncture, ill-bestowed. I would beg to be allowed a start
+of five minutes by the clock; and then to receive the present company,
+inquiring for Miss Wickfield, at the office of Wickfield and Heep, whose
+Stipendiary I am.’
+
+My aunt and I looked at Traddles, who nodded his approval.
+
+‘I have no more,’ observed Mr. Micawber, ‘to say at present.’
+
+With which, to my infinite surprise, he included us all in a
+comprehensive bow, and disappeared; his manner being extremely distant,
+and his face extremely pale.
+
+Traddles only smiled, and shook his head (with his hair standing upright
+on the top of it), when I looked to him for an explanation; so I took
+out my watch, and, as a last resource, counted off the five minutes. My
+aunt, with her own watch in her hand, did the like. When the time was
+expired, Traddles gave her his arm; and we all went out together to the
+old house, without saying one word on the way.
+
+We found Mr. Micawber at his desk, in the turret office on the
+ground floor, either writing, or pretending to write, hard. The large
+office-ruler was stuck into his waistcoat, and was not so well concealed
+but that a foot or more of that instrument protruded from his bosom,
+like a new kind of shirt-frill.
+
+As it appeared to me that I was expected to speak, I said aloud:
+
+‘How do you do, Mr. Micawber?’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, gravely, ‘I hope I see you well?’
+
+‘Is Miss Wickfield at home?’ said I.
+
+‘Mr. Wickfield is unwell in bed, sir, of a rheumatic fever,’ he
+returned; ‘but Miss Wickfield, I have no doubt, will be happy to see old
+friends. Will you walk in, sir?’
+
+He preceded us to the dining-room--the first room I had entered in that
+house--and flinging open the door of Mr. Wickfield’s former office,
+said, in a sonorous voice:
+
+‘Miss Trotwood, Mr. David Copperfield, Mr. Thomas Traddles, and Mr.
+Dixon!’
+
+I had not seen Uriah Heep since the time of the blow. Our visit
+astonished him, evidently; not the less, I dare say, because it
+astonished ourselves. He did not gather his eyebrows together, for he
+had none worth mentioning; but he frowned to that degree that he almost
+closed his small eyes, while the hurried raising of his grisly hand to
+his chin betrayed some trepidation or surprise. This was only when we
+were in the act of entering his room, and when I caught a glance at him
+over my aunt’s shoulder. A moment afterwards, he was as fawning and as
+humble as ever.
+
+‘Well, I am sure,’ he said. ‘This is indeed an unexpected pleasure! To
+have, as I may say, all friends round St. Paul’s at once, is a treat
+unlooked for! Mr. Copperfield, I hope I see you well, and--if I may
+umbly express myself so--friendly towards them as is ever your friends,
+whether or not. Mrs. Copperfield, sir, I hope she’s getting on. We have
+been made quite uneasy by the poor accounts we have had of her state,
+lately, I do assure you.’
+
+I felt ashamed to let him take my hand, but I did not know yet what else
+to do.
+
+‘Things are changed in this office, Miss Trotwood, since I was an umble
+clerk, and held your pony; ain’t they?’ said Uriah, with his sickliest
+smile. ‘But I am not changed, Miss Trotwood.’
+
+‘Well, sir,’ returned my aunt, ‘to tell you the truth, I think you are
+pretty constant to the promise of your youth; if that’s any satisfaction
+to you.’
+
+‘Thank you, Miss Trotwood,’ said Uriah, writhing in his ungainly manner,
+‘for your good opinion! Micawber, tell ‘em to let Miss Agnes know--and
+mother. Mother will be quite in a state, when she sees the present
+company!’ said Uriah, setting chairs.
+
+‘You are not busy, Mr. Heep?’ said Traddles, whose eye the cunning red
+eye accidentally caught, as it at once scrutinized and evaded us.
+
+‘No, Mr. Traddles,’ replied Uriah, resuming his official seat, and
+squeezing his bony hands, laid palm to palm between his bony knees. ‘Not
+so much so as I could wish. But lawyers, sharks, and leeches, are not
+easily satisfied, you know! Not but what myself and Micawber have our
+hands pretty full, in general, on account of Mr. Wickfield’s being
+hardly fit for any occupation, sir. But it’s a pleasure as well as a
+duty, I am sure, to work for him. You’ve not been intimate with Mr.
+Wickfield, I think, Mr. Traddles? I believe I’ve only had the honour of
+seeing you once myself?’
+
+‘No, I have not been intimate with Mr. Wickfield,’ returned Traddles;
+‘or I might perhaps have waited on you long ago, Mr. Heep.’
+
+There was something in the tone of this reply, which made Uriah look at
+the speaker again, with a very sinister and suspicious expression. But,
+seeing only Traddles, with his good-natured face, simple manner, and
+hair on end, he dismissed it as he replied, with a jerk of his whole
+body, but especially his throat:
+
+‘I am sorry for that, Mr. Traddles. You would have admired him as much
+as we all do. His little failings would only have endeared him to you
+the more. But if you would like to hear my fellow-partner eloquently
+spoken of, I should refer you to Copperfield. The family is a subject
+he’s very strong upon, if you never heard him.’
+
+I was prevented from disclaiming the compliment (if I should have
+done so, in any case), by the entrance of Agnes, now ushered in by Mr.
+Micawber. She was not quite so self-possessed as usual, I thought; and
+had evidently undergone anxiety and fatigue. But her earnest cordiality,
+and her quiet beauty, shone with the gentler lustre for it.
+
+I saw Uriah watch her while she greeted us; and he reminded me of an
+ugly and rebellious genie watching a good spirit. In the meanwhile,
+some slight sign passed between Mr. Micawber and Traddles; and Traddles,
+unobserved except by me, went out.
+
+‘Don’t wait, Micawber,’ said Uriah.
+
+Mr. Micawber, with his hand upon the ruler in his breast, stood erect
+before the door, most unmistakably contemplating one of his fellow-men,
+and that man his employer.
+
+‘What are you waiting for?’ said Uriah. ‘Micawber! did you hear me tell
+you not to wait?’
+
+‘Yes!’ replied the immovable Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘Then why DO you wait?’ said Uriah.
+
+‘Because I--in short, choose,’ replied Mr. Micawber, with a burst.
+
+Uriah’s cheeks lost colour, and an unwholesome paleness, still faintly
+tinged by his pervading red, overspread them. He looked at Mr. Micawber
+attentively, with his whole face breathing short and quick in every
+feature.
+
+‘You are a dissipated fellow, as all the world knows,’ he said, with an
+effort at a smile, ‘and I am afraid you’ll oblige me to get rid of you.
+Go along! I’ll talk to you presently.’
+
+‘If there is a scoundrel on this earth,’ said Mr. Micawber, suddenly
+breaking out again with the utmost vehemence, ‘with whom I have already
+talked too much, that scoundrel’s name is--HEEP!’
+
+Uriah fell back, as if he had been struck or stung. Looking slowly round
+upon us with the darkest and wickedest expression that his face could
+wear, he said, in a lower voice:
+
+‘Oho! This is a conspiracy! You have met here by appointment! You are
+playing Booty with my clerk, are you, Copperfield? Now, take care.
+You’ll make nothing of this. We understand each other, you and me.
+There’s no love between us. You were always a puppy with a proud
+stomach, from your first coming here; and you envy me my rise, do you?
+None of your plots against me; I’ll counterplot you! Micawber, you be
+off. I’ll talk to you presently.’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘there is a sudden change in this fellow, in
+more respects than the extraordinary one of his speaking the truth in
+one particular, which assures me that he is brought to bay. Deal with
+him as he deserves!’
+
+‘You are a precious set of people, ain’t you?’ said Uriah, in the same
+low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped from his
+forehead, with his long lean hand, ‘to buy over my clerk, who is the
+very scum of society,--as you yourself were, Copperfield, you know it,
+before anyone had charity on you,--to defame me with his lies? Miss
+Trotwood, you had better stop this; or I’ll stop your husband shorter
+than will be pleasant to you. I won’t know your story professionally,
+for nothing, old lady! Miss Wickfield, if you have any love for your
+father, you had better not join that gang. I’ll ruin him, if you do.
+Now, come! I have got some of you under the harrow. Think twice, before
+it goes over you. Think twice, you, Micawber, if you don’t want to
+be crushed. I recommend you to take yourself off, and be talked to
+presently, you fool! while there’s time to retreat. Where’s mother?’ he
+said, suddenly appearing to notice, with alarm, the absence of Traddles,
+and pulling down the bell-rope. ‘Fine doings in a person’s own house!’
+
+‘Mrs. Heep is here, sir,’ said Traddles, returning with that worthy
+mother of a worthy son. ‘I have taken the liberty of making myself known
+to her.’
+
+‘Who are you to make yourself known?’ retorted Uriah. ‘And what do you
+want here?’
+
+‘I am the agent and friend of Mr. Wickfield, sir,’ said Traddles, in a
+composed and business-like way. ‘And I have a power of attorney from him
+in my pocket, to act for him in all matters.’
+
+‘The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,’ said Uriah,
+turning uglier than before, ‘and it has been got from him by fraud!’
+
+‘Something has been got from him by fraud, I know,’ returned Traddles
+quietly; ‘and so do you, Mr. Heep. We will refer that question, if you
+please, to Mr. Micawber.’
+
+‘Ury--!’ Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.
+
+‘YOU hold your tongue, mother,’ he returned; ‘least said, soonest
+mended.’
+
+‘But, my Ury--’
+
+‘Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?’
+
+Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his
+pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of the
+extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off. The
+suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it was
+useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed; the leer
+with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he had done--all
+this time being desperate too, and at his wits’ end for the means
+of getting the better of us--though perfectly consistent with the
+experience I had of him, at first took even me by surprise, who had
+known him so long, and disliked him so heartily.
+
+I say nothing of the look he conferred on me, as he stood eyeing us,
+one after another; for I had always understood that he hated me, and I
+remembered the marks of my hand upon his cheek. But when his eyes passed
+on to Agnes, and I saw the rage with which he felt his power over her
+slipping away, and the exhibition, in their disappointment, of the
+odious passions that had led him to aspire to one whose virtues he could
+never appreciate or care for, I was shocked by the mere thought of her
+having lived, an hour, within sight of such a man.
+
+After some rubbing of the lower part of his face, and some looking at us
+with those bad eyes, over his grisly fingers, he made one more address
+to me, half whining, and half abusive.
+
+‘You think it justifiable, do you, Copperfield, you who pride yourself
+so much on your honour and all the rest of it, to sneak about my place,
+eaves-dropping with my clerk? If it had been ME, I shouldn’t have
+wondered; for I don’t make myself out a gentleman (though I never was
+in the streets either, as you were, according to Micawber), but being
+you!--And you’re not afraid of doing this, either? You don’t think at
+all of what I shall do, in return; or of getting yourself into
+trouble for conspiracy and so forth? Very well. We shall see! Mr.
+What’s-your-name, you were going to refer some question to Micawber.
+There’s your referee. Why don’t you make him speak? He has learnt his
+lesson, I see.’
+
+Seeing that what he said had no effect on me or any of us, he sat on the
+edge of his table with his hands in his pockets, and one of his splay
+feet twisted round the other leg, waiting doggedly for what might
+follow.
+
+Mr. Micawber, whose impetuosity I had restrained thus far with the
+greatest difficulty, and who had repeatedly interposed with the first
+syllable of SCOUN-drel! without getting to the second, now burst
+forward, drew the ruler from his breast (apparently as a defensive
+weapon), and produced from his pocket a foolscap document, folded in the
+form of a large letter. Opening this packet, with his old flourish, and
+glancing at the contents, as if he cherished an artistic admiration of
+their style of composition, he began to read as follows:
+
+
+‘“Dear Miss Trotwood and gentlemen--“’
+
+‘Bless and save the man!’ exclaimed my aunt in a low voice. ‘He’d write
+letters by the ream, if it was a capital offence!’
+
+Mr. Micawber, without hearing her, went on.
+
+‘“In appearing before you to denounce probably the most consummate
+Villain that has ever existed,”’ Mr. Micawber, without looking off the
+letter, pointed the ruler, like a ghostly truncheon, at Uriah Heep,
+‘“I ask no consideration for myself. The victim, from my cradle, of
+pecuniary liabilities to which I have been unable to respond, I have
+ever been the sport and toy of debasing circumstances. Ignominy,
+Want, Despair, and Madness, have, collectively or separately, been the
+attendants of my career.”’
+
+The relish with which Mr. Micawber described himself as a prey to these
+dismal calamities, was only to be equalled by the emphasis with which he
+read his letter; and the kind of homage he rendered to it with a roll of
+his head, when he thought he had hit a sentence very hard indeed.
+
+‘“In an accumulation of Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, I entered
+the office--or, as our lively neighbour the Gaul would term it, the
+Bureau--of the Firm, nominally conducted under the appellation of
+Wickfield and--HEEP, but in reality, wielded by--HEEP alone. HEEP, and
+only HEEP, is the mainspring of that machine. HEEP, and only HEEP, is
+the Forger and the Cheat.”’
+
+Uriah, more blue than white at these words, made a dart at the letter,
+as if to tear it in pieces. Mr. Micawber, with a perfect miracle of
+dexterity or luck, caught his advancing knuckles with the ruler, and
+disabled his right hand. It dropped at the wrist, as if it were broken.
+The blow sounded as if it had fallen on wood.
+
+‘The Devil take you!’ said Uriah, writhing in a new way with pain. ‘I’ll
+be even with you.’
+
+‘Approach me again, you--you--you HEEP of infamy,’ gasped Mr. Micawber,
+‘and if your head is human, I’ll break it. Come on, come on!’
+
+I think I never saw anything more ridiculous--I was sensible of it, even
+at the time--than Mr. Micawber making broad-sword guards with the ruler,
+and crying, ‘Come on!’ while Traddles and I pushed him back into a
+corner, from which, as often as we got him into it, he persisted in
+emerging again.
+
+His enemy, muttering to himself, after wringing his wounded hand for
+sometime, slowly drew off his neck-kerchief and bound it up; then
+held it in his other hand, and sat upon his table with his sullen face
+looking down.
+
+Mr. Micawber, when he was sufficiently cool, proceeded with his letter.
+
+‘“The stipendiary emoluments in consideration of which I entered into
+the service of--HEEP,”’ always pausing before that word and uttering
+it with astonishing vigour, ‘“were not defined, beyond the pittance of
+twenty-two shillings and six per week. The rest was left contingent on
+the value of my professional exertions; in other and more expressive
+words, on the baseness of my nature, the cupidity of my motives, the
+poverty of my family, the general moral (or rather immoral) resemblance
+between myself and--HEEP. Need I say, that it soon became necessary for
+me to solicit from--HEEP--pecuniary advances towards the support of
+Mrs. Micawber, and our blighted but rising family? Need I say that this
+necessity had been foreseen by--HEEP? That those advances were secured
+by I.O.U.’s and other similar acknowledgements, known to the legal
+institutions of this country? And that I thus became immeshed in the web
+he had spun for my reception?”’
+
+Mr. Micawber’s enjoyment of his epistolary powers, in describing this
+unfortunate state of things, really seemed to outweigh any pain or
+anxiety that the reality could have caused him. He read on:
+
+‘“Then it was that--HEEP--began to favour me with just so much of his
+confidence, as was necessary to the discharge of his infernal business.
+Then it was that I began, if I may so Shakespearianly express myself, to
+dwindle, peak, and pine. I found that my services were constantly
+called into requisition for the falsification of business, and the
+mystification of an individual whom I will designate as Mr. W. That Mr.
+W. was imposed upon, kept in ignorance, and deluded, in every possible
+way; yet, that all this while, the ruffian--HEEP--was professing
+unbounded gratitude to, and unbounded friendship for, that much-abused
+gentleman. This was bad enough; but, as the philosophic Dane observes,
+with that universal applicability which distinguishes the illustrious
+ornament of the Elizabethan Era, worse remains behind!”’
+
+Mr. Micawber was so very much struck by this happy rounding off with a
+quotation, that he indulged himself, and us, with a second reading of
+the sentence, under pretence of having lost his place.
+
+‘“It is not my intention,”’ he continued reading on, ‘“to enter on a
+detailed list, within the compass of the present epistle (though it
+is ready elsewhere), of the various malpractices of a minor nature,
+affecting the individual whom I have denominated Mr. W., to which I
+have been a tacitly consenting party. My object, when the contest within
+myself between stipend and no stipend, baker and no baker, existence
+and non-existence, ceased, was to take advantage of my opportunities
+to discover and expose the major malpractices committed, to that
+gentleman’s grievous wrong and injury, by--HEEP. Stimulated by the
+silent monitor within, and by a no less touching and appealing monitor
+without--to whom I will briefly refer as Miss W.--I entered on a not
+unlaborious task of clandestine investigation, protracted--now, to the
+best of my knowledge, information, and belief, over a period exceeding
+twelve calendar months.”’
+
+He read this passage as if it were from an Act of Parliament; and
+appeared majestically refreshed by the sound of the words.
+
+‘“My charges against--HEEP,”’ he read on, glancing at him, and drawing
+the ruler into a convenient position under his left arm, in case of
+need, ‘“are as follows.”’
+
+We all held our breath, I think. I am sure Uriah held his.
+
+‘“First,”’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘“When Mr. W.’s faculties and memory
+for business became, through causes into which it is not necessary or
+expedient for me to enter, weakened and confused,--HEEP--designedly
+perplexed and complicated the whole of the official transactions. When
+Mr. W. was least fit to enter on business,--HEEP was always at hand
+to force him to enter on it. He obtained Mr. W.’s signature under such
+circumstances to documents of importance, representing them to be other
+documents of no importance. He induced Mr. W. to empower him to draw
+out, thus, one particular sum of trust-money, amounting to twelve six
+fourteen, two and nine, and employed it to meet pretended business
+charges and deficiencies which were either already provided for, or
+had never really existed. He gave this proceeding, throughout, the
+appearance of having originated in Mr. W.’s own dishonest intention, and
+of having been accomplished by Mr. W.’s own dishonest act; and has used
+it, ever since, to torture and constrain him.”’
+
+‘You shall prove this, you Copperfield!’ said Uriah, with a threatening
+shake of the head. ‘All in good time!’
+
+‘Ask--HEEP--Mr. Traddles, who lived in his house after him,’ said Mr.
+Micawber, breaking off from the letter; ‘will you?’
+
+‘The fool himself--and lives there now,’ said Uriah, disdainfully.
+
+‘Ask--HEEP--if he ever kept a pocket-book in that house,’ said Mr.
+Micawber; ‘will you?’
+
+I saw Uriah’s lank hand stop, involuntarily, in the scraping of his
+chin.
+
+‘Or ask him,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if he ever burnt one there. If he says
+yes, and asks you where the ashes are, refer him to Wilkins Micawber,
+and he will hear of something not at all to his advantage!’
+
+The triumphant flourish with which Mr. Micawber delivered himself of
+these words, had a powerful effect in alarming the mother; who cried
+out, in much agitation:
+
+‘Ury, Ury! Be umble, and make terms, my dear!’
+
+‘Mother!’ he retorted, ‘will you keep quiet? You’re in a fright, and
+don’t know what you say or mean. Umble!’ he repeated, looking at me,
+with a snarl; ‘I’ve umbled some of ‘em for a pretty long time back,
+umble as I was!’
+
+Mr. Micawber, genteelly adjusting his chin in his cravat, presently
+proceeded with his composition.
+
+‘“Second. HEEP has, on several occasions, to the best of my knowledge,
+information, and belief--“’
+
+‘But that won’t do,’ muttered Uriah, relieved. ‘Mother, you keep quiet.’
+
+‘We will endeavour to provide something that WILL do, and do for you
+finally, sir, very shortly,’ replied Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘“Second. HEEP has, on several occasions, to the best of my knowledge,
+information, and belief, systematically forged, to various entries,
+books, and documents, the signature of Mr. W.; and has distinctly done
+so in one instance, capable of proof by me. To wit, in manner following,
+that is to say:”’
+
+Again, Mr. Micawber had a relish in this formal piling up of words,
+which, however ludicrously displayed in his case, was, I must say, not
+at all peculiar to him. I have observed it, in the course of my life,
+in numbers of men. It seems to me to be a general rule. In the taking of
+legal oaths, for instance, deponents seem to enjoy themselves mightily
+when they come to several good words in succession, for the expression
+of one idea; as, that they utterly detest, abominate, and abjure, or so
+forth; and the old anathemas were made relishing on the same principle.
+We talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannize over them
+too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to
+wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds
+well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on
+state occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the
+meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there
+be but a great parade of them. And as individuals get into trouble by
+making too great a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too
+numerous rise against their masters, so I think I could mention a
+nation that has got into many great difficulties, and will get into many
+greater, from maintaining too large a retinue of words.
+
+Mr. Micawber read on, almost smacking his lips:
+
+‘“To wit, in manner following, that is to say. Mr. W. being infirm, and
+it being within the bounds of probability that his decease might lead
+to some discoveries, and to the downfall of--HEEP’S--power over the W.
+family,--as I, Wilkins Micawber, the undersigned, assume--unless the
+filial affection of his daughter could be secretly influenced from
+allowing any investigation of the partnership affairs to be ever made,
+the said--HEEP--deemed it expedient to have a bond ready by him, as from
+Mr. W., for the before-mentioned sum of twelve six fourteen, two and
+nine, with interest, stated therein to have been advanced by--HEEP--to
+Mr. W. to save Mr. W. from dishonour; though really the sum was never
+advanced by him, and has long been replaced. The signatures to this
+instrument purporting to be executed by Mr. W. and attested by Wilkins
+Micawber, are forgeries by--HEEP. I have, in my possession, in his hand
+and pocket-book, several similar imitations of Mr. W.’s signature, here
+and there defaced by fire, but legible to anyone. I never attested any
+such document. And I have the document itself, in my possession.”’ Uriah
+Heep, with a start, took out of his pocket a bunch of keys, and opened
+a certain drawer; then, suddenly bethought himself of what he was about,
+and turned again towards us, without looking in it.
+
+‘“And I have the document,”’ Mr. Micawber read again, looking about as
+if it were the text of a sermon, ‘“in my possession,--that is to say,
+I had, early this morning, when this was written, but have since
+relinquished it to Mr. Traddles.”’
+
+‘It is quite true,’ assented Traddles.
+
+‘Ury, Ury!’ cried the mother, ‘be umble and make terms. I know my
+son will be umble, gentlemen, if you’ll give him time to think. Mr.
+Copperfield, I’m sure you know that he was always very umble, sir!’
+
+It was singular to see how the mother still held to the old trick, when
+the son had abandoned it as useless.
+
+‘Mother,’ he said, with an impatient bite at the handkerchief in which
+his hand was wrapped, ‘you had better take and fire a loaded gun at me.’
+
+‘But I love you, Ury,’ cried Mrs. Heep. And I have no doubt she did; or
+that he loved her, however strange it may appear; though, to be sure,
+they were a congenial couple. ‘And I can’t bear to hear you provoking
+the gentlemen, and endangering of yourself more. I told the gentleman
+at first, when he told me upstairs it was come to light, that I would
+answer for your being umble, and making amends. Oh, see how umble I am,
+gentlemen, and don’t mind him!’
+
+‘Why, there’s Copperfield, mother,’ he angrily retorted, pointing his
+lean finger at me, against whom all his animosity was levelled, as the
+prime mover in the discovery; and I did not undeceive him; ‘there’s
+Copperfield, would have given you a hundred pound to say less than
+you’ve blurted out!’
+
+‘I can’t help it, Ury,’ cried his mother. ‘I can’t see you running into
+danger, through carrying your head so high. Better be umble, as you
+always was.’
+
+He remained for a little, biting the handkerchief, and then said to me
+with a scowl:
+
+‘What more have you got to bring forward? If anything, go on with it.
+What do you look at me for?’
+
+Mr. Micawber promptly resumed his letter, glad to revert to a
+performance with which he was so highly satisfied.
+
+‘“Third. And last. I am now in a condition to show, by--HEEP’S--false
+books, and--HEEP’S--real memoranda, beginning with the partially
+destroyed pocket-book (which I was unable to comprehend, at the time of
+its accidental discovery by Mrs. Micawber, on our taking possession of
+our present abode, in the locker or bin devoted to the reception of the
+ashes calcined on our domestic hearth), that the weaknesses, the faults,
+the very virtues, the parental affections, and the sense of honour, of
+the unhappy Mr. W. have been for years acted on by, and warped to the
+base purposes of--HEEP. That Mr. W. has been for years deluded and
+plundered, in every conceivable manner, to the pecuniary aggrandisement
+of the avaricious, false, and grasping--HEEP. That the engrossing object
+of--HEEP--was, next to gain, to subdue Mr. and Miss W. (of his ulterior
+views in reference to the latter I say nothing) entirely to himself.
+That his last act, completed but a few months since, was to induce Mr.
+W. to execute a relinquishment of his share in the partnership, and even
+a bill of sale on the very furniture of his house, in consideration of a
+certain annuity, to be well and truly paid by--HEEP--on the four common
+quarter-days in each and every year. That these meshes; beginning with
+alarming and falsified accounts of the estate of which Mr. W. is the
+receiver, at a period when Mr. W. had launched into imprudent and
+ill-judged speculations, and may not have had the money, for which he
+was morally and legally responsible, in hand; going on with pretended
+borrowings of money at enormous interest, really coming from--HEEP--and
+by--HEEP--fraudulently obtained or withheld from Mr. W. himself,
+on pretence of such speculations or otherwise; perpetuated by a
+miscellaneous catalogue of unscrupulous chicaneries--gradually
+thickened, until the unhappy Mr. W. could see no world beyond. Bankrupt,
+as he believed, alike in circumstances, in all other hope, and
+in honour, his sole reliance was upon the monster in the garb of
+man,”’--Mr. Micawber made a good deal of this, as a new turn of
+expression,--‘“who, by making himself necessary to him, had achieved his
+destruction. All this I undertake to show. Probably much more!”’
+
+I whispered a few words to Agnes, who was weeping, half joyfully, half
+sorrowfully, at my side; and there was a movement among us, as if Mr.
+Micawber had finished. He said, with exceeding gravity, ‘Pardon me,’
+and proceeded, with a mixture of the lowest spirits and the most intense
+enjoyment, to the peroration of his letter.
+
+‘“I have now concluded. It merely remains for me to substantiate these
+accusations; and then, with my ill-starred family, to disappear from the
+landscape on which we appear to be an encumbrance. That is soon done. It
+may be reasonably inferred that our baby will first expire of inanition,
+as being the frailest member of our circle; and that our twins will
+follow next in order. So be it! For myself, my Canterbury Pilgrimage has
+done much; imprisonment on civil process, and want, will soon do more.
+I trust that the labour and hazard of an investigation--of which the
+smallest results have been slowly pieced together, in the pressure of
+arduous avocations, under grinding penurious apprehensions, at rise of
+morn, at dewy eve, in the shadows of night, under the watchful eye of
+one whom it were superfluous to call Demon--combined with the struggle
+of parental Poverty to turn it, when completed, to the right account,
+may be as the sprinkling of a few drops of sweet water on my funeral
+pyre. I ask no more. Let it be, in justice, merely said of me, as of a
+gallant and eminent naval Hero, with whom I have no pretensions to
+cope, that what I have done, I did, in despite of mercenary and selfish
+objects,
+
+ For England, home, and Beauty.
+
+ ‘“Remaining always, &c. &c., WILKINS MICAWBER.”’
+
+
+Much affected, but still intensely enjoying himself, Mr. Micawber folded
+up his letter, and handed it with a bow to my aunt, as something she
+might like to keep.
+
+There was, as I had noticed on my first visit long ago, an iron safe in
+the room. The key was in it. A hasty suspicion seemed to strike Uriah;
+and, with a glance at Mr. Micawber, he went to it, and threw the doors
+clanking open. It was empty.
+
+‘Where are the books?’ he cried, with a frightful face. ‘Some thief has
+stolen the books!’
+
+Mr. Micawber tapped himself with the ruler. ‘I did, when I got the key
+from you as usual--but a little earlier--and opened it this morning.’
+
+‘Don’t be uneasy,’ said Traddles. ‘They have come into my possession. I
+will take care of them, under the authority I mentioned.’
+
+‘You receive stolen goods, do you?’ cried Uriah.
+
+‘Under such circumstances,’ answered Traddles, ‘yes.’
+
+What was my astonishment when I beheld my aunt, who had been profoundly
+quiet and attentive, make a dart at Uriah Heep, and seize him by the
+collar with both hands!
+
+‘You know what I want?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘A strait-waistcoat,’ said he.
+
+‘No. My property!’ returned my aunt. ‘Agnes, my dear, as long as
+I believed it had been really made away with by your father, I
+wouldn’t--and, my dear, I didn’t, even to Trot, as he knows--breathe a
+syllable of its having been placed here for investment. But, now I know
+this fellow’s answerable for it, and I’ll have it! Trot, come and take
+it away from him!’
+
+Whether my aunt supposed, for the moment, that he kept her property in
+his neck-kerchief, I am sure I don’t know; but she certainly pulled at
+it as if she thought so. I hastened to put myself between them, and to
+assure her that we would all take care that he should make the utmost
+restitution of everything he had wrongly got. This, and a few moments’
+reflection, pacified her; but she was not at all disconcerted by what
+she had done (though I cannot say as much for her bonnet) and resumed
+her seat composedly.
+
+During the last few minutes, Mrs. Heep had been clamouring to her son
+to be ‘umble’; and had been going down on her knees to all of us in
+succession, and making the wildest promises. Her son sat her down in his
+chair; and, standing sulkily by her, holding her arm with his hand, but
+not rudely, said to me, with a ferocious look:
+
+‘What do you want done?’
+
+‘I will tell you what must be done,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘Has that Copperfield no tongue?’ muttered Uriah, ‘I would do a good
+deal for you if you could tell me, without lying, that somebody had cut
+it out.’
+
+‘My Uriah means to be umble!’ cried his mother. ‘Don’t mind what he
+says, good gentlemen!’
+
+‘What must be done,’ said Traddles, ‘is this. First, the deed of
+relinquishment, that we have heard of, must be given over to me
+now--here.’
+
+‘Suppose I haven’t got it,’ he interrupted.
+
+‘But you have,’ said Traddles; ‘therefore, you know, we won’t suppose
+so.’ And I cannot help avowing that this was the first occasion on
+which I really did justice to the clear head, and the plain, patient,
+practical good sense, of my old schoolfellow. ‘Then,’ said Traddles,
+‘you must prepare to disgorge all that your rapacity has become
+possessed of, and to make restoration to the last farthing. All the
+partnership books and papers must remain in our possession; all your
+books and papers; all money accounts and securities, of both kinds. In
+short, everything here.’
+
+‘Must it? I don’t know that,’ said Uriah. ‘I must have time to think
+about that.’
+
+‘Certainly,’ replied Traddles; ‘but, in the meanwhile, and until
+everything is done to our satisfaction, we shall maintain possession
+of these things; and beg you--in short, compel you--to keep to your own
+room, and hold no communication with anyone.’
+
+‘I won’t do it!’ said Uriah, with an oath.
+
+‘Maidstone jail is a safer place of detention,’ observed Traddles; ‘and
+though the law may be longer in righting us, and may not be able to
+right us so completely as you can, there is no doubt of its punishing
+YOU. Dear me, you know that quite as well as I! Copperfield, will you go
+round to the Guildhall, and bring a couple of officers?’
+
+Here, Mrs. Heep broke out again, crying on her knees to Agnes to
+interfere in their behalf, exclaiming that he was very humble, and it
+was all true, and if he didn’t do what we wanted, she would, and much
+more to the same purpose; being half frantic with fears for her darling.
+To inquire what he might have done, if he had had any boldness, would
+be like inquiring what a mongrel cur might do, if it had the spirit of
+a tiger. He was a coward, from head to foot; and showed his dastardly
+nature through his sullenness and mortification, as much as at any time
+of his mean life.
+
+‘Stop!’ he growled to me; and wiped his hot face with his hand. ‘Mother,
+hold your noise. Well! Let ‘em have that deed. Go and fetch it!’
+
+‘Do you help her, Mr. Dick,’ said Traddles, ‘if you please.’
+
+Proud of his commission, and understanding it, Mr. Dick accompanied her
+as a shepherd’s dog might accompany a sheep. But, Mrs. Heep gave him
+little trouble; for she not only returned with the deed, but with the
+box in which it was, where we found a banker’s book and some other
+papers that were afterwards serviceable.
+
+‘Good!’ said Traddles, when this was brought. ‘Now, Mr. Heep, you can
+retire to think: particularly observing, if you please, that I declare
+to you, on the part of all present, that there is only one thing to be
+done; that it is what I have explained; and that it must be done without
+delay.’
+
+Uriah, without lifting his eyes from the ground, shuffled across the
+room with his hand to his chin, and pausing at the door, said:
+
+‘Copperfield, I have always hated you. You’ve always been an upstart,
+and you’ve always been against me.’
+
+‘As I think I told you once before,’ said I, ‘it is you who have been,
+in your greed and cunning, against all the world. It may be profitable
+to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in
+the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is
+as certain as death.’
+
+‘Or as certain as they used to teach at school (the same school where I
+picked up so much umbleness), from nine o’clock to eleven, that labour
+was a curse; and from eleven o’clock to one, that it was a blessing and
+a cheerfulness, and a dignity, and I don’t know what all, eh?’ said
+he with a sneer. ‘You preach, about as consistent as they did.
+Won’t umbleness go down? I shouldn’t have got round my gentleman
+fellow-partner without it, I think. --Micawber, you old bully, I’ll pay
+YOU!’
+
+Mr. Micawber, supremely defiant of him and his extended finger, and
+making a great deal of his chest until he had slunk out at the door,
+then addressed himself to me, and proffered me the satisfaction of
+‘witnessing the re-establishment of mutual confidence between himself
+and Mrs. Micawber’. After which, he invited the company generally to the
+contemplation of that affecting spectacle.
+
+‘The veil that has long been interposed between Mrs. Micawber and
+myself, is now withdrawn,’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘and my children and the
+Author of their Being can once more come in contact on equal terms.’
+
+As we were all very grateful to him, and all desirous to show that we
+were, as well as the hurry and disorder of our spirits would permit, I
+dare say we should all have gone, but that it was necessary for Agnes to
+return to her father, as yet unable to bear more than the dawn of
+hope; and for someone else to hold Uriah in safe keeping. So, Traddles
+remained for the latter purpose, to be presently relieved by Mr. Dick;
+and Mr. Dick, my aunt, and I, went home with Mr. Micawber. As I parted
+hurriedly from the dear girl to whom I owed so much, and thought from
+what she had been saved, perhaps, that morning--her better resolution
+notwithstanding--I felt devoutly thankful for the miseries of my younger
+days which had brought me to the knowledge of Mr. Micawber.
+
+His house was not far off; and as the street door opened into the
+sitting-room, and he bolted in with a precipitation quite his own,
+we found ourselves at once in the bosom of the family. Mr. Micawber
+exclaiming, ‘Emma! my life!’ rushed into Mrs. Micawber’s arms. Mrs.
+Micawber shrieked, and folded Mr. Micawber in her embrace. Miss
+Micawber, nursing the unconscious stranger of Mrs. Micawber’s last
+letter to me, was sensibly affected. The stranger leaped. The twins
+testified their joy by several inconvenient but innocent demonstrations.
+Master Micawber, whose disposition appeared to have been soured by
+early disappointment, and whose aspect had become morose, yielded to his
+better feelings, and blubbered.
+
+‘Emma!’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘The cloud is past from my mind. Mutual
+confidence, so long preserved between us once, is restored, to know
+no further interruption. Now, welcome poverty!’ cried Mr. Micawber,
+shedding tears. ‘Welcome misery, welcome houselessness, welcome hunger,
+rags, tempest, and beggary! Mutual confidence will sustain us to the
+end!’
+
+With these expressions, Mr. Micawber placed Mrs. Micawber in a chair,
+and embraced the family all round; welcoming a variety of bleak
+prospects, which appeared, to the best of my judgement, to be anything
+but welcome to them; and calling upon them to come out into Canterbury
+and sing a chorus, as nothing else was left for their support.
+
+But Mrs. Micawber having, in the strength of her emotions, fainted away,
+the first thing to be done, even before the chorus could be considered
+complete, was to recover her. This my aunt and Mr. Micawber did; and
+then my aunt was introduced, and Mrs. Micawber recognized me.
+
+‘Excuse me, dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said the poor lady, giving me her
+hand, ‘but I am not strong; and the removal of the late misunderstanding
+between Mr. Micawber and myself was at first too much for me.’
+
+‘Is this all your family, ma’am?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘There are no more at present,’ returned Mrs. Micawber.
+
+‘Good gracious, I didn’t mean that, ma’am,’ said my aunt. ‘I mean, are
+all these yours?’
+
+‘Madam,’ replied Mr. Micawber, ‘it is a true bill.’
+
+‘And that eldest young gentleman, now,’ said my aunt, musing, ‘what has
+he been brought up to?’
+
+‘It was my hope when I came here,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘to have got
+Wilkins into the Church: or perhaps I shall express my meaning more
+strictly, if I say the Choir. But there was no vacancy for a tenor in
+the venerable Pile for which this city is so justly eminent; and he
+has--in short, he has contracted a habit of singing in public-houses,
+rather than in sacred edifices.’
+
+‘But he means well,’ said Mrs. Micawber, tenderly.
+
+‘I dare say, my love,’ rejoined Mr. Micawber, ‘that he means
+particularly well; but I have not yet found that he carries out his
+meaning, in any given direction whatsoever.’
+
+Master Micawber’s moroseness of aspect returned upon him again, and he
+demanded, with some temper, what he was to do? Whether he had been born
+a carpenter, or a coach-painter, any more than he had been born a bird?
+Whether he could go into the next street, and open a chemist’s shop?
+Whether he could rush to the next assizes, and proclaim himself a
+lawyer? Whether he could come out by force at the opera, and succeed
+by violence? Whether he could do anything, without being brought up to
+something?
+
+My aunt mused a little while, and then said:
+
+‘Mr. Micawber, I wonder you have never turned your thoughts to
+emigration.’
+
+‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘it was the dream of my youth, and the
+fallacious aspiration of my riper years.’ I am thoroughly persuaded, by
+the by, that he had never thought of it in his life.
+
+‘Aye?’ said my aunt, with a glance at me. ‘Why, what a thing it would
+be for yourselves and your family, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, if you were to
+emigrate now.’
+
+‘Capital, madam, capital,’ urged Mr. Micawber, gloomily.
+
+‘That is the principal, I may say the only difficulty, my dear Mr.
+Copperfield,’ assented his wife.
+
+‘Capital?’ cried my aunt. ‘But you are doing us a great service--have
+done us a great service, I may say, for surely much will come out of
+the fire--and what could we do for you, that would be half so good as to
+find the capital?’
+
+‘I could not receive it as a gift,’ said Mr. Micawber, full of fire and
+animation, ‘but if a sufficient sum could be advanced, say at five per
+cent interest, per annum, upon my personal liability--say my notes of
+hand, at twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four months, respectively, to
+allow time for something to turn up--’
+
+‘Could be? Can be and shall be, on your own terms,’ returned my aunt,
+‘if you say the word. Think of this now, both of you. Here are some
+people David knows, going out to Australia shortly. If you decide to go,
+why shouldn’t you go in the same ship? You may help each other. Think of
+this now, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. Take your time, and weigh it well.’
+
+‘There is but one question, my dear ma’am, I could wish to ask,’ said
+Mrs. Micawber. ‘The climate, I believe, is healthy?’
+
+‘Finest in the world!’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Just so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘Then my question arises. Now, are
+the circumstances of the country such, that a man of Mr. Micawber’s
+abilities would have a fair chance of rising in the social scale? I will
+not say, at present, might he aspire to be Governor, or anything of that
+sort; but would there be a reasonable opening for his talents to
+develop themselves--that would be amply sufficient--and find their own
+expansion?’
+
+‘No better opening anywhere,’ said my aunt, ‘for a man who conducts
+himself well, and is industrious.’
+
+‘For a man who conducts himself well,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber, with her
+clearest business manner, ‘and is industrious. Precisely. It is
+evident to me that Australia is the legitimate sphere of action for Mr.
+Micawber!’
+
+‘I entertain the conviction, my dear madam,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘that
+it is, under existing circumstances, the land, the only land, for myself
+and family; and that something of an extraordinary nature will turn up
+on that shore. It is no distance--comparatively speaking; and though
+consideration is due to the kindness of your proposal, I assure you that
+is a mere matter of form.’
+
+Shall I ever forget how, in a moment, he was the most sanguine of men,
+looking on to fortune; or how Mrs. Micawber presently discoursed
+about the habits of the kangaroo! Shall I ever recall that street of
+Canterbury on a market-day, without recalling him, as he walked
+back with us; expressing, in the hardy roving manner he assumed, the
+unsettled habits of a temporary sojourner in the land; and looking at
+the bullocks, as they came by, with the eye of an Australian farmer!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 53. ANOTHER RETROSPECT
+
+
+I must pause yet once again. O, my child-wife, there is a figure in the
+moving crowd before my memory, quiet and still, saying in its innocent
+love and childish beauty, Stop to think of me--turn to look upon the
+Little Blossom, as it flutters to the ground!
+
+I do. All else grows dim, and fades away. I am again with Dora, in our
+cottage. I do not know how long she has been ill. I am so used to it in
+feeling, that I cannot count the time. It is not really long, in weeks
+or months; but, in my usage and experience, it is a weary, weary while.
+
+They have left off telling me to ‘wait a few days more’. I have begun
+to fear, remotely, that the day may never shine, when I shall see my
+child-wife running in the sunlight with her old friend Jip.
+
+He is, as it were suddenly, grown very old. It may be that he misses in
+his mistress, something that enlivened him and made him younger; but he
+mopes, and his sight is weak, and his limbs are feeble, and my aunt is
+sorry that he objects to her no more, but creeps near her as he lies on
+Dora’s bed--she sitting at the bedside--and mildly licks her hand.
+
+Dora lies smiling on us, and is beautiful, and utters no hasty or
+complaining word. She says that we are very good to her; that her dear
+old careful boy is tiring himself out, she knows; that my aunt has no
+sleep, yet is always wakeful, active, and kind. Sometimes, the
+little bird-like ladies come to see her; and then we talk about our
+wedding-day, and all that happy time.
+
+What a strange rest and pause in my life there seems to be--and in all
+life, within doors and without--when I sit in the quiet, shaded, orderly
+room, with the blue eyes of my child-wife turned towards me, and her
+little fingers twining round my hand! Many and many an hour I sit thus;
+but, of all those times, three times come the freshest on my mind.
+
+
+It is morning; and Dora, made so trim by my aunt’s hands, shows me how
+her pretty hair will curl upon the pillow yet, an how long and bright it
+is, and how she likes to have it loosely gathered in that net she wears.
+
+‘Not that I am vain of it, now, you mocking boy,’ she says, when I
+smile; ‘but because you used to say you thought it so beautiful; and
+because, when I first began to think about you, I used to peep in the
+glass, and wonder whether you would like very much to have a lock of it.
+Oh what a foolish fellow you were, Doady, when I gave you one!’
+
+‘That was on the day when you were painting the flowers I had given you,
+Dora, and when I told you how much in love I was.’
+
+‘Ah! but I didn’t like to tell you,’ says Dora, ‘then, how I had cried
+over them, because I believed you really liked me! When I can run about
+again as I used to do, Doady, let us go and see those places where we
+were such a silly couple, shall we? And take some of the old walks? And
+not forget poor papa?’
+
+‘Yes, we will, and have some happy days. So you must make haste to get
+well, my dear.’
+
+‘Oh, I shall soon do that! I am so much better, you don’t know!’
+
+
+It is evening; and I sit in the same chair, by the same bed, with the
+same face turned towards me. We have been silent, and there is a smile
+upon her face. I have ceased to carry my light burden up and down stairs
+now. She lies here all the day.
+
+‘Doady!’
+
+‘My dear Dora!’
+
+‘You won’t think what I am going to say, unreasonable, after what you
+told me, such a little while ago, of Mr. Wickfield’s not being well? I
+want to see Agnes. Very much I want to see her.’
+
+‘I will write to her, my dear.’
+
+‘Will you?’
+
+‘Directly.’
+
+‘What a good, kind boy! Doady, take me on your arm. Indeed, my dear,
+it’s not a whim. It’s not a foolish fancy. I want, very much indeed, to
+see her!’
+
+‘I am certain of it. I have only to tell her so, and she is sure to
+come.’
+
+‘You are very lonely when you go downstairs, now?’ Dora whispers, with
+her arm about my neck.
+
+‘How can I be otherwise, my own love, when I see your empty chair?’
+
+‘My empty chair!’ She clings to me for a little while, in silence. ‘And
+you really miss me, Doady?’ looking up, and brightly smiling. ‘Even
+poor, giddy, stupid me?’
+
+‘My heart, who is there upon earth that I could miss so much?’
+
+‘Oh, husband! I am so glad, yet so sorry!’ creeping closer to me, and
+folding me in both her arms. She laughs and sobs, and then is quiet, and
+quite happy.
+
+‘Quite!’ she says. ‘Only give Agnes my dear love, and tell her that I
+want very, very, much to see her; and I have nothing left to wish for.’
+
+‘Except to get well again, Dora.’
+
+‘Ah, Doady! Sometimes I think--you know I always was a silly little
+thing!--that that will never be!’
+
+‘Don’t say so, Dora! Dearest love, don’t think so!’
+
+‘I won’t, if I can help it, Doady. But I am very happy; though my dear
+boy is so lonely by himself, before his child-wife’s empty chair!’
+
+
+It is night; and I am with her still. Agnes has arrived; has been among
+us for a whole day and an evening. She, my aunt, and I, have sat with
+Dora since the morning, all together. We have not talked much, but Dora
+has been perfectly contented and cheerful. We are now alone.
+
+Do I know, now, that my child-wife will soon leave me? They have told me
+so; they have told me nothing new to my thoughts--but I am far from
+sure that I have taken that truth to heart. I cannot master it. I have
+withdrawn by myself, many times today, to weep. I have remembered Who
+wept for a parting between the living and the dead. I have bethought me
+of all that gracious and compassionate history. I have tried to resign
+myself, and to console myself; and that, I hope, I may have done
+imperfectly; but what I cannot firmly settle in my mind is, that the end
+will absolutely come. I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine,
+I see her love for me, alive in all its strength. I cannot shut out a
+pale lingering shadow of belief that she will be spared.
+
+‘I am going to speak to you, Doady. I am going to say something I have
+often thought of saying, lately. You won’t mind?’ with a gentle look.
+
+‘Mind, my darling?’
+
+‘Because I don’t know what you will think, or what you may have thought
+sometimes. Perhaps you have often thought the same. Doady, dear, I am
+afraid I was too young.’
+
+I lay my face upon the pillow by her, and she looks into my eyes, and
+speaks very softly. Gradually, as she goes on, I feel, with a stricken
+heart, that she is speaking of herself as past.
+
+‘I am afraid, dear, I was too young. I don’t mean in years only, but
+in experience, and thoughts, and everything. I was such a silly little
+creature! I am afraid it would have been better, if we had only loved
+each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it. I have begun to think I
+was not fit to be a wife.’
+
+I try to stay my tears, and to reply, ‘Oh, Dora, love, as fit as I to be
+a husband!’
+
+‘I don’t know,’ with the old shake of her curls. ‘Perhaps! But if I had
+been more fit to be married I might have made you more so, too. Besides,
+you are very clever, and I never was.’
+
+‘We have been very happy, my sweet Dora.’
+
+‘I was very happy, very. But, as years went on, my dear boy would have
+wearied of his child-wife. She would have been less and less a companion
+for him. He would have been more and more sensible of what was wanting
+in his home. She wouldn’t have improved. It is better as it is.’
+
+‘Oh, Dora, dearest, dearest, do not speak to me so. Every word seems a
+reproach!’
+
+‘No, not a syllable!’ she answers, kissing me. ‘Oh, my dear, you never
+deserved it, and I loved you far too well to say a reproachful word to
+you, in earnest--it was all the merit I had, except being pretty--or you
+thought me so. Is it lonely, down-stairs, Doady?’
+
+‘Very! Very!’
+
+‘Don’t cry! Is my chair there?’
+
+‘In its old place.’
+
+‘Oh, how my poor boy cries! Hush, hush! Now, make me one promise. I want
+to speak to Agnes. When you go downstairs, tell Agnes so, and send her
+up to me; and while I speak to her, let no one come--not even aunt.
+I want to speak to Agnes by herself. I want to speak to Agnes, quite
+alone.’
+
+I promise that she shall, immediately; but I cannot leave her, for my
+grief.
+
+‘I said that it was better as it is!’ she whispers, as she holds me in
+her arms. ‘Oh, Doady, after more years, you never could have loved your
+child-wife better than you do; and, after more years, she would so have
+tried and disappointed you, that you might not have been able to love
+her half so well! I know I was too young and foolish. It is much better
+as it is!’
+
+Agnes is downstairs, when I go into the parlour; and I give her the
+message. She disappears, leaving me alone with Jip.
+
+His Chinese house is by the fire; and he lies within it, on his bed of
+flannel, querulously trying to sleep. The bright moon is high and clear.
+As I look out on the night, my tears fall fast, and my undisciplined
+heart is chastened heavily--heavily.
+
+I sit down by the fire, thinking with a blind remorse of all those
+secret feelings I have nourished since my marriage. I think of every
+little trifle between me and Dora, and feel the truth, that trifles
+make the sum of life. Ever rising from the sea of my remembrance, is the
+image of the dear child as I knew her first, graced by my young love,
+and by her own, with every fascination wherein such love is rich. Would
+it, indeed, have been better if we had loved each other as a boy and a
+girl, and forgotten it? Undisciplined heart, reply!
+
+How the time wears, I know not; until I am recalled by my child-wife’s
+old companion. More restless than he was, he crawls out of his house,
+and looks at me, and wanders to the door, and whines to go upstairs.
+
+‘Not tonight, Jip! Not tonight!’
+
+He comes very slowly back to me, licks my hand, and lifts his dim eyes
+to my face.
+
+‘Oh, Jip! It may be, never again!’
+
+He lies down at my feet, stretches himself out as if to sleep, and with
+a plaintive cry, is dead.
+
+‘Oh, Agnes! Look, look, here!’ --That face, so full of pity, and of
+grief, that rain of tears, that awful mute appeal to me, that solemn
+hand upraised towards Heaven!
+
+‘Agnes?’
+
+It is over. Darkness comes before my eyes; and, for a time, all things
+are blotted out of my remembrance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 54. Mr. MICAWBER’S TRANSACTIONS
+
+
+This is not the time at which I am to enter on the state of my mind
+beneath its load of sorrow. I came to think that the Future was walled
+up before me, that the energy and action of my life were at an end, that
+I never could find any refuge but in the grave. I came to think so, I
+say, but not in the first shock of my grief. It slowly grew to that.
+If the events I go on to relate, had not thickened around me, in the
+beginning to confuse, and in the end to augment, my affliction, it is
+possible (though I think not probable), that I might have fallen at once
+into this condition. As it was, an interval occurred before I fully knew
+my own distress; an interval, in which I even supposed that its sharpest
+pangs were past; and when my mind could soothe itself by resting on
+all that was most innocent and beautiful, in the tender story that was
+closed for ever.
+
+When it was first proposed that I should go abroad, or how it came to be
+agreed among us that I was to seek the restoration of my peace in change
+and travel, I do not, even now, distinctly know. The spirit of Agnes so
+pervaded all we thought, and said, and did, in that time of sorrow, that
+I assume I may refer the project to her influence. But her influence was
+so quiet that I know no more.
+
+And now, indeed, I began to think that in my old association of her with
+the stained-glass window in the church, a prophetic foreshadowing of
+what she would be to me, in the calamity that was to happen in the
+fullness of time, had found a way into my mind. In all that sorrow, from
+the moment, never to be forgotten, when she stood before me with her
+upraised hand, she was like a sacred presence in my lonely house. When
+the Angel of Death alighted there, my child-wife fell asleep--they told
+me so when I could bear to hear it--on her bosom, with a smile. From my
+swoon, I first awoke to a consciousness of her compassionate tears, her
+words of hope and peace, her gentle face bending down as from a purer
+region nearer Heaven, over my undisciplined heart, and softening its
+pain.
+
+Let me go on.
+
+I was to go abroad. That seemed to have been determined among us from
+the first. The ground now covering all that could perish of my
+departed wife, I waited only for what Mr. Micawber called the ‘final
+pulverization of Heep’; and for the departure of the emigrants.
+
+At the request of Traddles, most affectionate and devoted of friends in
+my trouble, we returned to Canterbury: I mean my aunt, Agnes, and I. We
+proceeded by appointment straight to Mr. Micawber’s house; where, and at
+Mr. Wickfield’s, my friend had been labouring ever since our explosive
+meeting. When poor Mrs. Micawber saw me come in, in my black clothes,
+she was sensibly affected. There was a great deal of good in Mrs.
+Micawber’s heart, which had not been dunned out of it in all those many
+years.
+
+‘Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber,’ was my aunt’s first salutation after we
+were seated. ‘Pray, have you thought about that emigration proposal of
+mine?’
+
+‘My dear madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘perhaps I cannot better express
+the conclusion at which Mrs. Micawber, your humble servant, and I may
+add our children, have jointly and severally arrived, than by borrowing
+the language of an illustrious poet, to reply that our Boat is on the
+shore, and our Bark is on the sea.’
+
+‘That’s right,’ said my aunt. ‘I augur all sort of good from your
+sensible decision.’
+
+‘Madam, you do us a great deal of honour,’ he rejoined. He then referred
+to a memorandum. ‘With respect to the pecuniary assistance enabling
+us to launch our frail canoe on the ocean of enterprise, I have
+reconsidered that important business-point; and would beg to propose
+my notes of hand--drawn, it is needless to stipulate, on stamps of the
+amounts respectively required by the various Acts of Parliament applying
+to such securities--at eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty months.
+The proposition I originally submitted, was twelve, eighteen, and
+twenty-four; but I am apprehensive that such an arrangement might not
+allow sufficient time for the requisite amount of--Something--to turn
+up. We might not,’ said Mr. Micawber, looking round the room as if it
+represented several hundred acres of highly cultivated land, ‘on the
+first responsibility becoming due, have been successful in our harvest,
+or we might not have got our harvest in. Labour, I believe, is sometimes
+difficult to obtain in that portion of our colonial possessions where it
+will be our lot to combat with the teeming soil.’
+
+‘Arrange it in any way you please, sir,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘Mrs. Micawber and myself are deeply sensible of
+the very considerate kindness of our friends and patrons. What I wish
+is, to be perfectly business-like, and perfectly punctual. Turning over,
+as we are about to turn over, an entirely new leaf; and falling back,
+as we are now in the act of falling back, for a Spring of no common
+magnitude; it is important to my sense of self-respect, besides being
+an example to my son, that these arrangements should be concluded as
+between man and man.’
+
+I don’t know that Mr. Micawber attached any meaning to this last phrase;
+I don’t know that anybody ever does, or did; but he appeared to relish
+it uncommonly, and repeated, with an impressive cough, ‘as between man
+and man’.
+
+‘I propose,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘Bills--a convenience to the mercantile
+world, for which, I believe, we are originally indebted to the Jews, who
+appear to me to have had a devilish deal too much to do with them
+ever since--because they are negotiable. But if a Bond, or any other
+description of security, would be preferred, I should be happy to
+execute any such instrument. As between man and man.’
+
+My aunt observed, that in a case where both parties were willing to
+agree to anything, she took it for granted there would be no difficulty
+in settling this point. Mr. Micawber was of her opinion.
+
+‘In reference to our domestic preparations, madam,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+with some pride, ‘for meeting the destiny to which we are now understood
+to be self-devoted, I beg to report them. My eldest daughter attends
+at five every morning in a neighbouring establishment, to acquire
+the process--if process it may be called--of milking cows. My younger
+children are instructed to observe, as closely as circumstances will
+permit, the habits of the pigs and poultry maintained in the poorer
+parts of this city: a pursuit from which they have, on two occasions,
+been brought home, within an inch of being run over. I have myself
+directed some attention, during the past week, to the art of baking; and
+my son Wilkins has issued forth with a walking-stick and driven cattle,
+when permitted, by the rugged hirelings who had them in charge, to
+render any voluntary service in that direction--which I regret to say,
+for the credit of our nature, was not often; he being generally warned,
+with imprecations, to desist.’
+
+‘All very right indeed,’ said my aunt, encouragingly. ‘Mrs. Micawber has
+been busy, too, I have no doubt.’
+
+‘My dear madam,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, with her business-like air.
+‘I am free to confess that I have not been actively engaged in pursuits
+immediately connected with cultivation or with stock, though well aware
+that both will claim my attention on a foreign shore. Such opportunities
+as I have been enabled to alienate from my domestic duties, I have
+devoted to corresponding at some length with my family. For I own it
+seems to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who always
+fell back on me, I suppose from old habit, to whomsoever else she might
+address her discourse at starting, ‘that the time is come when the past
+should be buried in oblivion; when my family should take Mr. Micawber by
+the hand, and Mr. Micawber should take my family by the hand; when the
+lion should lie down with the lamb, and my family be on terms with Mr.
+Micawber.’
+
+I said I thought so too.
+
+‘This, at least, is the light, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ pursued Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘in which I view the subject. When I lived at home with my
+papa and mama, my papa was accustomed to ask, when any point was under
+discussion in our limited circle, “In what light does my Emma view the
+subject?” That my papa was too partial, I know; still, on such a point
+as the frigid coldness which has ever subsisted between Mr. Micawber and
+my family, I necessarily have formed an opinion, delusive though it may
+be.’
+
+‘No doubt. Of course you have, ma’am,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Precisely so,’ assented Mrs. Micawber. ‘Now, I may be wrong in my
+conclusions; it is very likely that I am, but my individual impression
+is, that the gulf between my family and Mr. Micawber may be traced to an
+apprehension, on the part of my family, that Mr. Micawber would require
+pecuniary accommodation. I cannot help thinking,’ said Mrs. Micawber,
+with an air of deep sagacity, ‘that there are members of my family who
+have been apprehensive that Mr. Micawber would solicit them for their
+names.---I do not mean to be conferred in Baptism upon our children,
+but to be inscribed on Bills of Exchange, and negotiated in the Money
+Market.’
+
+The look of penetration with which Mrs. Micawber announced this
+discovery, as if no one had ever thought of it before, seemed rather to
+astonish my aunt; who abruptly replied, ‘Well, ma’am, upon the whole, I
+shouldn’t wonder if you were right!’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber being now on the eve of casting off the pecuniary
+shackles that have so long enthralled him,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘and of
+commencing a new career in a country where there is sufficient range
+for his abilities,--which, in my opinion, is exceedingly important; Mr.
+Micawber’s abilities peculiarly requiring space,--it seems to me that
+my family should signalize the occasion by coming forward. What I could
+wish to see, would be a meeting between Mr. Micawber and my family at
+a festive entertainment, to be given at my family’s expense; where Mr.
+Micawber’s health and prosperity being proposed, by some leading member
+of my family, Mr. Micawber might have an opportunity of developing his
+views.’
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, with some heat, ‘it may be better for me
+to state distinctly, at once, that if I were to develop my views to that
+assembled group, they would possibly be found of an offensive nature:
+my impression being that your family are, in the aggregate, impertinent
+Snobs; and, in detail, unmitigated Ruffians.’
+
+‘Micawber,’ said Mrs. Micawber, shaking her head, ‘no! You have never
+understood them, and they have never understood you.’
+
+Mr. Micawber coughed.
+
+‘They have never understood you, Micawber,’ said his wife. ‘They may
+be incapable of it. If so, that is their misfortune. I can pity their
+misfortune.’
+
+‘I am extremely sorry, my dear Emma,’ said Mr. Micawber, relenting, ‘to
+have been betrayed into any expressions that might, even remotely, have
+the appearance of being strong expressions. All I would say is, that
+I can go abroad without your family coming forward to favour me,--in
+short, with a parting Shove of their cold shoulders; and that, upon the
+whole, I would rather leave England with such impetus as I possess, than
+derive any acceleration of it from that quarter. At the same time, my
+dear, if they should condescend to reply to your communications--which
+our joint experience renders most improbable--far be it from me to be a
+barrier to your wishes.’
+
+The matter being thus amicably settled, Mr. Micawber gave Mrs. Micawber
+his arm, and glancing at the heap of books and papers lying before
+Traddles on the table, said they would leave us to ourselves; which they
+ceremoniously did.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, leaning back in his chair when
+they were gone, and looking at me with an affection that made his eyes
+red, and his hair all kinds of shapes, ‘I don’t make any excuse for
+troubling you with business, because I know you are deeply interested
+in it, and it may divert your thoughts. My dear boy, I hope you are not
+worn out?’
+
+‘I am quite myself,’ said I, after a pause. ‘We have more cause to think
+of my aunt than of anyone. You know how much she has done.’
+
+‘Surely, surely,’ answered Traddles. ‘Who can forget it!’
+
+‘But even that is not all,’ said I. ‘During the last fortnight, some new
+trouble has vexed her; and she has been in and out of London every day.
+Several times she has gone out early, and been absent until evening.
+Last night, Traddles, with this journey before her, it was almost
+midnight before she came home. You know what her consideration for
+others is. She will not tell me what has happened to distress her.’
+
+My aunt, very pale, and with deep lines in her face, sat immovable until
+I had finished; when some stray tears found their way to her cheeks, and
+she put her hand on mine.
+
+‘It’s nothing, Trot; it’s nothing. There will be no more of it. You
+shall know by and by. Now Agnes, my dear, let us attend to these
+affairs.’
+
+‘I must do Mr. Micawber the justice to say,’ Traddles began, ‘that
+although he would appear not to have worked to any good account for
+himself, he is a most untiring man when he works for other people. I
+never saw such a fellow. If he always goes on in the same way, he must
+be, virtually, about two hundred years old, at present. The heat into
+which he has been continually putting himself; and the distracted and
+impetuous manner in which he has been diving, day and night, among
+papers and books; to say nothing of the immense number of letters he has
+written me between this house and Mr. Wickfield’s, and often across the
+table when he has been sitting opposite, and might much more easily have
+spoken; is quite extraordinary.’
+
+‘Letters!’ cried my aunt. ‘I believe he dreams in letters!’
+
+‘There’s Mr. Dick, too,’ said Traddles, ‘has been doing wonders! As soon
+as he was released from overlooking Uriah Heep, whom he kept in such
+charge as I never saw exceeded, he began to devote himself to Mr.
+Wickfield. And really his anxiety to be of use in the investigations we
+have been making, and his real usefulness in extracting, and copying,
+and fetching, and carrying, have been quite stimulating to us.’
+
+‘Dick is a very remarkable man,’ exclaimed my aunt; ‘and I always said
+he was. Trot, you know it.’
+
+‘I am happy to say, Miss Wickfield,’ pursued Traddles, at once with
+great delicacy and with great earnestness, ‘that in your absence Mr.
+Wickfield has considerably improved. Relieved of the incubus that had
+fastened upon him for so long a time, and of the dreadful apprehensions
+under which he had lived, he is hardly the same person. At times,
+even his impaired power of concentrating his memory and attention on
+particular points of business, has recovered itself very much; and he
+has been able to assist us in making some things clear, that we should
+have found very difficult indeed, if not hopeless, without him. But
+what I have to do is to come to results; which are short enough; not
+to gossip on all the hopeful circumstances I have observed, or I shall
+never have done.’ His natural manner and agreeable simplicity made it
+transparent that he said this to put us in good heart, and to enable
+Agnes to hear her father mentioned with greater confidence; but it was
+not the less pleasant for that.
+
+‘Now, let me see,’ said Traddles, looking among the papers on the
+table. ‘Having counted our funds, and reduced to order a great mass of
+unintentional confusion in the first place, and of wilful confusion and
+falsification in the second, we take it to be clear that Mr. Wickfield
+might now wind up his business, and his agency-trust, and exhibit no
+deficiency or defalcation whatever.’
+
+‘Oh, thank Heaven!’ cried Agnes, fervently.
+
+‘But,’ said Traddles, ‘the surplus that would be left as his means of
+support--and I suppose the house to be sold, even in saying this--would
+be so small, not exceeding in all probability some hundreds of pounds,
+that perhaps, Miss Wickfield, it would be best to consider whether he
+might not retain his agency of the estate to which he has so long been
+receiver. His friends might advise him, you know; now he is free. You
+yourself, Miss Wickfield--Copperfield--I--’
+
+‘I have considered it, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, looking to me, ‘and I feel
+that it ought not to be, and must not be; even on the recommendation of
+a friend to whom I am so grateful, and owe so much.’
+
+‘I will not say that I recommend it,’ observed Traddles. ‘I think it
+right to suggest it. No more.’
+
+‘I am happy to hear you say so,’ answered Agnes, steadily, ‘for it gives
+me hope, almost assurance, that we think alike. Dear Mr. Traddles and
+dear Trotwood, papa once free with honour, what could I wish for! I have
+always aspired, if I could have released him from the toils in which he
+was held, to render back some little portion of the love and care I owe
+him, and to devote my life to him. It has been, for years, the utmost
+height of my hopes. To take our future on myself, will be the next
+great happiness--the next to his release from all trust and
+responsibility--that I can know.’
+
+‘Have you thought how, Agnes?’
+
+‘Often! I am not afraid, dear Trotwood. I am certain of success. So many
+people know me here, and think kindly of me, that I am certain. Don’t
+mistrust me. Our wants are not many. If I rent the dear old house, and
+keep a school, I shall be useful and happy.’
+
+The calm fervour of her cheerful voice brought back so vividly, first
+the dear old house itself, and then my solitary home, that my heart was
+too full for speech. Traddles pretended for a little while to be busily
+looking among the papers.
+
+‘Next, Miss Trotwood,’ said Traddles, ‘that property of yours.’
+
+‘Well, sir,’ sighed my aunt. ‘All I have got to say about it is, that if
+it’s gone, I can bear it; and if it’s not gone, I shall be glad to get
+it back.’
+
+‘It was originally, I think, eight thousand pounds, Consols?’ said
+Traddles.
+
+‘Right!’ replied my aunt.
+
+‘I can’t account for more than five,’ said Traddles, with an air of
+perplexity.
+
+‘--thousand, do you mean?’ inquired my aunt, with uncommon composure,
+‘or pounds?’
+
+‘Five thousand pounds,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘It was all there was,’ returned my aunt. ‘I sold three, myself. One, I
+paid for your articles, Trot, my dear; and the other two I have by me.
+When I lost the rest, I thought it wise to say nothing about that sum,
+but to keep it secretly for a rainy day. I wanted to see how you would
+come out of the trial, Trot; and you came out nobly--persevering,
+self-reliant, self-denying! So did Dick. Don’t speak to me, for I find
+my nerves a little shaken!’
+
+Nobody would have thought so, to see her sitting upright, with her arms
+folded; but she had wonderful self-command.
+
+‘Then I am delighted to say,’ cried Traddles, beaming with joy, ‘that we
+have recovered the whole money!’
+
+‘Don’t congratulate me, anybody!’ exclaimed my aunt. ‘How so, sir?’
+
+‘You believed it had been misappropriated by Mr. Wickfield?’ said
+Traddles.
+
+‘Of course I did,’ said my aunt, ‘and was therefore easily silenced.
+Agnes, not a word!’
+
+‘And indeed,’ said Traddles, ‘it was sold, by virtue of the power of
+management he held from you; but I needn’t say by whom sold, or on whose
+actual signature. It was afterwards pretended to Mr. Wickfield, by that
+rascal,--and proved, too, by figures,--that he had possessed himself of
+the money (on general instructions, he said) to keep other deficiencies
+and difficulties from the light. Mr. Wickfield, being so weak and
+helpless in his hands as to pay you, afterwards, several sums of
+interest on a pretended principal which he knew did not exist, made
+himself, unhappily, a party to the fraud.’
+
+‘And at last took the blame upon himself,’ added my aunt; ‘and wrote me
+a mad letter, charging himself with robbery, and wrong unheard of. Upon
+which I paid him a visit early one morning, called for a candle, burnt
+the letter, and told him if he ever could right me and himself, to
+do it; and if he couldn’t, to keep his own counsel for his daughter’s
+sake.---If anybody speaks to me, I’ll leave the house!’
+
+We all remained quiet; Agnes covering her face.
+
+‘Well, my dear friend,’ said my aunt, after a pause, ‘and you have
+really extorted the money back from him?’
+
+‘Why, the fact is,’ returned Traddles, ‘Mr. Micawber had so completely
+hemmed him in, and was always ready with so many new points if an
+old one failed, that he could not escape from us. A most remarkable
+circumstance is, that I really don’t think he grasped this sum even so
+much for the gratification of his avarice, which was inordinate, as in
+the hatred he felt for Copperfield. He said so to me, plainly. He said
+he would even have spent as much, to baulk or injure Copperfield.’
+
+‘Ha!’ said my aunt, knitting her brows thoughtfully, and glancing at
+Agnes. ‘And what’s become of him?’
+
+‘I don’t know. He left here,’ said Traddles, ‘with his mother, who had
+been clamouring, and beseeching, and disclosing, the whole time. They
+went away by one of the London night coaches, and I know no more about
+him; except that his malevolence to me at parting was audacious. He
+seemed to consider himself hardly less indebted to me, than to Mr.
+Micawber; which I consider (as I told him) quite a compliment.’
+
+‘Do you suppose he has any money, Traddles?’ I asked.
+
+‘Oh dear, yes, I should think so,’ he replied, shaking his head,
+seriously. ‘I should say he must have pocketed a good deal, in one
+way or other. But, I think you would find, Copperfield, if you had an
+opportunity of observing his course, that money would never keep that
+man out of mischief. He is such an incarnate hypocrite, that whatever
+object he pursues, he must pursue crookedly. It’s his only compensation
+for the outward restraints he puts upon himself. Always creeping along
+the ground to some small end or other, he will always magnify every
+object in the way; and consequently will hate and suspect everybody that
+comes, in the most innocent manner, between him and it. So the crooked
+courses will become crookeder, at any moment, for the least reason,
+or for none. It’s only necessary to consider his history here,’ said
+Traddles, ‘to know that.’
+
+‘He’s a monster of meanness!’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Really I don’t know about that,’ observed Traddles thoughtfully. ‘Many
+people can be very mean, when they give their minds to it.’
+
+‘And now, touching Mr. Micawber,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Well, really,’ said Traddles, cheerfully, ‘I must, once more, give Mr.
+Micawber high praise. But for his having been so patient and persevering
+for so long a time, we never could have hoped to do anything worth
+speaking of. And I think we ought to consider that Mr. Micawber did
+right, for right’s sake, when we reflect what terms he might have made
+with Uriah Heep himself, for his silence.’
+
+‘I think so too,’ said I.
+
+‘Now, what would you give him?’ inquired my aunt.
+
+‘Oh! Before you come to that,’ said Traddles, a little disconcerted,
+‘I am afraid I thought it discreet to omit (not being able to carry
+everything before me) two points, in making this lawless adjustment--for
+it’s perfectly lawless from beginning to end--of a difficult affair.
+Those I.O.U.’s, and so forth, which Mr. Micawber gave him for the
+advances he had--’
+
+‘Well! They must be paid,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Yes, but I don’t know when they may be proceeded on, or where they
+are,’ rejoined Traddles, opening his eyes; ‘and I anticipate, that,
+between this time and his departure, Mr. Micawber will be constantly
+arrested, or taken in execution.’
+
+‘Then he must be constantly set free again, and taken out of execution,’
+said my aunt. ‘What’s the amount altogether?’
+
+‘Why, Mr. Micawber has entered the transactions--he calls them
+transactions--with great form, in a book,’ rejoined Traddles, smiling;
+‘and he makes the amount a hundred and three pounds, five.’
+
+‘Now, what shall we give him, that sum included?’ said my aunt. ‘Agnes,
+my dear, you and I can talk about division of it afterwards. What should
+it be? Five hundred pounds?’
+
+Upon this, Traddles and I both struck in at once. We both recommended
+a small sum in money, and the payment, without stipulation to Mr.
+Micawber, of the Uriah claims as they came in. We proposed that the
+family should have their passage and their outfit, and a hundred pounds;
+and that Mr. Micawber’s arrangement for the repayment of the advances
+should be gravely entered into, as it might be wholesome for him
+to suppose himself under that responsibility. To this, I added the
+suggestion, that I should give some explanation of his character and
+history to Mr. Peggotty, who I knew could be relied on; and that to Mr.
+Peggotty should be quietly entrusted the discretion of advancing another
+hundred. I further proposed to interest Mr. Micawber in Mr. Peggotty,
+by confiding so much of Mr. Peggotty’s story to him as I might feel
+justified in relating, or might think expedient; and to endeavour to
+bring each of them to bear upon the other, for the common advantage. We
+all entered warmly into these views; and I may mention at once, that the
+principals themselves did so, shortly afterwards, with perfect good will
+and harmony.
+
+Seeing that Traddles now glanced anxiously at my aunt again, I reminded
+him of the second and last point to which he had adverted.
+
+‘You and your aunt will excuse me, Copperfield, if I touch upon a
+painful theme, as I greatly fear I shall,’ said Traddles, hesitating;
+‘but I think it necessary to bring it to your recollection. On the day
+of Mr. Micawber’s memorable denunciation a threatening allusion was made
+by Uriah Heep to your aunt’s--husband.’
+
+My aunt, retaining her stiff position, and apparent composure, assented
+with a nod.
+
+‘Perhaps,’ observed Traddles, ‘it was mere purposeless impertinence?’
+
+‘No,’ returned my aunt.
+
+‘There was--pardon me--really such a person, and at all in his power?’
+hinted Traddles.
+
+‘Yes, my good friend,’ said my aunt.
+
+Traddles, with a perceptible lengthening of his face, explained that he
+had not been able to approach this subject; that it had shared the fate
+of Mr. Micawber’s liabilities, in not being comprehended in the terms he
+had made; that we were no longer of any authority with Uriah Heep; and
+that if he could do us, or any of us, any injury or annoyance, no doubt
+he would.
+
+My aunt remained quiet; until again some stray tears found their way to
+her cheeks. ‘You are quite right,’ she said. ‘It was very thoughtful to
+mention it.’
+
+‘Can I--or Copperfield--do anything?’ asked Traddles, gently.
+
+‘Nothing,’ said my aunt. ‘I thank you many times. Trot, my dear, a vain
+threat! Let us have Mr. and Mrs. Micawber back. And don’t any of you
+speak to me!’ With that she smoothed her dress, and sat, with her
+upright carriage, looking at the door.
+
+‘Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber!’ said my aunt, when they entered. ‘We have
+been discussing your emigration, with many apologies to you for keeping
+you out of the room so long; and I’ll tell you what arrangements we
+propose.’
+
+These she explained to the unbounded satisfaction of the
+family,--children and all being then present,--and so much to the
+awakening of Mr. Micawber’s punctual habits in the opening stage of
+all bill transactions, that he could not be dissuaded from immediately
+rushing out, in the highest spirits, to buy the stamps for his notes of
+hand. But, his joy received a sudden check; for within five minutes,
+he returned in the custody of a sheriff ‘s officer, informing us, in
+a flood of tears, that all was lost. We, being quite prepared for this
+event, which was of course a proceeding of Uriah Heep’s, soon paid the
+money; and in five minutes more Mr. Micawber was seated at the table,
+filling up the stamps with an expression of perfect joy, which only
+that congenial employment, or the making of punch, could impart in full
+completeness to his shining face. To see him at work on the stamps, with
+the relish of an artist, touching them like pictures, looking at them
+sideways, taking weighty notes of dates and amounts in his pocket-book,
+and contemplating them when finished, with a high sense of their
+precious value, was a sight indeed.
+
+‘Now, the best thing you can do, sir, if you’ll allow me to advise
+you,’ said my aunt, after silently observing him, ‘is to abjure that
+occupation for evermore.’
+
+‘Madam,’ replied Mr. Micawber, ‘it is my intention to register such a
+vow on the virgin page of the future. Mrs. Micawber will attest it. I
+trust,’ said Mr. Micawber, solemnly, ‘that my son Wilkins will ever bear
+in mind, that he had infinitely better put his fist in the fire, than
+use it to handle the serpents that have poisoned the life-blood of his
+unhappy parent!’ Deeply affected, and changed in a moment to the image
+of despair, Mr. Micawber regarded the serpents with a look of gloomy
+abhorrence (in which his late admiration of them was not quite subdued),
+folded them up and put them in his pocket.
+
+This closed the proceedings of the evening. We were weary with sorrow
+and fatigue, and my aunt and I were to return to London on the morrow.
+It was arranged that the Micawbers should follow us, after effecting a
+sale of their goods to a broker; that Mr. Wickfield’s affairs should be
+brought to a settlement, with all convenient speed, under the direction
+of Traddles; and that Agnes should also come to London, pending those
+arrangements. We passed the night at the old house, which, freed from
+the presence of the Heeps, seemed purged of a disease; and I lay in my
+old room, like a shipwrecked wanderer come home.
+
+We went back next day to my aunt’s house--not to mine--and when she and
+I sat alone, as of old, before going to bed, she said:
+
+‘Trot, do you really wish to know what I have had upon my mind lately?’
+
+‘Indeed I do, aunt. If there ever was a time when I felt unwilling that
+you should have a sorrow or anxiety which I could not share, it is now.’
+
+‘You have had sorrow enough, child,’ said my aunt, affectionately,
+‘without the addition of my little miseries. I could have no other
+motive, Trot, in keeping anything from you.’
+
+‘I know that well,’ said I. ‘But tell me now.’
+
+‘Would you ride with me a little way tomorrow morning?’ asked my aunt.
+
+‘Of course.’
+
+‘At nine,’ said she. ‘I’ll tell you then, my dear.’
+
+At nine, accordingly, we went out in a little chariot, and drove to
+London. We drove a long way through the streets, until we came to one of
+the large hospitals. Standing hard by the building was a plain hearse.
+The driver recognized my aunt, and, in obedience to a motion of her hand
+at the window, drove slowly off; we following.
+
+‘You understand it now, Trot,’ said my aunt. ‘He is gone!’
+
+‘Did he die in the hospital?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+She sat immovable beside me; but, again I saw the stray tears on her
+face.
+
+‘He was there once before,’ said my aunt presently. ‘He was ailing a
+long time--a shattered, broken man, these many years. When he knew his
+state in this last illness, he asked them to send for me. He was sorry
+then. Very sorry.’
+
+‘You went, I know, aunt.’
+
+‘I went. I was with him a good deal afterwards.’
+
+‘He died the night before we went to Canterbury?’ said I. My aunt
+nodded. ‘No one can harm him now,’ she said. ‘It was a vain threat.’
+
+We drove away, out of town, to the churchyard at Hornsey. ‘Better here
+than in the streets,’ said my aunt. ‘He was born here.’
+
+We alighted; and followed the plain coffin to a corner I remember well,
+where the service was read consigning it to the dust.
+
+‘Six-and-thirty years ago, this day, my dear,’ said my aunt, as we
+walked back to the chariot, ‘I was married. God forgive us all!’ We took
+our seats in silence; and so she sat beside me for a long time, holding
+my hand. At length she suddenly burst into tears, and said:
+
+‘He was a fine-looking man when I married him, Trot--and he was sadly
+changed!’
+
+It did not last long. After the relief of tears, she soon became
+composed, and even cheerful. Her nerves were a little shaken, she said,
+or she would not have given way to it. God forgive us all!
+
+So we rode back to her little cottage at Highgate, where we found the
+following short note, which had arrived by that morning’s post from Mr.
+Micawber:
+
+
+ ‘Canterbury,
+
+ ‘Friday.
+
+‘My dear Madam, and Copperfield,
+
+‘The fair land of promise lately looming on the horizon is again
+enveloped in impenetrable mists, and for ever withdrawn from the eyes of
+a drifting wretch whose Doom is sealed!
+
+‘Another writ has been issued (in His Majesty’s High Court of King’s
+Bench at Westminster), in another cause of HEEP V. MICAWBER, and
+the defendant in that cause is the prey of the sheriff having legal
+jurisdiction in this bailiwick.
+
+ ‘Now’s the day, and now’s the hour,
+ See the front of battle lower,
+ See approach proud EDWARD’S power--
+ Chains and slavery!
+
+‘Consigned to which, and to a speedy end (for mental torture is not
+supportable beyond a certain point, and that point I feel I have
+attained), my course is run. Bless you, bless you! Some future
+traveller, visiting, from motives of curiosity, not unmingled, let us
+hope, with sympathy, the place of confinement allotted to debtors in
+this city, may, and I trust will, Ponder, as he traces on its wall,
+inscribed with a rusty nail,
+
+ ‘The obscure initials,
+
+ ‘W. M.
+
+‘P.S. I re-open this to say that our common friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles
+(who has not yet left us, and is looking extremely well), has paid the
+debt and costs, in the noble name of Miss Trotwood; and that myself and
+family are at the height of earthly bliss.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 55. TEMPEST
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 56. THE NEW WOUND, AND THE OLD
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 57. THE EMIGRANTS
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 58. ABSENCE
+
+
+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!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 59. RETURN
+
+
+I landed in London on a wintry autumn evening. It was dark and raining,
+and I saw more fog and mud in a minute than I had seen in a year. I
+walked from the Custom House to the Monument before I found a coach;
+and although the very house-fronts, looking on the swollen gutters, were
+like old friends to me, I could not but admit that they were very dingy
+friends.
+
+I have often remarked--I suppose everybody has--that one’s going away
+from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for change in it.
+As I looked out of the coach window, and observed that an old house on
+Fish-street Hill, which had stood untouched by painter, carpenter, or
+bricklayer, for a century, had been pulled down in my absence; and that
+a neighbouring street, of time-honoured insalubrity and inconvenience,
+was being drained and widened; I half expected to find St. Paul’s
+Cathedral looking older.
+
+For some changes in the fortunes of my friends, I was prepared. My aunt
+had long been re-established at Dover, and Traddles had begun to get
+into some little practice at the Bar, in the very first term after my
+departure. He had chambers in Gray’s Inn, now; and had told me, in his
+last letters, that he was not without hopes of being soon united to the
+dearest girl in the world.
+
+They expected me home before Christmas; but had no idea of my returning
+so soon. I had purposely misled them, that I might have the pleasure of
+taking them by surprise. And yet, I was perverse enough to feel a chill
+and disappointment in receiving no welcome, and rattling, alone and
+silent, through the misty streets.
+
+The well-known shops, however, with their cheerful lights, did something
+for me; and when I alighted at the door of the Gray’s Inn Coffee-house,
+I had recovered my spirits. It recalled, at first, that so-different
+time when I had put up at the Golden Cross, and reminded me of the
+changes that had come to pass since then; but that was natural.
+
+‘Do you know where Mr. Traddles lives in the Inn?’ I asked the waiter,
+as I warmed myself by the coffee-room fire.
+
+‘Holborn Court, sir. Number two.’
+
+‘Mr. Traddles has a rising reputation among the lawyers, I believe?’
+said I.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ returned the waiter, ‘probably he has, sir; but I am not
+aware of it myself.’
+
+This waiter, who was middle-aged and spare, looked for help to a waiter
+of more authority--a stout, potential old man, with a double chin,
+in black breeches and stockings, who came out of a place like a
+churchwarden’s pew, at the end of the coffee-room, where he kept company
+with a cash-box, a Directory, a Law-list, and other books and papers.
+
+‘Mr. Traddles,’ said the spare waiter. ‘Number two in the Court.’
+
+The potential waiter waved him away, and turned, gravely, to me.
+
+‘I was inquiring,’ said I, ‘whether Mr. Traddles, at number two in the
+Court, has not a rising reputation among the lawyers?’
+
+‘Never heard his name,’ said the waiter, in a rich husky voice.
+
+I felt quite apologetic for Traddles.
+
+‘He’s a young man, sure?’ said the portentous waiter, fixing his eyes
+severely on me. ‘How long has he been in the Inn?’
+
+‘Not above three years,’ said I.
+
+The waiter, who I supposed had lived in his churchwarden’s pew for forty
+years, could not pursue such an insignificant subject. He asked me what
+I would have for dinner?
+
+I felt I was in England again, and really was quite cast down on
+Traddles’s account. There seemed to be no hope for him. I meekly ordered
+a bit of fish and a steak, and stood before the fire musing on his
+obscurity.
+
+As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking
+that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he
+was, was an arduous place to rise in. It had such a prescriptive,
+stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced about the
+room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no doubt, in exactly the
+same manner when the chief waiter was a boy--if he ever was a boy,
+which appeared improbable; and at the shining tables, where I saw
+myself reflected, in unruffled depths of old mahogany; and at the lamps,
+without a flaw in their trimming or cleaning; and at the comfortable
+green curtains, with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the boxes;
+and at the two large coal fires, brightly burning; and at the rows of
+decanters, burly as if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive old
+port wine below; and both England, and the law, appeared to me to be
+very difficult indeed to be taken by storm. I went up to my bedroom
+to change my wet clothes; and the vast extent of that old wainscoted
+apartment (which was over the archway leading to the Inn, I remember),
+and the sedate immensity of the four-post bedstead, and the indomitable
+gravity of the chests of drawers, all seemed to unite in sternly
+frowning on the fortunes of Traddles, or on any such daring youth. I
+came down again to my dinner; and even the slow comfort of the meal,
+and the orderly silence of the place--which was bare of guests, the Long
+Vacation not yet being over--were eloquent on the audacity of Traddles,
+and his small hopes of a livelihood for twenty years to come.
+
+I had seen nothing like this since I went away, and it quite dashed my
+hopes for my friend. The chief waiter had had enough of me. He came near
+me no more; but devoted himself to an old gentleman in long gaiters, to
+meet whom a pint of special port seemed to come out of the cellar of its
+own accord, for he gave no order. The second waiter informed me, in a
+whisper, that this old gentleman was a retired conveyancer living in the
+Square, and worth a mint of money, which it was expected he would leave
+to his laundress’s daughter; likewise that it was rumoured that he had
+a service of plate in a bureau, all tarnished with lying by, though more
+than one spoon and a fork had never yet been beheld in his chambers
+by mortal vision. By this time, I quite gave Traddles up for lost; and
+settled in my own mind that there was no hope for him.
+
+Being very anxious to see the dear old fellow, nevertheless, I
+dispatched my dinner, in a manner not at all calculated to raise me in
+the opinion of the chief waiter, and hurried out by the back way. Number
+two in the Court was soon reached; and an inscription on the door-post
+informing me that Mr. Traddles occupied a set of chambers on the top
+storey, I ascended the staircase. A crazy old staircase I found it to
+be, feebly lighted on each landing by a club--headed little oil wick,
+dying away in a little dungeon of dirty glass.
+
+In the course of my stumbling upstairs, I fancied I heard a pleasant
+sound of laughter; and not the laughter of an attorney or barrister, or
+attorney’s clerk or barrister’s clerk, but of two or three merry girls.
+Happening, however, as I stopped to listen, to put my foot in a hole
+where the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn had left a plank deficient,
+I fell down with some noise, and when I recovered my footing all was
+silent.
+
+Groping my way more carefully, for the rest of the journey, my heart
+beat high when I found the outer door, which had Mr. TRADDLES painted on
+it, open. I knocked. A considerable scuffling within ensued, but nothing
+else. I therefore knocked again.
+
+A small sharp-looking lad, half-footboy and half-clerk, who was very
+much out of breath, but who looked at me as if he defied me to prove it
+legally, presented himself.
+
+‘Is Mr. Traddles within?’ I said.
+
+‘Yes, sir, but he’s engaged.’
+
+‘I want to see him.’
+
+After a moment’s survey of me, the sharp-looking lad decided to let me
+in; and opening the door wider for that purpose, admitted me, first,
+into a little closet of a hall, and next into a little sitting-room;
+where I came into the presence of my old friend (also out of breath),
+seated at a table, and bending over papers.
+
+‘Good God!’ cried Traddles, looking up. ‘It’s Copperfield!’ and rushed
+into my arms, where I held him tight.
+
+‘All well, my dear Traddles?’
+
+‘All well, my dear, dear Copperfield, and nothing but good news!’
+
+We cried with pleasure, both of us.
+
+‘My dear fellow,’ said Traddles, rumpling his hair in his excitement,
+which was a most unnecessary operation, ‘my dearest Copperfield, my
+long-lost and most welcome friend, how glad I am to see you! How
+brown you are! How glad I am! Upon my life and honour, I never was so
+rejoiced, my beloved Copperfield, never!’
+
+I was equally at a loss to express my emotions. I was quite unable to
+speak, at first.
+
+‘My dear fellow!’ said Traddles. ‘And grown so famous! My glorious
+Copperfield! Good gracious me, WHEN did you come, WHERE have you come
+from, WHAT have you been doing?’
+
+Never pausing for an answer to anything he said, Traddles, who had
+clapped me into an easy-chair by the fire, all this time impetuously
+stirred the fire with one hand, and pulled at my neck-kerchief with
+the other, under some wild delusion that it was a great-coat. Without
+putting down the poker, he now hugged me again; and I hugged him; and,
+both laughing, and both wiping our eyes, we both sat down, and shook
+hands across the hearth.
+
+‘To think,’ said Traddles, ‘that you should have been so nearly coming
+home as you must have been, my dear old boy, and not at the ceremony!’
+
+‘What ceremony, my dear Traddles?’
+
+‘Good gracious me!’ cried Traddles, opening his eyes in his old way.
+‘Didn’t you get my last letter?’
+
+‘Certainly not, if it referred to any ceremony.’
+
+‘Why, my dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, sticking his hair upright
+with both hands, and then putting his hands on my knees, ‘I am married!’
+
+‘Married!’ I cried joyfully.
+
+‘Lord bless me, yes!’ said Traddles--‘by the Reverend Horace--to
+Sophy--down in Devonshire. Why, my dear boy, she’s behind the window
+curtain! Look here!’
+
+To my amazement, the dearest girl in the world came at that same
+instant, laughing and blushing, from her place of concealment. And a
+more cheerful, amiable, honest, happy, bright-looking bride, I believe
+(as I could not help saying on the spot) the world never saw. I kissed
+her as an old acquaintance should, and wished them joy with all my might
+of heart.
+
+‘Dear me,’ said Traddles, ‘what a delightful re-union this is! You are
+so extremely brown, my dear Copperfield! God bless my soul, how happy I
+am!’
+
+‘And so am I,’ said I.
+
+‘And I am sure I am!’ said the blushing and laughing Sophy.
+
+‘We are all as happy as possible!’ said Traddles. ‘Even the girls are
+happy. Dear me, I declare I forgot them!’
+
+‘Forgot?’ said I.
+
+‘The girls,’ said Traddles. ‘Sophy’s sisters. They are staying with us.
+They have come to have a peep at London. The fact is, when--was it you
+that tumbled upstairs, Copperfield?’
+
+‘It was,’ said I, laughing.
+
+‘Well then, when you tumbled upstairs,’ said Traddles, ‘I was romping
+with the girls. In point of fact, we were playing at Puss in the Corner.
+But as that wouldn’t do in Westminster Hall, and as it wouldn’t look
+quite professional if they were seen by a client, they decamped. And
+they are now--listening, I have no doubt,’ said Traddles, glancing at
+the door of another room.
+
+‘I am sorry,’ said I, laughing afresh, ‘to have occasioned such a
+dispersion.’
+
+‘Upon my word,’ rejoined Traddles, greatly delighted, ‘if you had seen
+them running away, and running back again, after you had knocked, to
+pick up the combs they had dropped out of their hair, and going on in
+the maddest manner, you wouldn’t have said so. My love, will you fetch
+the girls?’
+
+Sophy tripped away, and we heard her received in the adjoining room with
+a peal of laughter.
+
+‘Really musical, isn’t it, my dear Copperfield?’ said Traddles. ‘It’s
+very agreeable to hear. It quite lights up these old rooms. To an
+unfortunate bachelor of a fellow who has lived alone all his life, you
+know, it’s positively delicious. It’s charming. Poor things, they have
+had a great loss in Sophy--who, I do assure you, Copperfield is, and
+ever was, the dearest girl!--and it gratifies me beyond expression
+to find them in such good spirits. The society of girls is a very
+delightful thing, Copperfield. It’s not professional, but it’s very
+delightful.’
+
+Observing that he slightly faltered, and comprehending that in the
+goodness of his heart he was fearful of giving me some pain by what he
+had said, I expressed my concurrence with a heartiness that evidently
+relieved and pleased him greatly.
+
+‘But then,’ said Traddles, ‘our domestic arrangements are, to say
+the truth, quite unprofessional altogether, my dear Copperfield. Even
+Sophy’s being here, is unprofessional. And we have no other place of
+abode. We have put to sea in a cockboat, but we are quite prepared to
+rough it. And Sophy’s an extraordinary manager! You’ll be surprised how
+those girls are stowed away. I am sure I hardly know how it’s done!’
+
+‘Are many of the young ladies with you?’ I inquired.
+
+‘The eldest, the Beauty is here,’ said Traddles, in a low confidential
+voice, ‘Caroline. And Sarah’s here--the one I mentioned to you as having
+something the matter with her spine, you know. Immensely better! And the
+two youngest that Sophy educated are with us. And Louisa’s here.’
+
+‘Indeed!’ cried I.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Traddles. ‘Now the whole set--I mean the chambers--is only
+three rooms; but Sophy arranges for the girls in the most wonderful way,
+and they sleep as comfortably as possible. Three in that room,’ said
+Traddles, pointing. ‘Two in that.’
+
+I could not help glancing round, in search of the accommodation
+remaining for Mr. and Mrs. Traddles. Traddles understood me.
+
+‘Well!’ said Traddles, ‘we are prepared to rough it, as I said just now,
+and we did improvise a bed last week, upon the floor here. But there’s
+a little room in the roof--a very nice room, when you’re up there--which
+Sophy papered herself, to surprise me; and that’s our room at present.
+It’s a capital little gipsy sort of place. There’s quite a view from
+it.’
+
+‘And you are happily married at last, my dear Traddles!’ said I. ‘How
+rejoiced I am!’
+
+‘Thank you, my dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, as we shook hands
+once more. ‘Yes, I am as happy as it’s possible to be. There’s your old
+friend, you see,’ said Traddles, nodding triumphantly at the flower-pot
+and stand; ‘and there’s the table with the marble top! All the other
+furniture is plain and serviceable, you perceive. And as to plate, Lord
+bless you, we haven’t so much as a tea-spoon.’
+
+‘All to be earned?’ said I, cheerfully.
+
+‘Exactly so,’ replied Traddles, ‘all to be earned. Of course we have
+something in the shape of tea-spoons, because we stir our tea. But
+they’re Britannia metal.’
+
+‘The silver will be the brighter when it comes,’ said I.
+
+‘The very thing we say!’ cried Traddles. ‘You see, my dear Copperfield,’
+falling again into the low confidential tone, ‘after I had delivered my
+argument in DOE dem. JIPES versus WIGZIELL, which did me great service
+with the profession, I went down into Devonshire, and had some serious
+conversation in private with the Reverend Horace. I dwelt upon the fact
+that Sophy--who I do assure you, Copperfield, is the dearest girl!--’
+
+‘I am certain she is!’ said I.
+
+‘She is, indeed!’ rejoined Traddles. ‘But I am afraid I am wandering
+from the subject. Did I mention the Reverend Horace?’
+
+‘You said that you dwelt upon the fact--’
+
+‘True! Upon the fact that Sophy and I had been engaged for a long
+period, and that Sophy, with the permission of her parents, was more
+than content to take me--in short,’ said Traddles, with his old frank
+smile, ‘on our present Britannia-metal footing. Very well. I then
+proposed to the Reverend Horace--who is a most excellent clergyman,
+Copperfield, and ought to be a Bishop; or at least ought to have enough
+to live upon, without pinching himself--that if I could turn the corner,
+say of two hundred and fifty pounds, in one year; and could see my
+way pretty clearly to that, or something better, next year; and could
+plainly furnish a little place like this, besides; then, and in that
+case, Sophy and I should be united. I took the liberty of representing
+that we had been patient for a good many years; and that the
+circumstance of Sophy’s being extraordinarily useful at home, ought not
+to operate with her affectionate parents, against her establishment in
+life--don’t you see?’
+
+‘Certainly it ought not,’ said I.
+
+‘I am glad you think so, Copperfield,’ rejoined Traddles, ‘because,
+without any imputation on the Reverend Horace, I do think parents, and
+brothers, and so forth, are sometimes rather selfish in such cases.
+Well! I also pointed out, that my most earnest desire was, to be useful
+to the family; and that if I got on in the world, and anything should
+happen to him--I refer to the Reverend Horace--’
+
+‘I understand,’ said I.
+
+‘--Or to Mrs. Crewler--it would be the utmost gratification of my
+wishes, to be a parent to the girls. He replied in a most admirable
+manner, exceedingly flattering to my feelings, and undertook to obtain
+the consent of Mrs. Crewler to this arrangement. They had a dreadful
+time of it with her. It mounted from her legs into her chest, and then
+into her head--’
+
+‘What mounted?’ I asked.
+
+‘Her grief,’ replied Traddles, with a serious look. ‘Her feelings
+generally. As I mentioned on a former occasion, she is a very superior
+woman, but has lost the use of her limbs. Whatever occurs to harass
+her, usually settles in her legs; but on this occasion it mounted to the
+chest, and then to the head, and, in short, pervaded the whole system
+in a most alarming manner. However, they brought her through it by
+unremitting and affectionate attention; and we were married yesterday
+six weeks. You have no idea what a Monster I felt, Copperfield, when I
+saw the whole family crying and fainting away in every direction! Mrs.
+Crewler couldn’t see me before we left--couldn’t forgive me, then, for
+depriving her of her child--but she is a good creature, and has done so
+since. I had a delightful letter from her, only this morning.’
+
+‘And in short, my dear friend,’ said I, ‘you feel as blest as you
+deserve to feel!’
+
+‘Oh! That’s your partiality!’ laughed Traddles. ‘But, indeed, I am in a
+most enviable state. I work hard, and read Law insatiably. I get up at
+five every morning, and don’t mind it at all. I hide the girls in the
+daytime, and make merry with them in the evening. And I assure you I am
+quite sorry that they are going home on Tuesday, which is the day before
+the first day of Michaelmas Term. But here,’ said Traddles, breaking off
+in his confidence, and speaking aloud, ‘ARE the girls! Mr. Copperfield,
+Miss Crewler--Miss Sarah--Miss Louisa--Margaret and Lucy!’
+
+They were a perfect nest of roses; they looked so wholesome and fresh.
+They were all pretty, and Miss Caroline was very handsome; but there was
+a loving, cheerful, fireside quality in Sophy’s bright looks, which was
+better than that, and which assured me that my friend had chosen well.
+We all sat round the fire; while the sharp boy, who I now divined had
+lost his breath in putting the papers out, cleared them away again, and
+produced the tea-things. After that, he retired for the night, shutting
+the outer door upon us with a bang. Mrs. Traddles, with perfect pleasure
+and composure beaming from her household eyes, having made the tea, then
+quietly made the toast as she sat in a corner by the fire.
+
+She had seen Agnes, she told me while she was toasting. ‘Tom’ had taken
+her down into Kent for a wedding trip, and there she had seen my aunt,
+too; and both my aunt and Agnes were well, and they had all talked of
+nothing but me. ‘Tom’ had never had me out of his thoughts, she really
+believed, all the time I had been away. ‘Tom’ was the authority for
+everything. ‘Tom’ was evidently the idol of her life; never to be shaken
+on his pedestal by any commotion; always to be believed in, and done
+homage to with the whole faith of her heart, come what might.
+
+The deference which both she and Traddles showed towards the Beauty,
+pleased me very much. I don’t know that I thought it very reasonable;
+but I thought it very delightful, and essentially a part of their
+character. If Traddles ever for an instant missed the tea-spoons that
+were still to be won, I have no doubt it was when he handed the Beauty
+her tea. If his sweet-tempered wife could have got up any self-assertion
+against anyone, I am satisfied it could only have been because she was
+the Beauty’s sister. A few slight indications of a rather petted and
+capricious manner, which I observed in the Beauty, were manifestly
+considered, by Traddles and his wife, as her birthright and natural
+endowment. If she had been born a Queen Bee, and they labouring Bees,
+they could not have been more satisfied of that.
+
+But their self-forgetfulness charmed me. Their pride in these girls, and
+their submission of themselves to all their whims, was the pleasantest
+little testimony to their own worth I could have desired to see. If
+Traddles were addressed as ‘a darling’, once in the course of that
+evening; and besought to bring something here, or carry something there,
+or take something up, or put something down, or find something, or fetch
+something, he was so addressed, by one or other of his sisters-in-law,
+at least twelve times in an hour. Neither could they do anything without
+Sophy. Somebody’s hair fell down, and nobody but Sophy could put it up.
+Somebody forgot how a particular tune went, and nobody but Sophy could
+hum that tune right. Somebody wanted to recall the name of a place in
+Devonshire, and only Sophy knew it. Something was wanted to be written
+home, and Sophy alone could be trusted to write before breakfast in
+the morning. Somebody broke down in a piece of knitting, and no one but
+Sophy was able to put the defaulter in the right direction. They were
+entire mistresses of the place, and Sophy and Traddles waited on them.
+How many children Sophy could have taken care of in her time, I can’t
+imagine; but she seemed to be famous for knowing every sort of song that
+ever was addressed to a child in the English tongue; and she sang dozens
+to order with the clearest little voice in the world, one after another
+(every sister issuing directions for a different tune, and the Beauty
+generally striking in last), so that I was quite fascinated. The best
+of all was, that, in the midst of their exactions, all the sisters had
+a great tenderness and respect both for Sophy and Traddles. I am sure,
+when I took my leave, and Traddles was coming out to walk with me to the
+coffee-house, I thought I had never seen an obstinate head of hair, or
+any other head of hair, rolling about in such a shower of kisses.
+
+Altogether, it was a scene I could not help dwelling on with pleasure,
+for a long time after I got back and had wished Traddles good night. If
+I had beheld a thousand roses blowing in a top set of chambers, in that
+withered Gray’s Inn, they could not have brightened it half so much.
+The idea of those Devonshire girls, among the dry law-stationers and the
+attorneys’ offices; and of the tea and toast, and children’s songs, in
+that grim atmosphere of pounce and parchment, red-tape, dusty wafers,
+ink-jars, brief and draft paper, law reports, writs, declarations, and
+bills of costs; seemed almost as pleasantly fanciful as if I had
+dreamed that the Sultan’s famous family had been admitted on the roll of
+attorneys, and had brought the talking bird, the singing tree, and the
+golden water into Gray’s Inn Hall. Somehow, I found that I had taken
+leave of Traddles for the night, and come back to the coffee-house, with
+a great change in my despondency about him. I began to think he would
+get on, in spite of all the many orders of chief waiters in England.
+
+Drawing a chair before one of the coffee-room fires to think about him
+at my leisure, I gradually fell from the consideration of his happiness
+to tracing prospects in the live-coals, and to thinking, as they broke
+and changed, of the principal vicissitudes and separations that had
+marked my life. I had not seen a coal fire, since I had left England
+three years ago: though many a wood fire had I watched, as it crumbled
+into hoary ashes, and mingled with the feathery heap upon the hearth,
+which not inaptly figured to me, in my despondency, my own dead hopes.
+
+I could think of the past now, gravely, but not bitterly; and could
+contemplate the future in a brave spirit. Home, in its best sense, was
+for me no more. She in whom I might have inspired a dearer love, I had
+taught to be my sister. She would marry, and would have new claimants on
+her tenderness; and in doing it, would never know the love for her that
+had grown up in my heart. It was right that I should pay the forfeit of
+my headlong passion. What I reaped, I had sown.
+
+I was thinking. And had I truly disciplined my heart to this, and could
+I resolutely bear it, and calmly hold the place in her home which she
+had calmly held in mine,--when I found my eyes resting on a countenance
+that might have arisen out of the fire, in its association with my early
+remembrances.
+
+Little Mr. Chillip the Doctor, to whose good offices I was indebted in
+the very first chapter of this history, sat reading a newspaper in the
+shadow of an opposite corner. He was tolerably stricken in years by this
+time; but, being a mild, meek, calm little man, had worn so easily, that
+I thought he looked at that moment just as he might have looked when he
+sat in our parlour, waiting for me to be born.
+
+Mr. Chillip had left Blunderstone six or seven years ago, and I had
+never seen him since. He sat placidly perusing the newspaper, with his
+little head on one side, and a glass of warm sherry negus at his
+elbow. He was so extremely conciliatory in his manner that he seemed to
+apologize to the very newspaper for taking the liberty of reading it.
+
+I walked up to where he was sitting, and said, ‘How do you do, Mr.
+Chillip?’
+
+He was greatly fluttered by this unexpected address from a stranger, and
+replied, in his slow way, ‘I thank you, sir, you are very good. Thank
+you, sir. I hope YOU are well.’
+
+‘You don’t remember me?’ said I.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, smiling very meekly, and shaking his
+head as he surveyed me, ‘I have a kind of an impression that something
+in your countenance is familiar to me, sir; but I couldn’t lay my hand
+upon your name, really.’
+
+‘And yet you knew it, long before I knew it myself,’ I returned.
+
+‘Did I indeed, sir?’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Is it possible that I had the
+honour, sir, of officiating when--?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said I.
+
+‘Dear me!’ cried Mr. Chillip. ‘But no doubt you are a good deal changed
+since then, sir?’
+
+‘Probably,’ said I.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ observed Mr. Chillip, ‘I hope you’ll excuse me, if I am
+compelled to ask the favour of your name?’
+
+On my telling him my name, he was really moved. He quite shook hands
+with me--which was a violent proceeding for him, his usual course being
+to slide a tepid little fish-slice, an inch or two in advance of his
+hip, and evince the greatest discomposure when anybody grappled with
+it. Even now, he put his hand in his coat-pocket as soon as he could
+disengage it, and seemed relieved when he had got it safe back.
+
+‘Dear me, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip, surveying me with his head on one
+side. ‘And it’s Mr. Copperfield, is it? Well, sir, I think I should have
+known you, if I had taken the liberty of looking more closely at you.
+There’s a strong resemblance between you and your poor father, sir.’
+
+‘I never had the happiness of seeing my father,’ I observed.
+
+‘Very true, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, in a soothing tone. ‘And very much
+to be deplored it was, on all accounts! We are not ignorant, sir,’ said
+Mr. Chillip, slowly shaking his little head again, ‘down in our part of
+the country, of your fame. There must be great excitement here, sir,’
+said Mr. Chillip, tapping himself on the forehead with his forefinger.
+‘You must find it a trying occupation, sir!’
+
+‘What is your part of the country now?’ I asked, seating myself near
+him.
+
+‘I am established within a few miles of Bury St. Edmund’s, sir,’ said
+Mr. Chillip. ‘Mrs. Chillip, coming into a little property in that
+neighbourhood, under her father’s will, I bought a practice down there,
+in which you will be glad to hear I am doing well. My daughter is
+growing quite a tall lass now, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, giving his little
+head another little shake. ‘Her mother let down two tucks in her frocks
+only last week. Such is time, you see, sir!’
+
+As the little man put his now empty glass to his lips, when he made this
+reflection, I proposed to him to have it refilled, and I would keep him
+company with another. ‘Well, sir,’ he returned, in his slow way, ‘it’s
+more than I am accustomed to; but I can’t deny myself the pleasure
+of your conversation. It seems but yesterday that I had the honour of
+attending you in the measles. You came through them charmingly, sir!’
+
+I acknowledged this compliment, and ordered the negus, which was soon
+produced. ‘Quite an uncommon dissipation!’ said Mr. Chillip, stirring
+it, ‘but I can’t resist so extraordinary an occasion. You have no
+family, sir?’
+
+I shook my head.
+
+‘I was aware that you sustained a bereavement, sir, some time ago,’ said
+Mr. Chillip. ‘I heard it from your father-in-law’s sister. Very decided
+character there, sir?’
+
+‘Why, yes,’ said I, ‘decided enough. Where did you see her, Mr.
+Chillip?’
+
+‘Are you not aware, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, with his placidest
+smile, ‘that your father-in-law is again a neighbour of mine?’
+
+‘No,’ said I.
+
+‘He is indeed, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Married a young lady of that
+part, with a very good little property, poor thing.---And this action
+of the brain now, sir? Don’t you find it fatigue you?’ said Mr. Chillip,
+looking at me like an admiring Robin.
+
+I waived that question, and returned to the Murdstones. ‘I was aware of
+his being married again. Do you attend the family?’ I asked.
+
+‘Not regularly. I have been called in,’ he replied. ‘Strong
+phrenological developments of the organ of firmness, in Mr. Murdstone
+and his sister, sir.’
+
+I replied with such an expressive look, that Mr. Chillip was emboldened
+by that, and the negus together, to give his head several short shakes,
+and thoughtfully exclaim, ‘Ah, dear me! We remember old times, Mr.
+Copperfield!’
+
+‘And the brother and sister are pursuing their old course, are they?’
+said I.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ replied Mr. Chillip, ‘a medical man, being so much in
+families, ought to have neither eyes nor ears for anything but his
+profession. Still, I must say, they are very severe, sir: both as to
+this life and the next.’
+
+‘The next will be regulated without much reference to them, I dare say,’
+I returned: ‘what are they doing as to this?’
+
+Mr. Chillip shook his head, stirred his negus, and sipped it.
+
+‘She was a charming woman, sir!’ he observed in a plaintive manner.
+
+‘The present Mrs. Murdstone?’
+
+‘A charming woman indeed, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip; ‘as amiable, I am sure,
+as it was possible to be! Mrs. Chillip’s opinion is, that her spirit
+has been entirely broken since her marriage, and that she is all but
+melancholy mad. And the ladies,’ observed Mr. Chillip, timorously, ‘are
+great observers, sir.’
+
+‘I suppose she was to be subdued and broken to their detestable mould,
+Heaven help her!’ said I. ‘And she has been.’
+
+‘Well, sir, there were violent quarrels at first, I assure you,’ said
+Mr. Chillip; ‘but she is quite a shadow now. Would it be considered
+forward if I was to say to you, sir, in confidence, that since the
+sister came to help, the brother and sister between them have nearly
+reduced her to a state of imbecility?’
+
+I told him I could easily believe it.
+
+‘I have no hesitation in saying,’ said Mr. Chillip, fortifying himself
+with another sip of negus, ‘between you and me, sir, that her mother
+died of it--or that tyranny, gloom, and worry have made Mrs. Murdstone
+nearly imbecile. She was a lively young woman, sir, before marriage, and
+their gloom and austerity destroyed her. They go about with her, now,
+more like her keepers than her husband and sister-in-law. That was
+Mrs. Chillip’s remark to me, only last week. And I assure you, sir, the
+ladies are great observers. Mrs. Chillip herself is a great observer!’
+
+‘Does he gloomily profess to be (I am ashamed to use the word in such
+association) religious still?’ I inquired.
+
+‘You anticipate, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, his eyelids getting quite
+red with the unwonted stimulus in which he was indulging. ‘One of Mrs.
+Chillip’s most impressive remarks. Mrs. Chillip,’ he proceeded, in the
+calmest and slowest manner, ‘quite electrified me, by pointing out
+that Mr. Murdstone sets up an image of himself, and calls it the Divine
+Nature. You might have knocked me down on the flat of my back, sir,
+with the feather of a pen, I assure you, when Mrs. Chillip said so. The
+ladies are great observers, sir?’
+
+‘Intuitively,’ said I, to his extreme delight.
+
+‘I am very happy to receive such support in my opinion, sir,’ he
+rejoined. ‘It is not often that I venture to give a non-medical opinion,
+I assure you. Mr. Murdstone delivers public addresses sometimes, and it
+is said,--in short, sir, it is said by Mrs. Chillip,--that the darker
+tyrant he has lately been, the more ferocious is his doctrine.’
+
+‘I believe Mrs. Chillip to be perfectly right,’ said I.
+
+‘Mrs. Chillip does go so far as to say,’ pursued the meekest of little
+men, much encouraged, ‘that what such people miscall their religion, is
+a vent for their bad humours and arrogance. And do you know I must say,
+sir,’ he continued, mildly laying his head on one side, ‘that I DON’T
+find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone in the New Testament?’
+
+‘I never found it either!’ said I.
+
+‘In the meantime, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, ‘they are much disliked;
+and as they are very free in consigning everybody who dislikes them
+to perdition, we really have a good deal of perdition going on in
+our neighbourhood! However, as Mrs. Chillip says, sir, they undergo a
+continual punishment; for they are turned inward, to feed upon their own
+hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. Now, sir, about that
+brain of yours, if you’ll excuse my returning to it. Don’t you expose it
+to a good deal of excitement, sir?’
+
+I found it not difficult, in the excitement of Mr. Chillip’s own brain,
+under his potations of negus, to divert his attention from this topic
+to his own affairs, on which, for the next half-hour, he was quite
+loquacious; giving me to understand, among other pieces of information,
+that he was then at the Gray’s Inn Coffee-house to lay his professional
+evidence before a Commission of Lunacy, touching the state of mind of a
+patient who had become deranged from excessive drinking. ‘And I assure
+you, sir,’ he said, ‘I am extremely nervous on such occasions. I could
+not support being what is called Bullied, sir. It would quite unman
+me. Do you know it was some time before I recovered the conduct of that
+alarming lady, on the night of your birth, Mr. Copperfield?’
+
+I told him that I was going down to my aunt, the Dragon of that night,
+early in the morning; and that she was one of the most tender-hearted
+and excellent of women, as he would know full well if he knew her
+better. The mere notion of the possibility of his ever seeing her again,
+appeared to terrify him. He replied with a small pale smile, ‘Is she so,
+indeed, sir? Really?’ and almost immediately called for a candle, and
+went to bed, as if he were not quite safe anywhere else. He did not
+actually stagger under the negus; but I should think his placid little
+pulse must have made two or three more beats in a minute, than it had
+done since the great night of my aunt’s disappointment, when she struck
+at him with her bonnet.
+
+Thoroughly tired, I went to bed too, at midnight; passed the next day on
+the Dover coach; burst safe and sound into my aunt’s old parlour while
+she was at tea (she wore spectacles now); and was received by her, and
+Mr. Dick, and dear old Peggotty, who acted as housekeeper, with open
+arms and tears of joy. My aunt was mightily amused, when we began to
+talk composedly, by my account of my meeting with Mr. Chillip, and of
+his holding her in such dread remembrance; and both she and Peggotty
+had a great deal to say about my poor mother’s second husband, and ‘that
+murdering woman of a sister’,--on whom I think no pain or penalty would
+have induced my aunt to bestow any Christian or Proper Name, or any
+other designation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 60. AGNES
+
+
+My aunt and I, when we were left alone, talked far into the night. How
+the emigrants never wrote home, otherwise than cheerfully and hopefully;
+how Mr. Micawber had actually remitted divers small sums of money, on
+account of those ‘pecuniary liabilities’, in reference to which he had
+been so business-like as between man and man; how Janet, returning into
+my aunt’s service when she came back to Dover, had finally carried out
+her renunciation of mankind by entering into wedlock with a thriving
+tavern-keeper; and how my aunt had finally set her seal on the same
+great principle, by aiding and abetting the bride, and crowning the
+marriage-ceremony with her presence; were among our topics--already
+more or less familiar to me through the letters I had had. Mr. Dick,
+as usual, was not forgotten. My aunt informed me how he incessantly
+occupied himself in copying everything he could lay his hands on, and
+kept King Charles the First at a respectful distance by that semblance
+of employment; how it was one of the main joys and rewards of her life
+that he was free and happy, instead of pining in monotonous restraint;
+and how (as a novel general conclusion) nobody but she could ever fully
+know what he was.
+
+‘And when, Trot,’ said my aunt, patting the back of my hand, as we sat
+in our old way before the fire, ‘when are you going over to Canterbury?’
+
+‘I shall get a horse, and ride over tomorrow morning, aunt, unless you
+will go with me?’
+
+‘No!’ said my aunt, in her short abrupt way. ‘I mean to stay where I
+am.’
+
+Then, I should ride, I said. I could not have come through Canterbury
+today without stopping, if I had been coming to anyone but her.
+
+She was pleased, but answered, ‘Tut, Trot; MY old bones would have
+kept till tomorrow!’ and softly patted my hand again, as I sat looking
+thoughtfully at the fire.
+
+Thoughtfully, for I could not be here once more, and so near Agnes,
+without the revival of those regrets with which I had so long been
+occupied. Softened regrets they might be, teaching me what I had failed
+to learn when my younger life was all before me, but not the less
+regrets. ‘Oh, Trot,’ I seemed to hear my aunt say once more; and I
+understood her better now--‘Blind, blind, blind!’
+
+We both kept silence for some minutes. When I raised my eyes, I found
+that she was steadily observant of me. Perhaps she had followed the
+current of my mind; for it seemed to me an easy one to track now, wilful
+as it had been once.
+
+‘You will find her father a white-haired old man,’ said my aunt, ‘though
+a better man in all other respects--a reclaimed man. Neither will you
+find him measuring all human interests, and joys, and sorrows, with his
+one poor little inch-rule now. Trust me, child, such things must shrink
+very much, before they can be measured off in that way.’
+
+‘Indeed they must,’ said I.
+
+‘You will find her,’ pursued my aunt, ‘as good, as beautiful, as
+earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been. If I knew higher
+praise, Trot, I would bestow it on her.’
+
+There was no higher praise for her; no higher reproach for me. Oh, how
+had I strayed so far away!
+
+‘If she trains the young girls whom she has about her, to be like
+herself,’ said my aunt, earnest even to the filling of her eyes with
+tears, ‘Heaven knows, her life will be well employed! Useful and happy,
+as she said that day! How could she be otherwise than useful and happy!’
+
+‘Has Agnes any--’ I was thinking aloud, rather than speaking.
+
+‘Well? Hey? Any what?’ said my aunt, sharply.
+
+‘Any lover,’ said I.
+
+‘A score,’ cried my aunt, with a kind of indignant pride. ‘She might
+have married twenty times, my dear, since you have been gone!’
+
+‘No doubt,’ said I. ‘No doubt. But has she any lover who is worthy of
+her? Agnes could care for no other.’
+
+My aunt sat musing for a little while, with her chin upon her hand.
+Slowly raising her eyes to mine, she said:
+
+‘I suspect she has an attachment, Trot.’
+
+‘A prosperous one?’ said I.
+
+‘Trot,’ returned my aunt gravely, ‘I can’t say. I have no right to tell
+you even so much. She has never confided it to me, but I suspect it.’
+
+She looked so attentively and anxiously at me (I even saw her tremble),
+that I felt now, more than ever, that she had followed my late thoughts.
+I summoned all the resolutions I had made, in all those many days and
+nights, and all those many conflicts of my heart.
+
+‘If it should be so,’ I began, ‘and I hope it is-’
+
+‘I don’t know that it is,’ said my aunt curtly. ‘You must not be ruled
+by my suspicions. You must keep them secret. They are very slight,
+perhaps. I have no right to speak.’
+
+‘If it should be so,’ I repeated, ‘Agnes will tell me at her own good
+time. A sister to whom I have confided so much, aunt, will not be
+reluctant to confide in me.’
+
+My aunt withdrew her eyes from mine, as slowly as she had turned them
+upon me; and covered them thoughtfully with her hand. By and by she
+put her other hand on my shoulder; and so we both sat, looking into the
+past, without saying another word, until we parted for the night.
+
+I rode away, early in the morning, for the scene of my old school-days.
+I cannot say that I was yet quite happy, in the hope that I was gaining
+a victory over myself; even in the prospect of so soon looking on her
+face again.
+
+The well-remembered ground was soon traversed, and I came into the quiet
+streets, where every stone was a boy’s book to me. I went on foot to the
+old house, and went away with a heart too full to enter. I returned; and
+looking, as I passed, through the low window of the turret-room where
+first Uriah Heep, and afterwards Mr. Micawber, had been wont to sit,
+saw that it was a little parlour now, and that there was no office.
+Otherwise the staid old house was, as to its cleanliness and order,
+still just as it had been when I first saw it. I requested the new maid
+who admitted me, to tell Miss Wickfield that a gentleman who waited on
+her from a friend abroad, was there; and I was shown up the grave old
+staircase (cautioned of the steps I knew so well), into the unchanged
+drawing-room. The books that Agnes and I had read together, were on
+their shelves; and the desk where I had laboured at my lessons, many
+a night, stood yet at the same old corner of the table. All the little
+changes that had crept in when the Heeps were there, were changed again.
+Everything was as it used to be, in the happy time.
+
+I stood in a window, and looked across the ancient street at the
+opposite houses, recalling how I had watched them on wet afternoons,
+when I first came there; and how I had used to speculate about the
+people who appeared at any of the windows, and had followed them with my
+eyes up and down stairs, while women went clicking along the pavement in
+pattens, and the dull rain fell in slanting lines, and poured out of the
+water-spout yonder, and flowed into the road. The feeling with which
+I used to watch the tramps, as they came into the town on those wet
+evenings, at dusk, and limped past, with their bundles drooping over
+their shoulders at the ends of sticks, came freshly back to me; fraught,
+as then, with the smell of damp earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the
+sensation of the very airs that blew upon me in my own toilsome journey.
+
+The opening of the little door in the panelled wall made me start and
+turn. Her beautiful serene eyes met mine as she came towards me. She
+stopped and laid her hand upon her bosom, and I caught her in my arms.
+
+‘Agnes! my dear girl! I have come too suddenly upon you.’
+
+‘No, no! I am so rejoiced to see you, Trotwood!’
+
+‘Dear Agnes, the happiness it is to me, to see you once again!’
+
+I folded her to my heart, and, for a little while, we were both silent.
+Presently we sat down, side by side; and her angel-face was turned upon
+me with the welcome I had dreamed of, waking and sleeping, for whole
+years.
+
+She was so true, she was so beautiful, she was so good,--I owed her so
+much gratitude, she was so dear to me, that I could find no utterance
+for what I felt. I tried to bless her, tried to thank her, tried to tell
+her (as I had often done in letters) what an influence she had upon me;
+but all my efforts were in vain. My love and joy were dumb.
+
+With her own sweet tranquillity, she calmed my agitation; led me back to
+the time of our parting; spoke to me of Emily, whom she had visited,
+in secret, many times; spoke to me tenderly of Dora’s grave. With the
+unerring instinct of her noble heart, she touched the chords of my
+memory so softly and harmoniously, that not one jarred within me; I
+could listen to the sorrowful, distant music, and desire to shrink from
+nothing it awoke. How could I, when, blended with it all, was her dear
+self, the better angel of my life?
+
+‘And you, Agnes,’ I said, by and by. ‘Tell me of yourself. You have
+hardly ever told me of your own life, in all this lapse of time!’
+
+‘What should I tell?’ she answered, with her radiant smile. ‘Papa is
+well. You see us here, quiet in our own home; our anxieties set at rest,
+our home restored to us; and knowing that, dear Trotwood, you know all.’
+
+‘All, Agnes?’ said I.
+
+She looked at me, with some fluttering wonder in her face.
+
+‘Is there nothing else, Sister?’ I said.
+
+Her colour, which had just now faded, returned, and faded again. She
+smiled; with a quiet sadness, I thought; and shook her head.
+
+I had sought to lead her to what my aunt had hinted at; for, sharply
+painful to me as it must be to receive that confidence, I was to
+discipline my heart, and do my duty to her. I saw, however, that she was
+uneasy, and I let it pass.
+
+‘You have much to do, dear Agnes?’
+
+‘With my school?’ said she, looking up again, in all her bright
+composure.
+
+‘Yes. It is laborious, is it not?’
+
+‘The labour is so pleasant,’ she returned, ‘that it is scarcely grateful
+in me to call it by that name.’
+
+‘Nothing good is difficult to you,’ said I.
+
+Her colour came and went once more; and once more, as she bent her head,
+I saw the same sad smile.
+
+‘You will wait and see papa,’ said Agnes, cheerfully, ‘and pass the
+day with us? Perhaps you will sleep in your own room? We always call it
+yours.’
+
+I could not do that, having promised to ride back to my aunt’s at night;
+but I would pass the day there, joyfully.
+
+‘I must be a prisoner for a little while,’ said Agnes, ‘but here are the
+old books, Trotwood, and the old music.’
+
+‘Even the old flowers are here,’ said I, looking round; ‘or the old
+kinds.’
+
+‘I have found a pleasure,’ returned Agnes, smiling, ‘while you have been
+absent, in keeping everything as it used to be when we were children.
+For we were very happy then, I think.’
+
+‘Heaven knows we were!’ said I.
+
+‘And every little thing that has reminded me of my brother,’ said Agnes,
+with her cordial eyes turned cheerfully upon me, ‘has been a welcome
+companion. Even this,’ showing me the basket-trifle, full of keys, still
+hanging at her side, ‘seems to jingle a kind of old tune!’
+
+She smiled again, and went out at the door by which she had come.
+
+It was for me to guard this sisterly affection with religious care. It
+was all that I had left myself, and it was a treasure. If I once shook
+the foundations of the sacred confidence and usage, in virtue of which
+it was given to me, it was lost, and could never be recovered. I set
+this steadily before myself. The better I loved her, the more it behoved
+me never to forget it.
+
+I walked through the streets; and, once more seeing my old adversary the
+butcher--now a constable, with his staff hanging up in the shop--went
+down to look at the place where I had fought him; and there meditated
+on Miss Shepherd and the eldest Miss Larkins, and all the idle loves and
+likings, and dislikings, of that time. Nothing seemed to have survived
+that time but Agnes; and she, ever a star above me, was brighter and
+higher.
+
+When I returned, Mr. Wickfield had come home, from a garden he had, a
+couple of miles or so out of town, where he now employed himself almost
+every day. I found him as my aunt had described him. We sat down to
+dinner, with some half-dozen little girls; and he seemed but the shadow
+of his handsome picture on the wall.
+
+The tranquillity and peace belonging, of old, to that quiet ground in my
+memory, pervaded it again. When dinner was done, Mr. Wickfield taking no
+wine, and I desiring none, we went up-stairs; where Agnes and her little
+charges sang and played, and worked. After tea the children left us; and
+we three sat together, talking of the bygone days.
+
+‘My part in them,’ said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his white head, ‘has much
+matter for regret--for deep regret, and deep contrition, Trotwood, you
+well know. But I would not cancel it, if it were in my power.’
+
+I could readily believe that, looking at the face beside him.
+
+‘I should cancel with it,’ he pursued, ‘such patience and devotion, such
+fidelity, such a child’s love, as I must not forget, no! even to forget
+myself.’
+
+‘I understand you, sir,’ I softly said. ‘I hold it--I have always held
+it--in veneration.’
+
+‘But no one knows, not even you,’ he returned, ‘how much she has done,
+how much she has undergone, how hard she has striven. Dear Agnes!’
+
+She had put her hand entreatingly on his arm, to stop him; and was very,
+very pale.
+
+‘Well, well!’ he said with a sigh, dismissing, as I then saw, some trial
+she had borne, or was yet to bear, in connexion with what my aunt had
+told me. ‘Well! I have never told you, Trotwood, of her mother. Has
+anyone?’
+
+‘Never, sir.’
+
+‘It’s not much--though it was much to suffer. She married me in
+opposition to her father’s wish, and he renounced her. She prayed him
+to forgive her, before my Agnes came into this world. He was a very hard
+man, and her mother had long been dead. He repulsed her. He broke her
+heart.’
+
+Agnes leaned upon his shoulder, and stole her arm about his neck.
+
+‘She had an affectionate and gentle heart,’ he said; ‘and it was broken.
+I knew its tender nature very well. No one could, if I did not. She
+loved me dearly, but was never happy. She was always labouring, in
+secret, under this distress; and being delicate and downcast at the time
+of his last repulse--for it was not the first, by many--pined away
+and died. She left me Agnes, two weeks old; and the grey hair that you
+recollect me with, when you first came.’ He kissed Agnes on her cheek.
+
+‘My love for my dear child was a diseased love, but my mind was all
+unhealthy then. I say no more of that. I am not speaking of myself,
+Trotwood, but of her mother, and of her. If I give you any clue to what
+I am, or to what I have been, you will unravel it, I know. What Agnes
+is, I need not say. I have always read something of her poor mother’s
+story, in her character; and so I tell it you tonight, when we three are
+again together, after such great changes. I have told it all.’
+
+His bowed head, and her angel-face and filial duty, derived a more
+pathetic meaning from it than they had had before. If I had wanted
+anything by which to mark this night of our re-union, I should have
+found it in this.
+
+Agnes rose up from her father’s side, before long; and going softly to
+her piano, played some of the old airs to which we had often listened in
+that place.
+
+‘Have you any intention of going away again?’ Agnes asked me, as I was
+standing by.
+
+‘What does my sister say to that?’
+
+‘I hope not.’
+
+‘Then I have no such intention, Agnes.’
+
+‘I think you ought not, Trotwood, since you ask me,’ she said, mildly.
+‘Your growing reputation and success enlarge your power of doing good;
+and if I could spare my brother,’ with her eyes upon me, ‘perhaps the
+time could not.’
+
+‘What I am, you have made me, Agnes. You should know best.’
+
+‘I made you, Trotwood?’
+
+‘Yes! Agnes, my dear girl!’ I said, bending over her. ‘I tried to tell
+you, when we met today, something that has been in my thoughts since
+Dora died. You remember, when you came down to me in our little
+room--pointing upward, Agnes?’
+
+‘Oh, Trotwood!’ she returned, her eyes filled with tears. ‘So loving, so
+confiding, and so young! Can I ever forget?’
+
+‘As you were then, my sister, I have often thought since, you have ever
+been to me. Ever pointing upward, Agnes; ever leading me to something
+better; ever directing me to higher things!’
+
+She only shook her head; through her tears I saw the same sad quiet
+smile.
+
+‘And I am so grateful to you for it, Agnes, so bound to you, that there
+is no name for the affection of my heart. I want you to know, yet don’t
+know how to tell you, that all my life long I shall look up to you,
+and be guided by you, as I have been through the darkness that is past.
+Whatever betides, whatever new ties you may form, whatever changes may
+come between us, I shall always look to you, and love you, as I do now,
+and have always done. You will always be my solace and resource, as you
+have always been. Until I die, my dearest sister, I shall see you always
+before me, pointing upward!’
+
+She put her hand in mine, and told me she was proud of me, and of what I
+said; although I praised her very far beyond her worth. Then she went
+on softly playing, but without removing her eyes from me. ‘Do you know,
+what I have heard tonight, Agnes,’ said I, strangely seems to be a part
+of the feeling with which I regarded you when I saw you first--with
+which I sat beside you in my rough school-days?’
+
+‘You knew I had no mother,’ she replied with a smile, ‘and felt kindly
+towards me.’
+
+‘More than that, Agnes, I knew, almost as if I had known this story,
+that there was something inexplicably gentle and softened, surrounding
+you; something that might have been sorrowful in someone else (as I can
+now understand it was), but was not so in you.’
+
+She softly played on, looking at me still.
+
+‘Will you laugh at my cherishing such fancies, Agnes?’
+
+‘No!’
+
+‘Or at my saying that I really believe I felt, even then, that you could
+be faithfully affectionate against all discouragement, and never cease
+to be so, until you ceased to live?---Will you laugh at such a dream?’
+
+‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’
+
+For an instant, a distressful shadow crossed her face; but, even in the
+start it gave me, it was gone; and she was playing on, and looking at me
+with her own calm smile.
+
+As I rode back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like a restless
+memory, I thought of this, and feared she was not happy. I was not
+happy; but, thus far, I had faithfully set the seal upon the Past, and,
+thinking of her, pointing upward, thought of her as pointing to that
+sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with
+a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me
+when I loved her here.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 61. I AM SHOWN TWO INTERESTING PENITENTS
+
+
+For a time--at all events until my book should be completed, which would
+be the work of several months--I took up my abode in my aunt’s house at
+Dover; and there, sitting in the window from which I had looked out at
+the moon upon the sea, when that roof first gave me shelter, I quietly
+pursued my task.
+
+In pursuance of my intention of referring to my own fictions only when
+their course should incidentally connect itself with the progress of my
+story, I do not enter on the aspirations, the delights, anxieties, and
+triumphs of my art. That I truly devoted myself to it with my strongest
+earnestness, and bestowed upon it every energy of my soul, I have
+already said. If the books I have written be of any worth, they will
+supply the rest. I shall otherwise have written to poor purpose, and the
+rest will be of interest to no one.
+
+Occasionally, I went to London; to lose myself in the swarm of life
+there, or to consult with Traddles on some business point. He had
+managed for me, in my absence, with the soundest judgement; and my
+worldly affairs were prospering. As my notoriety began to bring upon
+me an enormous quantity of letters from people of whom I had no
+knowledge--chiefly about nothing, and extremely difficult to answer--I
+agreed with Traddles to have my name painted up on his door. There, the
+devoted postman on that beat delivered bushels of letters for me; and
+there, at intervals, I laboured through them, like a Home Secretary of
+State without the salary.
+
+Among this correspondence, there dropped in, every now and then, an
+obliging proposal from one of the numerous outsiders always lurking
+about the Commons, to practise under cover of my name (if I would take
+the necessary steps remaining to make a proctor of myself), and pay me
+a percentage on the profits. But I declined these offers; being already
+aware that there were plenty of such covert practitioners in existence,
+and considering the Commons quite bad enough, without my doing anything
+to make it worse.
+
+The girls had gone home, when my name burst into bloom on Traddles’s
+door; and the sharp boy looked, all day, as if he had never heard of
+Sophy, shut up in a back room, glancing down from her work into a sooty
+little strip of garden with a pump in it. But there I always found her,
+the same bright housewife; often humming her Devonshire ballads when no
+strange foot was coming up the stairs, and blunting the sharp boy in his
+official closet with melody.
+
+I wondered, at first, why I so often found Sophy writing in a copy-book;
+and why she always shut it up when I appeared, and hurried it into the
+table-drawer. But the secret soon came out. One day, Traddles (who had
+just come home through the drizzling sleet from Court) took a paper out
+of his desk, and asked me what I thought of that handwriting?
+
+‘Oh, DON’T, Tom!’ cried Sophy, who was warming his slippers before the
+fire.
+
+‘My dear,’ returned Tom, in a delighted state, ‘why not? What do you say
+to that writing, Copperfield?’
+
+‘It’s extraordinarily legal and formal,’ said I. ‘I don’t think I ever
+saw such a stiff hand.’
+
+‘Not like a lady’s hand, is it?’ said Traddles.
+
+‘A lady’s!’ I repeated. ‘Bricks and mortar are more like a lady’s hand!’
+
+Traddles broke into a rapturous laugh, and informed me that it was
+Sophy’s writing; that Sophy had vowed and declared he would need a
+copying-clerk soon, and she would be that clerk; that she had acquired
+this hand from a pattern; and that she could throw off--I forget how
+many folios an hour. Sophy was very much confused by my being told all
+this, and said that when ‘Tom’ was made a judge he wouldn’t be so ready
+to proclaim it. Which ‘Tom’ denied; averring that he should always be
+equally proud of it, under all circumstances.
+
+‘What a thoroughly good and charming wife she is, my dear Traddles!’
+said I, when she had gone away, laughing.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Traddles, ‘she is, without any
+exception, the dearest girl! The way she manages this place; her
+punctuality, domestic knowledge, economy, and order; her cheerfulness,
+Copperfield!’
+
+‘Indeed, you have reason to commend her!’ I returned. ‘You are a happy
+fellow. I believe you make yourselves, and each other, two of the
+happiest people in the world.’
+
+‘I am sure we ARE two of the happiest people,’ returned Traddles. ‘I
+admit that, at all events. Bless my soul, when I see her getting up
+by candle-light on these dark mornings, busying herself in the day’s
+arrangements, going out to market before the clerks come into the Inn,
+caring for no weather, devising the most capital little dinners out of
+the plainest materials, making puddings and pies, keeping everything in
+its right place, always so neat and ornamental herself, sitting up
+at night with me if it’s ever so late, sweet-tempered and encouraging
+always, and all for me, I positively sometimes can’t believe it,
+Copperfield!’
+
+He was tender of the very slippers she had been warming, as he put them
+on, and stretched his feet enjoyingly upon the fender.
+
+‘I positively sometimes can’t believe it,’ said Traddles. ‘Then our
+pleasures! Dear me, they are inexpensive, but they are quite wonderful!
+When we are at home here, of an evening, and shut the outer door, and
+draw those curtains--which she made--where could we be more snug? When
+it’s fine, and we go out for a walk in the evening, the streets
+abound in enjoyment for us. We look into the glittering windows of the
+jewellers’ shops; and I show Sophy which of the diamond-eyed serpents,
+coiled up on white satin rising grounds, I would give her if I could
+afford it; and Sophy shows me which of the gold watches that are
+capped and jewelled and engine-turned, and possessed of the horizontal
+lever-escape-movement, and all sorts of things, she would buy for me if
+she could afford it; and we pick out the spoons and forks, fish-slices,
+butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer if we could both
+afford it; and really we go away as if we had got them! Then, when we
+stroll into the squares, and great streets, and see a house to let,
+sometimes we look up at it, and say, how would THAT do, if I was made
+a judge? And we parcel it out--such a room for us, such rooms for the
+girls, and so forth; until we settle to our satisfaction that it
+would do, or it wouldn’t do, as the case may be. Sometimes, we go at
+half-price to the pit of the theatre--the very smell of which is cheap,
+in my opinion, at the money--and there we thoroughly enjoy the play:
+which Sophy believes every word of, and so do I. In walking home,
+perhaps we buy a little bit of something at a cook’s-shop, or a little
+lobster at the fishmongers, and bring it here, and make a splendid
+supper, chatting about what we have seen. Now, you know, Copperfield, if
+I was Lord Chancellor, we couldn’t do this!’
+
+‘You would do something, whatever you were, my dear Traddles,’ thought
+I, ‘that would be pleasant and amiable. And by the way,’ I said aloud,
+‘I suppose you never draw any skeletons now?’
+
+‘Really,’ replied Traddles, laughing, and reddening, ‘I can’t wholly
+deny that I do, my dear Copperfield. For being in one of the back rows
+of the King’s Bench the other day, with a pen in my hand, the fancy came
+into my head to try how I had preserved that accomplishment. And I am
+afraid there’s a skeleton--in a wig--on the ledge of the desk.’
+
+After we had both laughed heartily, Traddles wound up by looking with a
+smile at the fire, and saying, in his forgiving way, ‘Old Creakle!’
+
+‘I have a letter from that old--Rascal here,’ said I. For I never was
+less disposed to forgive him the way he used to batter Traddles, than
+when I saw Traddles so ready to forgive him himself.
+
+‘From Creakle the schoolmaster?’ exclaimed Traddles. ‘No!’
+
+‘Among the persons who are attracted to me in my rising fame and
+fortune,’ said I, looking over my letters, ‘and who discover that they
+were always much attached to me, is the self-same Creakle. He is not
+a schoolmaster now, Traddles. He is retired. He is a Middlesex
+Magistrate.’
+
+I thought Traddles might be surprised to hear it, but he was not so at
+all.
+
+‘How do you suppose he comes to be a Middlesex Magistrate?’ said I.
+
+‘Oh dear me!’ replied Traddles, ‘it would be very difficult to answer
+that question. Perhaps he voted for somebody, or lent money to somebody,
+or bought something of somebody, or otherwise obliged somebody, or
+jobbed for somebody, who knew somebody who got the lieutenant of the
+county to nominate him for the commission.’
+
+‘On the commission he is, at any rate,’ said I. ‘And he writes to me
+here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only true
+system of prison discipline; the only unchallengeable way of making
+sincere and lasting converts and penitents--which, you know, is by
+solitary confinement. What do you say?’
+
+‘To the system?’ inquired Traddles, looking grave.
+
+‘No. To my accepting the offer, and your going with me?’
+
+‘I don’t object,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘Then I’ll write to say so. You remember (to say nothing of our
+treatment) this same Creakle turning his son out of doors, I suppose,
+and the life he used to lead his wife and daughter?’
+
+‘Perfectly,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘Yet, if you’ll read his letter, you’ll find he is the tenderest of
+men to prisoners convicted of the whole calendar of felonies,’ said I;
+‘though I can’t find that his tenderness extends to any other class of
+created beings.’
+
+Traddles shrugged his shoulders, and was not at all surprised. I had not
+expected him to be, and was not surprised myself; or my observation of
+similar practical satires would have been but scanty. We arranged the
+time of our visit, and I wrote accordingly to Mr. Creakle that evening.
+
+On the appointed day--I think it was the next day, but no
+matter--Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was
+powerful. It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast
+expense. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what
+an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man had
+proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an
+industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving
+old.
+
+In an office that might have been on the ground-floor of the Tower of
+Babel, it was so massively constructed, we were presented to our old
+schoolmaster; who was one of a group, composed of two or three of the
+busier sort of magistrates, and some visitors they had brought. He
+received me, like a man who had formed my mind in bygone years, and
+had always loved me tenderly. On my introducing Traddles, Mr. Creakle
+expressed, in like manner, but in an inferior degree, that he had always
+been Traddles’s guide, philosopher, and friend. Our venerable instructor
+was a great deal older, and not improved in appearance. His face was
+as fiery as ever; his eyes were as small, and rather deeper set. The
+scanty, wet-looking grey hair, by which I remembered him, was almost
+gone; and the thick veins in his bald head were none the more agreeable
+to look at.
+
+After some conversation among these gentlemen, from which I might have
+supposed that there was nothing in the world to be legitimately taken
+into account but the supreme comfort of prisoners, at any expense, and
+nothing on the wide earth to be done outside prison-doors, we began
+our inspection. It being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the
+great kitchen, where every prisoner’s dinner was in course of being set
+out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity
+and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered
+whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast
+between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not
+to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk
+of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred
+ever dined half so well. But I learned that the ‘system’ required high
+living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found
+that on that head and on all others, ‘the system’ put an end to all
+doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least
+idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered.
+
+As we were going through some of the magnificent passages, I inquired of
+Mr. Creakle and his friends what were supposed to be the main advantages
+of this all-governing and universally over-riding system? I found
+them to be the perfect isolation of prisoners--so that no one man in
+confinement there, knew anything about another; and the reduction of
+prisoners to a wholesome state of mind, leading to sincere contrition
+and repentance.
+
+Now, it struck me, when we began to visit individuals in their cells,
+and to traverse the passages in which those cells were, and to have the
+manner of the going to chapel and so forth, explained to us, that there
+was a strong probability of the prisoners knowing a good deal about each
+other, and of their carrying on a pretty complete system of intercourse.
+This, at the time I write, has been proved, I believe, to be the case;
+but, as it would have been flat blasphemy against the system to have
+hinted such a doubt then, I looked out for the penitence as diligently
+as I could.
+
+And here again, I had great misgivings. I found as prevalent a fashion
+in the form of the penitence, as I had left outside in the forms of the
+coats and waistcoats in the windows of the tailors’ shops. I found a
+vast amount of profession, varying very little in character: varying
+very little (which I thought exceedingly suspicious), even in words. I
+found a great many foxes, disparaging whole vineyards of inaccessible
+grapes; but I found very few foxes whom I would have trusted within
+reach of a bunch. Above all, I found that the most professing men were
+the greatest objects of interest; and that their conceit, their vanity,
+their want of excitement, and their love of deception (which many
+of them possessed to an almost incredible extent, as their histories
+showed), all prompted to these professions, and were all gratified by
+them.
+
+However, I heard so repeatedly, in the course of our goings to and fro,
+of a certain Number Twenty Seven, who was the Favourite, and who really
+appeared to be a Model Prisoner, that I resolved to suspend my judgement
+until I should see Twenty Seven. Twenty Eight, I understood, was also
+a bright particular star; but it was his misfortune to have his glory
+a little dimmed by the extraordinary lustre of Twenty Seven. I heard so
+much of Twenty Seven, of his pious admonitions to everybody around him,
+and of the beautiful letters he constantly wrote to his mother (whom he
+seemed to consider in a very bad way), that I became quite impatient to
+see him.
+
+I had to restrain my impatience for some time, on account of Twenty
+Seven being reserved for a concluding effect. But, at last, we came to
+the door of his cell; and Mr. Creakle, looking through a little hole in
+it, reported to us, in a state of the greatest admiration, that he was
+reading a Hymn Book.
+
+There was such a rush of heads immediately, to see Number Twenty Seven
+reading his Hymn Book, that the little hole was blocked up, six or seven
+heads deep. To remedy this inconvenience, and give us an opportunity of
+conversing with Twenty Seven in all his purity, Mr. Creakle directed the
+door of the cell to be unlocked, and Twenty Seven to be invited out into
+the passage. This was done; and whom should Traddles and I then behold,
+to our amazement, in this converted Number Twenty Seven, but Uriah Heep!
+
+He knew us directly; and said, as he came out--with the old writhe,--
+
+‘How do you do, Mr. Copperfield? How do you do, Mr. Traddles?’
+
+This recognition caused a general admiration in the party. I rather
+thought that everyone was struck by his not being proud, and taking
+notice of us.
+
+‘Well, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle, mournfully admiring him. ‘How do
+you find yourself today?’
+
+‘I am very umble, sir!’ replied Uriah Heep.
+
+‘You are always so, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle.
+
+Here, another gentleman asked, with extreme anxiety: ‘Are you quite
+comfortable?’
+
+‘Yes, I thank you, sir!’ said Uriah Heep, looking in that direction.
+‘Far more comfortable here, than ever I was outside. I see my follies,
+now, sir. That’s what makes me comfortable.’
+
+Several gentlemen were much affected; and a third questioner, forcing
+himself to the front, inquired with extreme feeling: ‘How do you find
+the beef?’
+
+‘Thank you, sir,’ replied Uriah, glancing in the new direction of this
+voice, ‘it was tougher yesterday than I could wish; but it’s my duty to
+bear. I have committed follies, gentlemen,’ said Uriah, looking round
+with a meek smile, ‘and I ought to bear the consequences without
+repining.’ A murmur, partly of gratification at Twenty Seven’s celestial
+state of mind, and partly of indignation against the Contractor who had
+given him any cause of complaint (a note of which was immediately made
+by Mr. Creakle), having subsided, Twenty Seven stood in the midst of
+us, as if he felt himself the principal object of merit in a highly
+meritorious museum. That we, the neophytes, might have an excess of
+light shining upon us all at once, orders were given to let out Twenty
+Eight.
+
+I had been so much astonished already, that I only felt a kind of
+resigned wonder when Mr. Littimer walked forth, reading a good book!
+
+‘Twenty Eight,’ said a gentleman in spectacles, who had not yet spoken,
+‘you complained last week, my good fellow, of the cocoa. How has it been
+since?’
+
+‘I thank you, sir,’ said Mr. Littimer, ‘it has been better made. If I
+might take the liberty of saying so, sir, I don’t think the milk which
+is boiled with it is quite genuine; but I am aware, sir, that there is
+a great adulteration of milk, in London, and that the article in a pure
+state is difficult to be obtained.’
+
+It appeared to me that the gentleman in spectacles backed his Twenty
+Eight against Mr. Creakle’s Twenty Seven, for each of them took his own
+man in hand.
+
+‘What is your state of mind, Twenty Eight?’ said the questioner in
+spectacles.
+
+‘I thank you, sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer; ‘I see my follies now, sir.
+I am a good deal troubled when I think of the sins of my former
+companions, sir; but I trust they may find forgiveness.’
+
+‘You are quite happy yourself?’ said the questioner, nodding
+encouragement.
+
+‘I am much obliged to you, sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer. ‘Perfectly so.’
+
+‘Is there anything at all on your mind now?’ said the questioner. ‘If
+so, mention it, Twenty Eight.’
+
+‘Sir,’ said Mr. Littimer, without looking up, ‘if my eyes have not
+deceived me, there is a gentleman present who was acquainted with me
+in my former life. It may be profitable to that gentleman to know, sir,
+that I attribute my past follies, entirely to having lived a thoughtless
+life in the service of young men; and to having allowed myself to be led
+by them into weaknesses, which I had not the strength to resist. I hope
+that gentleman will take warning, sir, and will not be offended at my
+freedom. It is for his good. I am conscious of my own past follies. I
+hope he may repent of all the wickedness and sin to which he has been a
+party.’
+
+I observed that several gentlemen were shading their eyes, each with one
+hand, as if they had just come into church.
+
+‘This does you credit, Twenty Eight,’ returned the questioner. ‘I should
+have expected it of you. Is there anything else?’
+
+‘Sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer, slightly lifting up his eyebrows, but not
+his eyes, ‘there was a young woman who fell into dissolute courses, that
+I endeavoured to save, sir, but could not rescue. I beg that gentleman,
+if he has it in his power, to inform that young woman from me that
+I forgive her her bad conduct towards myself, and that I call her to
+repentance--if he will be so good.’
+
+‘I have no doubt, Twenty Eight,’ returned the questioner, ‘that the
+gentleman you refer to feels very strongly--as we all must--what you
+have so properly said. We will not detain you.’
+
+‘I thank you, sir,’ said Mr. Littimer. ‘Gentlemen, I wish you a good
+day, and hoping you and your families will also see your wickedness, and
+amend!’
+
+With this, Number Twenty Eight retired, after a glance between him and
+Uriah; as if they were not altogether unknown to each other, through
+some medium of communication; and a murmur went round the group, as his
+door shut upon him, that he was a most respectable man, and a beautiful
+case.
+
+‘Now, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle, entering on a clear stage with
+his man, ‘is there anything that anyone can do for you? If so, mention
+it.’
+
+‘I would umbly ask, sir,’ returned Uriah, with a jerk of his malevolent
+head, ‘for leave to write again to mother.’
+
+‘It shall certainly be granted,’ said Mr. Creakle.
+
+‘Thank you, sir! I am anxious about mother. I am afraid she ain’t safe.’
+
+Somebody incautiously asked, what from? But there was a scandalized
+whisper of ‘Hush!’
+
+‘Immortally safe, sir,’ returned Uriah, writhing in the direction of
+the voice. ‘I should wish mother to be got into my state. I never should
+have been got into my present state if I hadn’t come here. I wish mother
+had come here. It would be better for everybody, if they got took up,
+and was brought here.’
+
+This sentiment gave unbounded satisfaction--greater satisfaction, I
+think, than anything that had passed yet.
+
+‘Before I come here,’ said Uriah, stealing a look at us, as if he would
+have blighted the outer world to which we belonged, if he could, ‘I was
+given to follies; but now I am sensible of my follies. There’s a deal
+of sin outside. There’s a deal of sin in mother. There’s nothing but sin
+everywhere--except here.’
+
+‘You are quite changed?’ said Mr. Creakle.
+
+‘Oh dear, yes, sir!’ cried this hopeful penitent.
+
+‘You wouldn’t relapse, if you were going out?’ asked somebody else.
+
+‘Oh de-ar no, sir!’
+
+‘Well!’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘this is very gratifying. You have addressed
+Mr. Copperfield, Twenty Seven. Do you wish to say anything further to
+him?’
+
+‘You knew me, a long time before I came here and was changed, Mr.
+Copperfield,’ said Uriah, looking at me; and a more villainous look
+I never saw, even on his visage. ‘You knew me when, in spite of my
+follies, I was umble among them that was proud, and meek among them that
+was violent--you was violent to me yourself, Mr. Copperfield. Once, you
+struck me a blow in the face, you know.’
+
+General commiseration. Several indignant glances directed at me.
+
+‘But I forgive you, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Uriah, making his forgiving
+nature the subject of a most impious and awful parallel, which I shall
+not record. ‘I forgive everybody. It would ill become me to bear malice.
+I freely forgive you, and I hope you’ll curb your passions in future. I
+hope Mr. W. will repent, and Miss W., and all of that sinful lot. You’ve
+been visited with affliction, and I hope it may do you good; but you’d
+better have come here. Mr. W. had better have come here, and Miss W.
+too. The best wish I could give you, Mr. Copperfield, and give all of
+you gentlemen, is, that you could be took up and brought here. When I
+think of my past follies, and my present state, I am sure it would be
+best for you. I pity all who ain’t brought here!’
+
+He sneaked back into his cell, amidst a little chorus of approbation;
+and both Traddles and I experienced a great relief when he was locked
+in.
+
+It was a characteristic feature in this repentance, that I was fain to
+ask what these two men had done, to be there at all. That appeared to be
+the last thing about which they had anything to say. I addressed
+myself to one of the two warders, who, I suspected from certain latent
+indications in their faces, knew pretty well what all this stir was
+worth.
+
+‘Do you know,’ said I, as we walked along the passage, ‘what felony was
+Number Twenty Seven’s last “folly”?’
+
+The answer was that it was a Bank case.
+
+‘A fraud on the Bank of England?’ I asked. ‘Yes, sir. Fraud, forgery,
+and conspiracy. He and some others. He set the others on. It was a deep
+plot for a large sum. Sentence, transportation for life. Twenty Seven
+was the knowingest bird of the lot, and had very nearly kept himself
+safe; but not quite. The Bank was just able to put salt upon his
+tail--and only just.’
+
+‘Do you know Twenty Eight’s offence?’
+
+‘Twenty Eight,’ returned my informant, speaking throughout in a low
+tone, and looking over his shoulder as we walked along the passage, to
+guard himself from being overheard, in such an unlawful reference
+to these Immaculates, by Creakle and the rest; ‘Twenty Eight (also
+transportation) got a place, and robbed a young master of a matter of
+two hundred and fifty pounds in money and valuables, the night before
+they were going abroad. I particularly recollect his case, from his
+being took by a dwarf.’
+
+‘A what?’
+
+‘A little woman. I have forgot her name?’
+
+‘Not Mowcher?’
+
+‘That’s it! He had eluded pursuit, and was going to America in a flaxen
+wig, and whiskers, and such a complete disguise as never you see in all
+your born days; when the little woman, being in Southampton, met
+him walking along the street--picked him out with her sharp eye in a
+moment--ran betwixt his legs to upset him--and held on to him like grim
+Death.’
+
+‘Excellent Miss Mowcher!’ cried I.
+
+‘You’d have said so, if you had seen her, standing on a chair in the
+witness-box at the trial, as I did,’ said my friend. ‘He cut her face
+right open, and pounded her in the most brutal manner, when she took
+him; but she never loosed her hold till he was locked up. She held so
+tight to him, in fact, that the officers were obliged to take ‘em
+both together. She gave her evidence in the gamest way, and was highly
+complimented by the Bench, and cheered right home to her lodgings. She
+said in Court that she’d have took him single-handed (on account of what
+she knew concerning him), if he had been Samson. And it’s my belief she
+would!’
+
+It was mine too, and I highly respected Miss Mowcher for it.
+
+We had now seen all there was to see. It would have been in vain to
+represent to such a man as the Worshipful Mr. Creakle, that Twenty Seven
+and Twenty Eight were perfectly consistent and unchanged; that exactly
+what they were then, they had always been; that the hypocritical knaves
+were just the subjects to make that sort of profession in such a place;
+that they knew its market-value at least as well as we did, in the
+immediate service it would do them when they were expatriated; in
+a word, that it was a rotten, hollow, painfully suggestive piece of
+business altogether. We left them to their system and themselves, and
+went home wondering.
+
+‘Perhaps it’s a good thing, Traddles,’ said I, ‘to have an unsound Hobby
+ridden hard; for it’s the sooner ridden to death.’
+
+‘I hope so,’ replied Traddles.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 62. A LIGHT SHINES ON MY WAY
+
+
+The year came round to Christmas-time, and I had been at home above
+two months. I had seen Agnes frequently. However loud the general voice
+might be in giving me encouragement, and however fervent the emotions
+and endeavours to which it roused me, I heard her lightest word of
+praise as I heard nothing else.
+
+At least once a week, and sometimes oftener, I rode over there, and
+passed the evening. I usually rode back at night; for the old unhappy
+sense was always hovering about me now--most sorrowfully when I left
+her--and I was glad to be up and out, rather than wandering over the
+past in weary wakefulness or miserable dreams. I wore away the longest
+part of many wild sad nights, in those rides; reviving, as I went, the
+thoughts that had occupied me in my long absence.
+
+Or, if I were to say rather that I listened to the echoes of those
+thoughts, I should better express the truth. They spoke to me from afar
+off. I had put them at a distance, and accepted my inevitable place.
+When I read to Agnes what I wrote; when I saw her listening face; moved
+her to smiles or tears; and heard her cordial voice so earnest on the
+shadowy events of that imaginative world in which I lived; I thought
+what a fate mine might have been--but only thought so, as I had thought
+after I was married to Dora, what I could have wished my wife to be.
+
+My duty to Agnes, who loved me with a love, which, if I disquieted, I
+wronged most selfishly and poorly, and could never restore; my matured
+assurance that I, who had worked out my own destiny, and won what I
+had impetuously set my heart on, had no right to murmur, and must bear;
+comprised what I felt and what I had learned. But I loved her: and now
+it even became some consolation to me, vaguely to conceive a distant day
+when I might blamelessly avow it; when all this should be over; when I
+could say ‘Agnes, so it was when I came home; and now I am old, and I
+never have loved since!’
+
+She did not once show me any change in herself. What she always had been
+to me, she still was; wholly unaltered.
+
+Between my aunt and me there had been something, in this connexion,
+since the night of my return, which I cannot call a restraint, or an
+avoidance of the subject, so much as an implied understanding that we
+thought of it together, but did not shape our thoughts into words. When,
+according to our old custom, we sat before the fire at night, we often
+fell into this train; as naturally, and as consciously to each other, as
+if we had unreservedly said so. But we preserved an unbroken silence. I
+believed that she had read, or partly read, my thoughts that night; and
+that she fully comprehended why I gave mine no more distinct expression.
+
+This Christmas-time being come, and Agnes having reposed no new
+confidence in me, a doubt that had several times arisen in my
+mind--whether she could have that perception of the true state of
+my breast, which restrained her with the apprehension of giving me
+pain--began to oppress me heavily. If that were so, my sacrifice was
+nothing; my plainest obligation to her unfulfilled; and every poor
+action I had shrunk from, I was hourly doing. I resolved to set this
+right beyond all doubt;--if such a barrier were between us, to break it
+down at once with a determined hand.
+
+It was--what lasting reason have I to remember it!--a cold, harsh,
+winter day. There had been snow, some hours before; and it lay, not
+deep, but hard-frozen on the ground. Out at sea, beyond my window, the
+wind blew ruggedly from the north. I had been thinking of it, sweeping
+over those mountain wastes of snow in Switzerland, then inaccessible to
+any human foot; and had been speculating which was the lonelier, those
+solitary regions, or a deserted ocean.
+
+‘Riding today, Trot?’ said my aunt, putting her head in at the door.
+
+‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I am going over to Canterbury. It’s a good day for a
+ride.’
+
+‘I hope your horse may think so too,’ said my aunt; ‘but at present he
+is holding down his head and his ears, standing before the door there,
+as if he thought his stable preferable.’
+
+My aunt, I may observe, allowed my horse on the forbidden ground, but
+had not at all relented towards the donkeys.
+
+‘He will be fresh enough, presently!’ said I.
+
+‘The ride will do his master good, at all events,’ observed my aunt,
+glancing at the papers on my table. ‘Ah, child, you pass a good many
+hours here! I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was
+to write them.’
+
+‘It’s work enough to read them, sometimes,’ I returned. ‘As to the
+writing, it has its own charms, aunt.’
+
+‘Ah! I see!’ said my aunt. ‘Ambition, love of approbation, sympathy, and
+much more, I suppose? Well: go along with you!’
+
+‘Do you know anything more,’ said I, standing composedly before her--she
+had patted me on the shoulder, and sat down in my chair--‘of that
+attachment of Agnes?’
+
+She looked up in my face a little while, before replying:
+
+‘I think I do, Trot.’
+
+‘Are you confirmed in your impression?’ I inquired.
+
+‘I think I am, Trot.’
+
+She looked so steadfastly at me: with a kind of doubt, or pity, or
+suspense in her affection: that I summoned the stronger determination to
+show her a perfectly cheerful face.
+
+‘And what is more, Trot--’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Yes!’
+
+‘I think Agnes is going to be married.’
+
+‘God bless her!’ said I, cheerfully.
+
+‘God bless her!’ said my aunt, ‘and her husband too!’
+
+I echoed it, parted from my aunt, and went lightly downstairs, mounted,
+and rode away. There was greater reason than before to do what I had
+resolved to do.
+
+How well I recollect the wintry ride! The frozen particles of ice,
+brushed from the blades of grass by the wind, and borne across my face;
+the hard clatter of the horse’s hoofs, beating a tune upon the ground;
+the stiff-tilled soil; the snowdrift, lightly eddying in the chalk-pit
+as the breeze ruffled it; the smoking team with the waggon of old hay,
+stopping to breathe on the hill-top, and shaking their bells musically;
+the whitened slopes and sweeps of Down-land lying against the dark sky,
+as if they were drawn on a huge slate!
+
+I found Agnes alone. The little girls had gone to their own homes now,
+and she was alone by the fire, reading. She put down her book on seeing
+me come in; and having welcomed me as usual, took her work-basket and
+sat in one of the old-fashioned windows.
+
+I sat beside her on the window-seat, and we talked of what I was doing,
+and when it would be done, and of the progress I had made since my last
+visit. Agnes was very cheerful; and laughingly predicted that I should
+soon become too famous to be talked to, on such subjects.
+
+‘So I make the most of the present time, you see,’ said Agnes, ‘and talk
+to you while I may.’
+
+As I looked at her beautiful face, observant of her work, she raised her
+mild clear eyes, and saw that I was looking at her.
+
+‘You are thoughtful today, Trotwood!’
+
+‘Agnes, shall I tell you what about? I came to tell you.’
+
+She put aside her work, as she was used to do when we were seriously
+discussing anything; and gave me her whole attention.
+
+‘My dear Agnes, do you doubt my being true to you?’
+
+‘No!’ she answered, with a look of astonishment.
+
+‘Do you doubt my being what I always have been to you?’
+
+‘No!’ she answered, as before.
+
+‘Do you remember that I tried to tell you, when I came home, what a debt
+of gratitude I owed you, dearest Agnes, and how fervently I felt towards
+you?’
+
+‘I remember it,’ she said, gently, ‘very well.’
+
+‘You have a secret,’ said I. ‘Let me share it, Agnes.’
+
+She cast down her eyes, and trembled.
+
+‘I could hardly fail to know, even if I had not heard--but from other
+lips than yours, Agnes, which seems strange--that there is someone upon
+whom you have bestowed the treasure of your love. Do not shut me out of
+what concerns your happiness so nearly! If you can trust me, as you say
+you can, and as I know you may, let me be your friend, your brother, in
+this matter, of all others!’
+
+With an appealing, almost a reproachful, glance, she rose from the
+window; and hurrying across the room as if without knowing where, put
+her hands before her face, and burst into such tears as smote me to the
+heart.
+
+And yet they awakened something in me, bringing promise to my heart.
+Without my knowing why, these tears allied themselves with the quietly
+sad smile which was so fixed in my remembrance, and shook me more with
+hope than fear or sorrow.
+
+‘Agnes! Sister! Dearest! What have I done?’
+
+‘Let me go away, Trotwood. I am not well. I am not myself. I will speak
+to you by and by--another time. I will write to you. Don’t speak to me
+now. Don’t! don’t!’
+
+I sought to recollect what she had said, when I had spoken to her on
+that former night, of her affection needing no return. It seemed a very
+world that I must search through in a moment. ‘Agnes, I cannot bear
+to see you so, and think that I have been the cause. My dearest girl,
+dearer to me than anything in life, if you are unhappy, let me share
+your unhappiness. If you are in need of help or counsel, let me try to
+give it to you. If you have indeed a burden on your heart, let me try to
+lighten it. For whom do I live now, Agnes, if it is not for you!’
+
+‘Oh, spare me! I am not myself! Another time!’ was all I could
+distinguish.
+
+Was it a selfish error that was leading me away? Or, having once a clue
+to hope, was there something opening to me that I had not dared to think
+of?
+
+‘I must say more. I cannot let you leave me so! For Heaven’s sake,
+Agnes, let us not mistake each other after all these years, and all
+that has come and gone with them! I must speak plainly. If you have any
+lingering thought that I could envy the happiness you will confer; that
+I could not resign you to a dearer protector, of your own choosing; that
+I could not, from my removed place, be a contented witness of your joy;
+dismiss it, for I don’t deserve it! I have not suffered quite in vain.
+You have not taught me quite in vain. There is no alloy of self in what
+I feel for you.’
+
+She was quiet now. In a little time, she turned her pale face towards
+me, and said in a low voice, broken here and there, but very clear:
+
+‘I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood--which, indeed, I do
+not doubt--to tell you, you are mistaken. I can do no more. If I have
+sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and counsel, they have
+come to me. If I have sometimes been unhappy, the feeling has passed
+away. If I have ever had a burden on my heart, it has been lightened
+for me. If I have any secret, it is--no new one; and is--not what you
+suppose. I cannot reveal it, or divide it. It has long been mine, and
+must remain mine.’
+
+‘Agnes! Stay! A moment!’
+
+She was going away, but I detained her. I clasped my arm about her
+waist. ‘In the course of years!’ ‘It is not a new one!’ New thoughts and
+hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were
+changing.
+
+‘Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honour--whom I so devotedly love!
+When I came here today, I thought that nothing could have wrested this
+confession from me. I thought I could have kept it in my bosom all our
+lives, till we were old. But, Agnes, if I have indeed any new-born hope
+that I may ever call you something more than Sister, widely different
+from Sister!--’
+
+Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately shed,
+and I saw my hope brighten in them.
+
+‘Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful
+of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my
+heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so
+much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and
+disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in
+everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first
+and greater one of loving you as I do!’
+
+Still weeping, but not sadly--joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she
+had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!
+
+‘When I loved Dora--fondly, Agnes, as you know--’
+
+‘Yes!’ she cried, earnestly. ‘I am glad to know it!’
+
+‘When I loved her--even then, my love would have been incomplete,
+without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost
+her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!’
+
+Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my
+shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!
+
+‘I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I
+returned home, loving you!’
+
+And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the
+conclusion I had come to. I tried to lay my mind before her, truly, and
+entirely. I tried to show her how I had hoped I had come into the better
+knowledge of myself and of her; how I had resigned myself to what that
+better knowledge brought; and how I had come there, even that day, in my
+fidelity to this. If she did so love me (I said) that she could take me
+for her husband, she could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon
+the truth of my love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to
+be what it was; and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even
+out of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife
+looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee, to
+tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its bloom!
+
+‘I am so blest, Trotwood--my heart is so overcharged--but there is one
+thing I must say.’
+
+‘Dearest, what?’
+
+She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in my
+face.
+
+‘Do you know, yet, what it is?’
+
+‘I am afraid to speculate on what it is. Tell me, my dear.’
+
+‘I have loved you all my life!’
+
+O, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials (hers
+so much the greater) through which we had come to be thus, but for the
+rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!
+
+We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together; and the blessed
+calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air. The early stars
+began to shine while we were lingering on, and looking up to them, we
+thanked our GOD for having guided us to this tranquillity.
+
+We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when the
+moon was shining; Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it; I following
+her glance. Long miles of road then opened out before my mind; and,
+toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy, forsaken and neglected, who
+should come to call even the heart now beating against mine, his own.
+
+
+It was nearly dinner-time next day when we appeared before my aunt. She
+was up in my study, Peggotty said: which it was her pride to keep in
+readiness and order for me. We found her, in her spectacles, sitting by
+the fire.
+
+‘Goodness me!’ said my aunt, peering through the dusk, ‘who’s this
+you’re bringing home?’
+
+‘Agnes,’ said I.
+
+As we had arranged to say nothing at first, my aunt was not a little
+discomfited. She darted a hopeful glance at me, when I said ‘Agnes’; but
+seeing that I looked as usual, she took off her spectacles in despair,
+and rubbed her nose with them.
+
+She greeted Agnes heartily, nevertheless; and we were soon in the
+lighted parlour downstairs, at dinner. My aunt put on her spectacles
+twice or thrice, to take another look at me, but as often took them
+off again, disappointed, and rubbed her nose with them. Much to the
+discomfiture of Mr. Dick, who knew this to be a bad symptom.
+
+‘By the by, aunt,’ said I, after dinner; ‘I have been speaking to Agnes
+about what you told me.’
+
+‘Then, Trot,’ said my aunt, turning scarlet, ‘you did wrong, and broke
+your promise.’
+
+‘You are not angry, aunt, I trust? I am sure you won’t be, when you
+learn that Agnes is not unhappy in any attachment.’
+
+‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said my aunt.
+
+As my aunt appeared to be annoyed, I thought the best way was to cut her
+annoyance short. I took Agnes in my arm to the back of her chair, and we
+both leaned over her. My aunt, with one clap of her hands, and one look
+through her spectacles, immediately went into hysterics, for the first
+and only time in all my knowledge of her.
+
+The hysterics called up Peggotty. The moment my aunt was restored, she
+flew at Peggotty, and calling her a silly old creature, hugged her with
+all her might. After that, she hugged Mr. Dick (who was highly honoured,
+but a good deal surprised); and after that, told them why. Then, we were
+all happy together.
+
+I could not discover whether my aunt, in her last short conversation
+with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really mistaken the state
+of my mind. It was quite enough, she said, that she had told me Agnes
+was going to be married; and that I now knew better than anyone how true
+it was.
+
+
+We were married within a fortnight. Traddles and Sophy, and Doctor and
+Mrs. Strong, were the only guests at our quiet wedding. We left them
+full of joy; and drove away together. Clasped in my embrace, I held the
+source of every worthy aspiration I had ever had; the centre of myself,
+the circle of my life, my own, my wife; my love of whom was founded on a
+rock!
+
+‘Dearest husband!’ said Agnes. ‘Now that I may call you by that name, I
+have one thing more to tell you.’
+
+‘Let me hear it, love.’
+
+‘It grows out of the night when Dora died. She sent you for me.’
+
+‘She did.’
+
+‘She told me that she left me something. Can you think what it was?’
+
+I believed I could. I drew the wife who had so long loved me, closer to
+my side.
+
+‘She told me that she made a last request to me, and left me a last
+charge.’
+
+‘And it was--’
+
+‘That only I would occupy this vacant place.’
+
+And Agnes laid her head upon my breast, and wept; and I wept with her,
+though we were so happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 63. A VISITOR
+
+What I have purposed to record is nearly finished; but there is yet an
+incident conspicuous in my memory, on which it often rests with delight,
+and without which one thread in the web I have spun would have a
+ravelled end.
+
+I had advanced in fame and fortune, my domestic joy was perfect, I had
+been married ten happy years. Agnes and I were sitting by the fire, in
+our house in London, one night in spring, and three of our children were
+playing in the room, when I was told that a stranger wished to see me.
+
+He had been asked if he came on business, and had answered No; he had
+come for the pleasure of seeing me, and had come a long way. He was an
+old man, my servant said, and looked like a farmer.
+
+As this sounded mysterious to the children, and moreover was like the
+beginning of a favourite story Agnes used to tell them, introductory
+to the arrival of a wicked old Fairy in a cloak who hated everybody, it
+produced some commotion. One of our boys laid his head in his mother’s
+lap to be out of harm’s way, and little Agnes (our eldest child) left
+her doll in a chair to represent her, and thrust out her little heap
+of golden curls from between the window-curtains, to see what happened
+next.
+
+‘Let him come in here!’ said I.
+
+There soon appeared, pausing in the dark doorway as he entered, a hale,
+grey-haired old man. Little Agnes, attracted by his looks, had run to
+bring him in, and I had not yet clearly seen his face, when my wife,
+starting up, cried out to me, in a pleased and agitated voice, that it
+was Mr. Peggotty!
+
+It WAS Mr. Peggotty. An old man now, but in a ruddy, hearty, strong old
+age. When our first emotion was over, and he sat before the fire with
+the children on his knees, and the blaze shining on his face, he looked,
+to me, as vigorous and robust, withal as handsome, an old man, as ever I
+had seen.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy,’ said he. And the old name in the old tone fell so
+naturally on my ear! ‘Mas’r Davy, ‘tis a joyful hour as I see you, once
+more, ‘long with your own trew wife!’
+
+‘A joyful hour indeed, old friend!’ cried I.
+
+‘And these heer pretty ones,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘To look at these heer
+flowers! Why, Mas’r Davy, you was but the heighth of the littlest of
+these, when I first see you! When Em’ly warn’t no bigger, and our poor
+lad were BUT a lad!’
+
+‘Time has changed me more than it has changed you since then,’ said I.
+‘But let these dear rogues go to bed; and as no house in England but
+this must hold you, tell me where to send for your luggage (is the old
+black bag among it, that went so far, I wonder!), and then, over a glass
+of Yarmouth grog, we will have the tidings of ten years!’
+
+‘Are you alone?’ asked Agnes.
+
+‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, kissing her hand, ‘quite alone.’
+
+We sat him between us, not knowing how to give him welcome enough; and
+as I began to listen to his old familiar voice, I could have fancied he
+was still pursuing his long journey in search of his darling niece.
+
+‘It’s a mort of water,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘fur to come across, and
+on’y stay a matter of fower weeks. But water [‘specially when ‘tis salt)
+comes nat’ral to me; and friends is dear, and I am heer. --Which is
+verse,’ said Mr. Peggotty, surprised to find it out, ‘though I hadn’t
+such intentions.’
+
+‘Are you going back those many thousand miles, so soon?’ asked Agnes.
+
+‘Yes, ma’am,’ he returned. ‘I giv the promise to Em’ly, afore I come
+away. You see, I doen’t grow younger as the years comes round, and if
+I hadn’t sailed as ‘twas, most like I shouldn’t never have done ‘t. And
+it’s allus been on my mind, as I must come and see Mas’r Davy and your
+own sweet blooming self, in your wedded happiness, afore I got to be too
+old.’
+
+He looked at us, as if he could never feast his eyes on us sufficiently.
+Agnes laughingly put back some scattered locks of his grey hair, that he
+might see us better.
+
+‘And now tell us,’ said I, ‘everything relating to your fortunes.’
+
+‘Our fortuns, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined, ‘is soon told. We haven’t fared
+nohows, but fared to thrive. We’ve allus thrived. We’ve worked as we
+ought to ‘t, and maybe we lived a leetle hard at first or so, but
+we have allus thrived. What with sheep-farming, and what with
+stock-farming, and what with one thing and what with t’other, we are as
+well to do, as well could be. Theer’s been kiender a blessing fell upon
+us,’ said Mr. Peggotty, reverentially inclining his head, ‘and we’ve
+done nowt but prosper. That is, in the long run. If not yesterday, why
+then today. If not today, why then tomorrow.’
+
+‘And Emily?’ said Agnes and I, both together.
+
+‘Em’ly,’ said he, ‘arter you left her, ma’am--and I never heerd her
+saying of her prayers at night, t’other side the canvas screen, when we
+was settled in the Bush, but what I heerd your name--and arter she and
+me lost sight of Mas’r Davy, that theer shining sundown--was that low,
+at first, that, if she had know’d then what Mas’r Davy kep from us so
+kind and thowtful, ‘tis my opinion she’d have drooped away. But theer
+was some poor folks aboard as had illness among ‘em, and she took care
+of them; and theer was the children in our company, and she took care of
+them; and so she got to be busy, and to be doing good, and that helped
+her.’
+
+‘When did she first hear of it?’ I asked.
+
+‘I kep it from her arter I heerd on ‘t,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘going
+on nigh a year. We was living then in a solitary place, but among the
+beautifullest trees, and with the roses a-covering our Beein to the
+roof. Theer come along one day, when I was out a-working on the land, a
+traveller from our own Norfolk or Suffolk in England (I doen’t rightly
+mind which), and of course we took him in, and giv him to eat and drink,
+and made him welcome. We all do that, all the colony over. He’d got an
+old newspaper with him, and some other account in print of the storm.
+That’s how she know’d it. When I came home at night, I found she know’d
+it.’
+
+He dropped his voice as he said these words, and the gravity I so well
+remembered overspread his face.
+
+‘Did it change her much?’ we asked.
+
+‘Aye, for a good long time,’ he said, shaking his head; ‘if not to this
+present hour. But I think the solitoode done her good. And she had a
+deal to mind in the way of poultry and the like, and minded of it, and
+come through. I wonder,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘if you could see my
+Em’ly now, Mas’r Davy, whether you’d know her!’
+
+‘Is she so altered?’ I inquired.
+
+‘I doen’t know. I see her ev’ry day, and doen’t know; But, odd-times, I
+have thowt so. A slight figure,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at the fire,
+‘kiender worn; soft, sorrowful, blue eyes; a delicate face; a pritty
+head, leaning a little down; a quiet voice and way--timid a’most. That’s
+Em’ly!’
+
+We silently observed him as he sat, still looking at the fire.
+
+‘Some thinks,’ he said, ‘as her affection was ill-bestowed; some, as her
+marriage was broken off by death. No one knows how ‘tis. She might have
+married well, a mort of times, “but, uncle,” she says to me, “that’s
+gone for ever.” Cheerful along with me; retired when others is by;
+fond of going any distance fur to teach a child, or fur to tend a sick
+person, or fur to do some kindness tow’rds a young girl’s wedding (and
+she’s done a many, but has never seen one); fondly loving of her uncle;
+patient; liked by young and old; sowt out by all that has any trouble.
+That’s Em’ly!’
+
+He drew his hand across his face, and with a half-suppressed sigh looked
+up from the fire.
+
+‘Is Martha with you yet?’ I asked.
+
+‘Martha,’ he replied, ‘got married, Mas’r Davy, in the second year. A
+young man, a farm-labourer, as come by us on his way to market with his
+mas’r’s drays--a journey of over five hundred mile, theer and back--made
+offers fur to take her fur his wife (wives is very scarce theer), and
+then to set up fur their two selves in the Bush. She spoke to me fur to
+tell him her trew story. I did. They was married, and they live fower
+hundred mile away from any voices but their own and the singing birds.’
+
+‘Mrs. Gummidge?’ I suggested.
+
+It was a pleasant key to touch, for Mr. Peggotty suddenly burst into a
+roar of laughter, and rubbed his hands up and down his legs, as he had
+been accustomed to do when he enjoyed himself in the long-shipwrecked
+boat.
+
+‘Would you believe it!’ he said. ‘Why, someun even made offer fur to
+marry her! If a ship’s cook that was turning settler, Mas’r Davy, didn’t
+make offers fur to marry Missis Gummidge, I’m Gormed--and I can’t say no
+fairer than that!’
+
+I never saw Agnes laugh so. This sudden ecstasy on the part of Mr.
+Peggotty was so delightful to her, that she could not leave off
+laughing; and the more she laughed the more she made me laugh, and the
+greater Mr. Peggotty’s ecstasy became, and the more he rubbed his legs.
+
+‘And what did Mrs. Gummidge say?’ I asked, when I was grave enough.
+
+‘If you’ll believe me,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘Missis Gummidge, ‘stead
+of saying “thank you, I’m much obleeged to you, I ain’t a-going fur
+to change my condition at my time of life,” up’d with a bucket as was
+standing by, and laid it over that theer ship’s cook’s head ‘till he
+sung out fur help, and I went in and reskied of him.’
+
+Mr. Peggotty burst into a great roar of laughter, and Agnes and I both
+kept him company.
+
+‘But I must say this, for the good creetur,’ he resumed, wiping his
+face, when we were quite exhausted; ‘she has been all she said she’d
+be to us, and more. She’s the willingest, the trewest, the
+honestest-helping woman, Mas’r Davy, as ever draw’d the breath of life.
+I have never know’d her to be lone and lorn, for a single minute,
+not even when the colony was all afore us, and we was new to it. And
+thinking of the old ‘un is a thing she never done, I do assure you,
+since she left England!’
+
+‘Now, last, not least, Mr. Micawber,’ said I. ‘He has paid off every
+obligation he incurred here--even to Traddles’s bill, you remember my
+dear Agnes--and therefore we may take it for granted that he is doing
+well. But what is the latest news of him?’
+
+Mr. Peggotty, with a smile, put his hand in his breast-pocket, and
+produced a flat-folded, paper parcel, from which he took out, with much
+care, a little odd-looking newspaper.
+
+‘You are to understan’, Mas’r Davy,’ said he, ‘as we have left the
+Bush now, being so well to do; and have gone right away round to Port
+Middlebay Harbour, wheer theer’s what we call a town.’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber was in the Bush near you?’ said I.
+
+‘Bless you, yes,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and turned to with a will. I never
+wish to meet a better gen’l’man for turning to with a will. I’ve seen
+that theer bald head of his a perspiring in the sun, Mas’r Davy, till I
+a’most thowt it would have melted away. And now he’s a Magistrate.’
+
+‘A Magistrate, eh?’ said I.
+
+Mr. Peggotty pointed to a certain paragraph in the newspaper, where I
+read aloud as follows, from the Port Middlebay Times:
+
+
+‘The public dinner to our distinguished fellow-colonist and townsman,
+WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, Port Middlebay District Magistrate, came
+off yesterday in the large room of the Hotel, which was crowded to
+suffocation. It is estimated that not fewer than forty-seven persons
+must have been accommodated with dinner at one time, exclusive of the
+company in the passage and on the stairs. The beauty, fashion, and
+exclusiveness of Port Middlebay, flocked to do honour to one so
+deservedly esteemed, so highly talented, and so widely popular. Doctor
+Mell (of Colonial Salem-House Grammar School, Port Middlebay) presided,
+and on his right sat the distinguished guest. After the removal of the
+cloth, and the singing of Non Nobis (beautifully executed, and in which
+we were at no loss to distinguish the bell-like notes of that gifted
+amateur, WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, JUNIOR), the usual loyal and
+patriotic toasts were severally given and rapturously received. Doctor
+Mell, in a speech replete with feeling, then proposed “Our distinguished
+Guest, the ornament of our town. May he never leave us but to better
+himself, and may his success among us be such as to render his bettering
+himself impossible!” The cheering with which the toast was received
+defies description. Again and again it rose and fell, like the waves
+of ocean. At length all was hushed, and WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE,
+presented himself to return thanks. Far be it from us, in the present
+comparatively imperfect state of the resources of our establishment,
+to endeavour to follow our distinguished townsman through the
+smoothly-flowing periods of his polished and highly-ornate address!
+Suffice it to observe, that it was a masterpiece of eloquence; and that
+those passages in which he more particularly traced his own successful
+career to its source, and warned the younger portion of his auditory
+from the shoals of ever incurring pecuniary liabilities which they were
+unable to liquidate, brought a tear into the manliest eye present. The
+remaining toasts were DOCTOR MELL; Mrs. MICAWBER (who gracefully bowed
+her acknowledgements from the side-door, where a galaxy of beauty was
+elevated on chairs, at once to witness and adorn the gratifying scene),
+Mrs. RIDGER BEGS (late Miss Micawber); Mrs. MELL; WILKINS MICAWBER,
+ESQUIRE, JUNIOR (who convulsed the assembly by humorously remarking that
+he found himself unable to return thanks in a speech, but would do so,
+with their permission, in a song); Mrs. MICAWBER’S FAMILY (well known,
+it is needless to remark, in the mother-country), &c. &c. &c. At the
+conclusion of the proceedings the tables were cleared as if by art-magic
+for dancing. Among the votaries of TERPSICHORE, who disported themselves
+until Sol gave warning for departure, Wilkins Micawber, Esquire, Junior,
+and the lovely and accomplished Miss Helena, fourth daughter of Doctor
+Mell, were particularly remarkable.’
+
+
+I was looking back to the name of Doctor Mell, pleased to have
+discovered, in these happier circumstances, Mr. Mell, formerly poor
+pinched usher to my Middlesex magistrate, when Mr. Peggotty pointing
+to another part of the paper, my eyes rested on my own name, and I read
+thus:
+
+
+‘TO DAVID COPPERFIELD, ESQUIRE,
+
+‘THE EMINENT AUTHOR.
+
+‘My Dear Sir,
+
+‘Years have elapsed, since I had an opportunity of ocularly perusing the
+lineaments, now familiar to the imaginations of a considerable portion
+of the civilized world.
+
+‘But, my dear Sir, though estranged (by the force of circumstances over
+which I have had no control) from the personal society of the friend and
+companion of my youth, I have not been unmindful of his soaring flight.
+Nor have I been debarred,
+
+ Though seas between us braid ha’ roared,
+
+(BURNS) from participating in the intellectual feasts he has spread
+before us.
+
+‘I cannot, therefore, allow of the departure from this place of an
+individual whom we mutually respect and esteem, without, my dear Sir,
+taking this public opportunity of thanking you, on my own behalf, and,
+I may undertake to add, on that of the whole of the Inhabitants of Port
+Middlebay, for the gratification of which you are the ministering agent.
+
+‘Go on, my dear Sir! You are not unknown here, you are not
+unappreciated. Though “remote”, we are neither “unfriended”,
+“melancholy”, nor (I may add) “slow”. Go on, my dear Sir, in your Eagle
+course! The inhabitants of Port Middlebay may at least aspire to watch
+it, with delight, with entertainment, with instruction!
+
+‘Among the eyes elevated towards you from this portion of the globe,
+will ever be found, while it has light and life,
+
+ ‘The
+ ‘Eye
+ ‘Appertaining to
+
+ ‘WILKINS MICAWBER,
+ ‘Magistrate.’
+
+
+I found, on glancing at the remaining contents of the newspaper, that
+Mr. Micawber was a diligent and esteemed correspondent of that journal.
+There was another letter from him in the same paper, touching a bridge;
+there was an advertisement of a collection of similar letters by him, to
+be shortly republished, in a neat volume, ‘with considerable additions’;
+and, unless I am very much mistaken, the Leading Article was his also.
+
+We talked much of Mr. Micawber, on many other evenings while Mr.
+Peggotty remained with us. He lived with us during the whole term of his
+stay,--which, I think, was something less than a month,--and his sister
+and my aunt came to London to see him. Agnes and I parted from him
+aboard-ship, when he sailed; and we shall never part from him more, on
+earth.
+
+But before he left, he went with me to Yarmouth, to see a little tablet
+I had put up in the churchyard to the memory of Ham. While I was copying
+the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw him stoop, and
+gather a tuft of grass from the grave and a little earth.
+
+‘For Em’ly,’ he said, as he put it in his breast. ‘I promised, Mas’r
+Davy.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 64. A LAST RETROSPECT
+
+
+And now my written story ends. I look back, once more--for the last
+time--before I close these leaves.
+
+I see myself, with Agnes at my side, journeying along the road of life.
+I see our children and our friends around us; and I hear the roar of
+many voices, not indifferent to me as I travel on.
+
+What faces are the most distinct to me in the fleeting crowd? Lo, these;
+all turning to me as I ask my thoughts the question!
+
+Here is my aunt, in stronger spectacles, an old woman of four-score
+years and more, but upright yet, and a steady walker of six miles at a
+stretch in winter weather.
+
+Always with her, here comes Peggotty, my good old nurse, likewise in
+spectacles, accustomed to do needle-work at night very close to the
+lamp, but never sitting down to it without a bit of wax candle, a
+yard-measure in a little house, and a work-box with a picture of St.
+Paul’s upon the lid.
+
+The cheeks and arms of Peggotty, so hard and red in my childish days,
+when I wondered why the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples,
+are shrivelled now; and her eyes, that used to darken their whole
+neighbourhood in her face, are fainter (though they glitter still);
+but her rough forefinger, which I once associated with a pocket
+nutmeg-grater, is just the same, and when I see my least child catching
+at it as it totters from my aunt to her, I think of our little parlour
+at home, when I could scarcely walk. My aunt’s old disappointment is set
+right, now. She is godmother to a real living Betsey Trotwood; and Dora
+(the next in order) says she spoils her.
+
+There is something bulky in Peggotty’s pocket. It is nothing smaller
+than the Crocodile Book, which is in rather a dilapidated condition by
+this time, with divers of the leaves torn and stitched across, but which
+Peggotty exhibits to the children as a precious relic. I find it very
+curious to see my own infant face, looking up at me from the Crocodile
+stories; and to be reminded by it of my old acquaintance Brooks of
+Sheffield.
+
+Among my boys, this summer holiday time, I see an old man making giant
+kites, and gazing at them in the air, with a delight for which there
+are no words. He greets me rapturously, and whispers, with many nods
+and winks, ‘Trotwood, you will be glad to hear that I shall finish the
+Memorial when I have nothing else to do, and that your aunt’s the most
+extraordinary woman in the world, sir!’
+
+Who is this bent lady, supporting herself by a stick, and showing me
+a countenance in which there are some traces of old pride and beauty,
+feebly contending with a querulous, imbecile, fretful wandering of the
+mind? She is in a garden; and near her stands a sharp, dark, withered
+woman, with a white scar on her lip. Let me hear what they say.
+
+‘Rosa, I have forgotten this gentleman’s name.’
+
+Rosa bends over her, and calls to her, ‘Mr. Copperfield.’
+
+‘I am glad to see you, sir. I am sorry to observe you are in mourning. I
+hope Time will be good to you.’
+
+Her impatient attendant scolds her, tells her I am not in mourning, bids
+her look again, tries to rouse her.
+
+‘You have seen my son, sir,’ says the elder lady. ‘Are you reconciled?’
+
+Looking fixedly at me, she puts her hand to her forehead, and moans.
+Suddenly, she cries, in a terrible voice, ‘Rosa, come to me. He is
+dead!’ Rosa kneeling at her feet, by turns caresses her, and quarrels
+with her; now fiercely telling her, ‘I loved him better than you ever
+did!’--now soothing her to sleep on her breast, like a sick child. Thus
+I leave them; thus I always find them; thus they wear their time away,
+from year to year.
+
+What ship comes sailing home from India, and what English lady is this,
+married to a growling old Scotch Croesus with great flaps of ears? Can
+this be Julia Mills?
+
+Indeed it is Julia Mills, peevish and fine, with a black man to carry
+cards and letters to her on a golden salver, and a copper-coloured woman
+in linen, with a bright handkerchief round her head, to serve her Tiffin
+in her dressing-room. But Julia keeps no diary in these days; never
+sings Affection’s Dirge; eternally quarrels with the old Scotch Croesus,
+who is a sort of yellow bear with a tanned hide. Julia is steeped in
+money to the throat, and talks and thinks of nothing else. I liked her
+better in the Desert of Sahara.
+
+Or perhaps this IS the Desert of Sahara! For, though Julia has a stately
+house, and mighty company, and sumptuous dinners every day, I see no
+green growth near her; nothing that can ever come to fruit or flower.
+What Julia calls ‘society’, I see; among it Mr. Jack Maldon, from his
+Patent Place, sneering at the hand that gave it him, and speaking to me
+of the Doctor as ‘so charmingly antique’. But when society is the name
+for such hollow gentlemen and ladies, Julia, and when its breeding is
+professed indifference to everything that can advance or can retard
+mankind, I think we must have lost ourselves in that same Desert of
+Sahara, and had better find the way out.
+
+And lo, the Doctor, always our good friend, labouring at his Dictionary
+(somewhere about the letter D), and happy in his home and wife. Also
+the Old Soldier, on a considerably reduced footing, and by no means so
+influential as in days of yore!
+
+Working at his chambers in the Temple, with a busy aspect, and his hair
+(where he is not bald) made more rebellious than ever by the constant
+friction of his lawyer’s-wig, I come, in a later time, upon my dear old
+Traddles. His table is covered with thick piles of papers; and I say, as
+I look around me:
+
+‘If Sophy were your clerk, now, Traddles, she would have enough to do!’
+
+‘You may say that, my dear Copperfield! But those were capital days,
+too, in Holborn Court! Were they not?’
+
+‘When she told you you would be a judge? But it was not the town talk
+then!’
+
+‘At all events,’ says Traddles, ‘if I ever am one--’ ‘Why, you know you
+will be.’
+
+‘Well, my dear Copperfield, WHEN I am one, I shall tell the story, as I
+said I would.’
+
+We walk away, arm in arm. I am going to have a family dinner with
+Traddles. It is Sophy’s birthday; and, on our road, Traddles discourses
+to me of the good fortune he has enjoyed.
+
+‘I really have been able, my dear Copperfield, to do all that I had most
+at heart. There’s the Reverend Horace promoted to that living at four
+hundred and fifty pounds a year; there are our two boys receiving the
+very best education, and distinguishing themselves as steady scholars
+and good fellows; there are three of the girls married very comfortably;
+there are three more living with us; there are three more keeping house
+for the Reverend Horace since Mrs. Crewler’s decease; and all of them
+happy.’
+
+‘Except--’ I suggest.
+
+‘Except the Beauty,’ says Traddles. ‘Yes. It was very unfortunate that
+she should marry such a vagabond. But there was a certain dash and glare
+about him that caught her. However, now we have got her safe at our
+house, and got rid of him, we must cheer her up again.’
+
+Traddles’s house is one of the very houses--or it easily may have
+been--which he and Sophy used to parcel out, in their evening walks. It
+is a large house; but Traddles keeps his papers in his dressing-room
+and his boots with his papers; and he and Sophy squeeze themselves into
+upper rooms, reserving the best bedrooms for the Beauty and the girls.
+There is no room to spare in the house; for more of ‘the girls’ are
+here, and always are here, by some accident or other, than I know how
+to count. Here, when we go in, is a crowd of them, running down to
+the door, and handing Traddles about to be kissed, until he is out of
+breath. Here, established in perpetuity, is the poor Beauty, a widow
+with a little girl; here, at dinner on Sophy’s birthday, are the three
+married girls with their three husbands, and one of the husband’s
+brothers, and another husband’s cousin, and another husband’s sister,
+who appears to me to be engaged to the cousin. Traddles, exactly the
+same simple, unaffected fellow as he ever was, sits at the foot of the
+large table like a Patriarch; and Sophy beams upon him, from the head,
+across a cheerful space that is certainly not glittering with Britannia
+metal.
+
+And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these
+faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by
+which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And
+that remains.
+
+I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.
+
+My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear
+presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.
+
+O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life
+indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows
+which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!
projects / gender-roles-text-analysis.git / blobdiff