David Copperfield Part 3 in English Fiction Stories by Charles Dickens books and stories PDF | David Copperfield Part 3

David Copperfield

Dickens, Charles

By Listen Books

Part - 3

Published: 1850 • Categorie(s): Fiction • Source: http://en.wikisource.org

© COPYRIGHTS

This book is copyrighted content of the concerned author as well as Matrubharti.

Matrubharti has exclusive digital publishing rights of this book.

Any illegal copies in physical or digital format are strictly prohibited.

Matrubharti can challenge such illegal distribution / copies / usage in court.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter-27

Chapter-28

Chapter-29

Chapter-30

Chapter-31

Chapter-32

Chapter-33

Chapter-34

Chapter-35

Chapter-36

Chapter-37

Chapter-38

Chapter-39

Chapter 27

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 be-gun 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, Copper-field,’ 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, like-wise, 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 re-new 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 some-what 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

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 to-wards 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 cap-able 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 under-stand your allusion, my love. I regret it, but I can bear it.’ ‘Micawber!’ exclaimed Mrs. Micawber, in tears. ‘Have I de-served 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 Copper-field 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 in-formed 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 sub-stance 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 al-low 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 to-morrow, 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 visit-ors 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 al-ways 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 Copper-field 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 Copper-field 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 al-low 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, be-cause 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 de-posit at a banking-house, the manners of Mr. Micawber, as rep-resenting 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 con-tend 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 per-son 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 over-looked, 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 them-selves 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 re-turn, 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 parent-al 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 con-tents: ‘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, be-cause 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 be-fore 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 re-joined, 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 let-ter 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 under-signed 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 Traddle s, 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

Chapter 29

I Visit Steerf orth 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 al-most 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 ac-countable 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 false-hood 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 be-cause 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 provok- ing 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 in-stance - 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 pre-vent 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, Steer-forth 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 mat-ter 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 be-fore 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 of-ten 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

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 draw-backs 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 sup-posed; 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 for-get 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 re-marked 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 en-treated me to come upstairs, sobbing that Mr. Barkis had al-ways 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, be-hind 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 pleas-ant smile: ‘Barkis is willin’!’ And, it being low water, he went out with the tide.

Chapter 31

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 ex-pounding 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 re-solved 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 Blunder-stone 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. Thinks 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 like-wise, 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 in-to 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 al-ways 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 de-served, 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 Steer- forth, yielded to a better feeling, My overcharged heart found the same relief, and I cried too.

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

The Beginning of a Long Jour ney 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 Steer-forth 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 to-wards 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 en-countered 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. Gum-midge, ‘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. Gum-midge, 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 her-self 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 be-fore 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 for-wards, 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 ex-claimed again, ‘Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the mat-ter! 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 thought-less 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 re-member 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 Lit-timer, 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 ad-vice, 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 ac-count 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 sal-lies 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 be-quest 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 re-placed 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 him-self 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 beer 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 re-collection 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

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, be-came 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 gentle-man, I believe?’ I made my gentleman a distant bow, and Peggotty barely re-cognized 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 re-belled 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 bet-ter, 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 con-firmed, 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 gentle-manly 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 de-signed 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 up-side 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 bet-ter, 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 gentle-man 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, be-cause 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 re-mind’; 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 butter-flies, 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, en-joy 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 him-self 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 ac-count 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 ad-dress 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, re-calling 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 up-hold 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 be-fore 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 in-sanity. 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

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 at-tending 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 stair-case - 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. There-fore 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 illconwenience’ 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, Copper-field, 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 ex-acting, 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 re-purchase 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, be-cause 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 be-fore 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 lug-gage 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 ex-tending 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 sup-posed. 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 pre-served 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 fright-en us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!’

Chapter 35

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 ac-count 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 re-sources. 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 at-tempts 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 re-turned, 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 ad-mission; ‘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 in-to 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 over-shadow 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 night-cap 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 any-thing; 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 be-fore 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, at-tired 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 re-covered. 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 be-fore 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, Copper-field, 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. Hope-less! 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, Copper-field!’ 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 al-ways 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 col-our 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 him-self. 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 An-gel (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 your-self, 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. Wick-field 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 in-tolerable 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

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, bare-headed, 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 Copper-field, 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 for-gotten 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; re-minding 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, be-cause I have always contemplated making any young friend I might thus employ, a present too. Undoubtedly,’ said the Doc-tor, 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 ac-knowledge -’ ‘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 bet-ter, 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 saga-city, ‘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 day-time 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 par-lour, whip in hand. It was Mr. Jack Maldon; and Mr. Jack Mal-don 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 cater-pillars. 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 re-main 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 for-get 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 re-ported 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 pock-et, 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 washhand-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 my-self 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. Copper-field, 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 him-self 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 de-sired 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 Canter-bury, 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 eye-brows; where it presently appeared to be, on his singing us (as an alternative between that and bed) ‘The Wood-Pecker tap-ping’. After many compliments on this performance, we fell in-to 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 es-teemed 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 re-marks, 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 in-supportable 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

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 be-coming 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 every-body 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 stair-case, 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 al-lowed 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 re-turn 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 an-gel 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 her-self 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. ‘Be-cause 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 en-able 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 ac-counts, 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 house-keeping, 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, under-take 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 any-thing 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 ac-count 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

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 alpha-bet, 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 cob-web, 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 Sid-mouth, 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 de-nomination 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 ac-count 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 let-ter 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 agree-able. 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 Copper-field, 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 be-fore. 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 any-thing, 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 in-crease 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 con-sequences 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 systematic-ally 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.3 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. Copper-field, 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 in- definable 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 de-scribe 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. Copper-field, 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 con-genial melody, “Evening Bells”. Effect not soothing, but re-verse. 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 en-able me to enter!

Chapter 39

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 pi-lot; 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 thou-sand 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 gentle-man 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 con-fused 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 there-unto. 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 as-sure 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 Wick-field! 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 al-ways 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 per-sons 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 Canter-bury?’ 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 up-stairs 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 al-most have consigned her to the mercies of the wind on the top-most 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 Wick-field?’ 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 Lon-don; 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, al-most 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 de-testable 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 your-self 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 moon-light - 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 in-to 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. Wick-field 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. Copper-field, 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 de-sire 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 an-other 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 an-other 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 know-ledge 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, Trot-wood! 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. Wick-field, 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 any-thing 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 Trot-wood, 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 under-stands 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.