David Copperfield

C >> Charles Dickens >> David Copperfield

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77

And Mrs. Gummidge took his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos
and affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude, that
he well deserved.

We brought the locker out, extinguished the candle, fastened the
door on the outside, and left the old boat close shut up, a dark
speck in the cloudy night. Next day, when we were returning to
London outside the coach, Mrs. Gummidge and her basket were on the
seat behind, and Mrs. Gummidge was happy.

CHAPTER 52
I ASSIST AT AN EXPLOSION

When the time Mr. Micawber had appointed so mysteriously, was
within four-and-twenty hours of being come, my aunt and I consulted
how we should proceed; for my aunt was very unwilling to leave
Dora. Ah! how easily I carried Dora up and down stairs, now!

We were disposed, notwithstanding Mr. Micawber's stipulation for my
aunt's attendance, to arrange that she should stay at home, and be
represented by Mr. Dick and me. In short, we had resolved to take
this course, when Dora again unsettled us by declaring that she
never would forgive herself, and never would forgive her bad boy,
if my aunt remained behind, on any pretence.

'I won't speak to you,' said Dora, shaking her curls at my aunt.
'I'll be disagreeable! I'll make Jip bark at you all day. I shall
be sure that you really are a cross old thing, if you don't go!'

'Tut, Blossom!' laughed my aunt. 'You know you can't do without
me!'

'Yes, I can,' said Dora. 'You are no use to me at all. You never
run up and down stairs for me, all day long. You never sit and
tell me stories about Doady, when his shoes were worn out, and he
was covered with dust - oh, what a poor little mite of a fellow!
You never do anything at all to please me, do you, dear?' Dora made
haste to kiss my aunt, and say, 'Yes, you do! I'm only joking!'-
lest my aunt should think she really meant it.

'But, aunt,' said Dora, coaxingly, 'now listen. You must go. I
shall tease you, 'till you let me have my own way about it. I
shall lead my naughty boy such a life, if he don't make you go. I
shall make myself so disagreeable - and so will Jip! You'll wish
you had gone, like a good thing, for ever and ever so long, if you
don't go. Besides,' said Dora, putting back her hair, and looking
wonderingly at my aunt and me, 'why shouldn't you both go? I am
not very ill indeed. Am I?'

'Why, what a question!' cried my aunt.

'What a fancy!' said I.

'Yes! I know I am a silly little thing!' said Dora, slowly looking
from one of us to the other, and then putting up her pretty lips to
kiss us as she lay upon her couch. 'Well, then, you must both go,
or I shall not believe you; and then I shall cry!'

I saw, in my aunt's face, that she began to give way now, and Dora
brightened again, as she saw it too.

'You'll come back with so much to tell me, that it'll take at least
a week to make me understand!' said Dora. 'Because I know I shan't
understand, for a length of time, if there's any business in it.
And there's sure to be some business in it! If there's anything to
add up, besides, I don't know when I shall make it out; and my bad
boy will look so miserable all the time. There! Now you'll go,
won't you? You'll only be gone one night, and Jip will take care
of me while you are gone. Doady will carry me upstairs before you
go, and I won't come down again till you come back; and you shall
take Agnes a dreadfully scolding letter from me, because she has
never been to see us!'

We agreed, without any more consultation, that we would both go,
and that Dora was a little Impostor, who feigned to be rather
unwell, because she liked to be petted. She was greatly pleased,
and very merry; and we four, that is to say, my aunt, Mr. Dick,
Traddles, and I, went down to Canterbury by the Dover mail that
night.

At the hotel where Mr. Micawber had requested us to await him,
which we got into, with some trouble, in the middle of the night,
I found a letter, importing that he would appear in the morning
punctually at half past nine. After which, we went shivering, at
that uncomfortable hour, to our respective beds, through various
close passages; which smelt as if they had been steeped, for ages,
in a solution of soup and stables.

Early in the morning, I sauntered through the dear old tranquil
streets, and again mingled with the shadows of the venerable
gateways and churches. The rooks were sailing about the cathedral
towers; and the towers themselves, overlooking many a long
unaltered mile of the rich country and its pleasant streams, were
cutting the bright morning air, as if there were no such thing as
change on earth. Yet the bells, when they sounded, told me
sorrowfully of change in everything; told me of their own age, and
my pretty Dora's youth; and of the many, never old, who had lived
and loved and died, while the reverberations of the bells had
hummed through the rusty armour of the Black Prince hanging up
within, and, motes upon the deep of Time, had lost themselves in
air, as circles do in water.

I looked at the old house from the corner of the street, but did
not go nearer to it, lest, being observed, I might unwittingly do
any harm to the design I had come to aid. The early sun was
striking edgewise on its gables and lattice-windows, touching them
with gold; and some beams of its old peace seemed to touch my
heart.

I strolled into the country for an hour or so, and then returned by
the main street, which in the interval had shaken off its last
night's sleep. Among those who were stirring in the shops, I saw
my ancient enemy the butcher, now advanced to top-boots and a baby,
and in business for himself. He was nursing the baby, and appeared
to be a benignant member of society.

We all became very anxious and impatient, when we sat down to
breakfast. As it approached nearer and nearer to half past nine
o'clock, our restless expectation of Mr. Micawber increased. At
last we made no more pretence of attending to the meal, which,
except with Mr. Dick, had been a mere form from the first; but my
aunt walked up and down the room, Traddles sat upon the sofa
affecting to read the paper with his eyes on the ceiling; and I
looked out of the window to give early notice of Mr. Micawber's
coming. Nor had I long to watch, for, at the first chime of the
half hour, he appeared in the street.

'Here he is,' said I, 'and not in his legal attire!'

My aunt tied the strings of her bonnet (she had come down to
breakfast in it), and put on her shawl, as if she were ready for
anything that was resolute and uncompromising. Traddles buttoned
his coat with a determined air. Mr. Dick, disturbed by these
formidable appearances, but feeling it necessary to imitate them,
pulled his hat, with both hands, as firmly over his ears as he
possibly could; and instantly took it off again, to welcome Mr.
Micawber.

'Gentlemen, and madam,' said Mr. Micawber, 'good morning! My dear
sir,' to Mr. Dick, who shook hands with him violently, 'you are
extremely good.'

'Have you breakfasted?' said Mr. Dick. 'Have a chop!'

'Not for the world, my good sir!' cried Mr. Micawber, stopping him
on his way to the bell; 'appetite and myself, Mr. Dixon, have long
been strangers.'

Mr. Dixon was so well pleased with his new name, and appeared to
think it so obliging in Mr. Micawber to confer it upon him, that he
shook hands with him again, and laughed rather childishly.

'Dick,' said my aunt, 'attention!'

Mr. Dick recovered himself, with a blush.

'Now, sir,' said my aunt to Mr. Micawber, as she put on her gloves,
'we are ready for Mount Vesuvius, or anything else, as soon as YOU
please.'

'Madam,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'I trust you will shortly witness
an eruption. Mr. Traddles, I have your permission, I believe, to
mention here that we have been in communication together?'

'It is undoubtedly the fact, Copperfield,' said Traddles, to whom
I looked in surprise. 'Mr. Micawber has consulted me in reference
to what he has in contemplation; and I have advised him to the best
of my judgement.'

'Unless I deceive myself, Mr. Traddles,' pursued Mr. Micawber,
'what I contemplate is a disclosure of an important nature.'

'Highly so,' said Traddles.

'Perhaps, under such circumstances, madam and gentlemen,' said Mr.
Micawber, 'you will do me the favour to submit yourselves, for the
moment, to the direction of one who, however unworthy to be
regarded in any other light but as a Waif and Stray upon the shore
of human nature, is still your fellow-man, though crushed out of
his original form by individual errors, and the accumulative force
of a combination of circumstances?'

'We have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Micawber,' said I, 'and
will do what you please.'

'Mr. Copperfield,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'your confidence is not,
at the existing juncture, ill-bestowed. I would beg to be allowed
a start of five minutes by the clock; and then to receive the
present company, inquiring for Miss Wickfield, at the office of
Wickfield and Heep, whose Stipendiary I am.'

My aunt and I looked at Traddles, who nodded his approval.

'I have no more,' observed Mr. Micawber, 'to say at present.'

With which, to my infinite surprise, he included us all in a
comprehensive bow, and disappeared; his manner being extremely
distant, and his face extremely pale.

Traddles only smiled, and shook his head (with his hair standing
upright on the top of it), when I looked to him for an explanation;
so I took out my watch, and, as a last resource, counted off the
five minutes. My aunt, with her own watch in her hand, did the
like. When the time was expired, Traddles gave her his arm; and we
all went out together to the old house, without saying one word on
the way.

We found Mr. Micawber at his desk, in the turret office on the
ground floor, either writing, or pretending to write, hard. The
large office-ruler was stuck into his waistcoat, and was not so
well concealed but that a foot or more of that instrument protruded
from his bosom, like a new kind of shirt-frill.

As it appeared to me that I was expected to speak, I said aloud:

'How do you do, Mr. Micawber?'

'Mr. Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, gravely, 'I hope I see you
well?'

'Is Miss Wickfield at home?' said I.

'Mr. Wickfield is unwell in bed, sir, of a rheumatic fever,' he
returned; 'but Miss Wickfield, I have no doubt, will be happy to
see old friends. Will you walk in, sir?'

He preceded us to the dining-room - the first room I had entered in
that house - and flinging open the door of Mr. Wickfield's former
office, said, in a sonorous voice:

'Miss Trotwood, Mr. David Copperfield, Mr. Thomas Traddles, and Mr.
Dixon!'

I had not seen Uriah Heep since the time of the blow. Our visit
astonished him, evidently; not the less, I dare say, because it
astonished ourselves. He did not gather his eyebrows together, for
he had none worth mentioning; but he frowned to that degree that he
almost closed his small eyes, while the hurried raising of his
grisly hand to his chin betrayed some trepidation or surprise.
This was only when we were in the act of entering his room, and
when I caught a glance at him over my aunt's shoulder. A moment
afterwards, he was as fawning and as humble as ever.

'Well, I am sure,' he said. 'This is indeed an unexpected
pleasure! To have, as I may say, all friends round St. Paul's at
once, is a treat unlooked for! Mr. Copperfield, I hope I see you
well, and - if I may umbly express myself so - friendly towards
them as is ever your friends, whether or not. Mrs. Copperfield,
sir, I hope she's getting on. We have been made quite uneasy by
the poor accounts we have had of her state, lately, I do assure
you.'

I felt ashamed to let him take my hand, but I did not know yet what
else to do.

'Things are changed in this office, Miss Trotwood, since I was an
umble clerk, and held your pony; ain't they?' said Uriah, with his
sickliest smile. 'But I am not changed, Miss Trotwood.'

'Well, sir,' returned my aunt, 'to tell you the truth, I think you
are pretty constant to the promise of your youth; if that's any
satisfaction to you.'

'Thank you, Miss Trotwood,' said Uriah, writhing in his ungainly
manner, 'for your good opinion! Micawber, tell 'em to let Miss
Agnes know - and mother. Mother will be quite in a state, when she
sees the present company!' said Uriah, setting chairs.

'You are not busy, Mr. Heep?' said Traddles, whose eye the cunning
red eye accidentally caught, as it at once scrutinized and evaded
us.

'No, Mr. Traddles,' replied Uriah, resuming his official seat, and
squeezing his bony hands, laid palm to palm between his bony knees.
'Not so much so as I could wish. But lawyers, sharks, and leeches,
are not easily satisfied, you know! Not but what myself and
Micawber have our hands pretty full, in general, on account of Mr.
Wickfield's being hardly fit for any occupation, sir. But it's a
pleasure as well as a duty, I am sure, to work for him. You've not
been intimate with Mr. Wickfield, I think, Mr. Traddles? I believe
I've only had the honour of seeing you once myself?'

'No, I have not been intimate with Mr. Wickfield,' returned
Traddles; 'or I might perhaps have waited on you long ago, Mr.
Heep.'

There was something in the tone of this reply, which made Uriah
look at the speaker again, with a very sinister and suspicious
expression. But, seeing only Traddles, with his good-natured face,
simple manner, and hair on end, he dismissed it as he replied, with
a jerk of his whole body, but especially his throat:

'I am sorry for that, Mr. Traddles. You would have admired him as
much as we all do. His little failings would only have endeared
him to you the more. But if you would like to hear my
fellow-partner eloquently spoken of, I should refer you to
Copperfield. The family is a subject he's very strong upon, if you
never heard him.'

I was prevented from disclaiming the compliment (if I should have
done so, in any case), by the entrance of Agnes, now ushered in by
Mr. Micawber. She was not quite so self-possessed as usual, I
thought; and had evidently undergone anxiety and fatigue. But her
earnest cordiality, and her quiet beauty, shone with the gentler
lustre for it.

I saw Uriah watch her while she greeted us; and he reminded me of
an ugly and rebellious genie watching a good spirit. In the
meanwhile, some slight sign passed between Mr. Micawber and
Traddles; and Traddles, unobserved except by me, went out.

'Don't wait, Micawber,' said Uriah.

Mr. Micawber, with his hand upon the ruler in his breast, stood
erect before the door, most unmistakably contemplating one of his
fellow-men, and that man his employer.

'What are you waiting for?' said Uriah. 'Micawber! did you hear me
tell you not to wait?'

'Yes!' replied the immovable Mr. Micawber.

'Then why DO you wait?' said Uriah.

'Because I - in short, choose,' replied Mr. Micawber, with a burst.

Uriah's cheeks lost colour, and an unwholesome paleness, still
faintly tinged by his pervading red, overspread them. He looked at
Mr. Micawber attentively, with his whole face breathing short and
quick in every feature.

'You are a dissipated fellow, as all the world knows,' he said,
with an effort at a smile, 'and I am afraid you'll oblige me to get
rid of you. Go along! I'll talk to you presently.'

'If there is a scoundrel on this earth,' said Mr. Micawber,
suddenly breaking out again with the utmost vehemence, 'with whom
I have already talked too much, that scoundrel's name is - HEEP!'

Uriah fell back, as if he had been struck or stung. Looking slowly
round upon us with the darkest and wickedest expression that his
face could wear, he said, in a lower voice:

'Oho! This is a conspiracy! You have met here by appointment! You
are playing Booty with my clerk, are you, Copperfield? Now, take
care. You'll make nothing of this. We understand each other, you
and me. There's no love between us. You were always a puppy with
a proud stomach, from your first coming here; and you envy me my
rise, do you? None of your plots against me; I'll counterplot you!
Micawber, you be off. I'll talk to you presently.'

'Mr. Micawber,' said I, 'there is a sudden change in this fellow.
in more respects than the extraordinary one of his speaking the
truth in one particular, which assures me that he is brought to
bay. Deal with him as he deserves!'

'You are a precious set of people, ain't you?' said Uriah, in the
same low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped
from his forehead, with his long lean hand, 'to buy over my clerk,
who is the very scum of society, - as you yourself were,
Copperfield, you know it, before anyone had charity on you, - to
defame me with his lies? Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this;
or I'll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to you. I
won't know your story professionally, for nothing, old lady! Miss
Wickfield, if you have any love for your father, you had better not
join that gang. I'll ruin him, if you do. Now, come! I have got
some of you under the harrow. Think twice, before it goes over
you. Think twice, you, Micawber, if you don't want to be crushed.
I recommend you to take yourself off, and be talked to presently,
you fool! while there's time to retreat. Where's mother?' he said,
suddenly appearing to notice, with alarm, the absence of Traddles,
and pulling down the bell-rope. 'Fine doings in a person's own
house!'

'Mrs. Heep is here, sir,' said Traddles, returning with that worthy
mother of a worthy son. 'I have taken the liberty of making myself
known to her.'

'Who are you to make yourself known?' retorted Uriah. 'And what do
you want here?'

'I am the agent and friend of Mr. Wickfield, sir,' said Traddles,
in a composed and business-like way. 'And I have a power of
attorney from him in my pocket, to act for him in all matters.'

'The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,' said Uriah,
turning uglier than before, 'and it has been got from him by
fraud!'

'Something has been got from him by fraud, I know,' returned
Traddles quietly; 'and so do you, Mr. Heep. We will refer that
question, if you please, to Mr. Micawber.'

'Ury -!' Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.

'YOU hold your tongue, mother,' he returned; 'least said, soonest
mended.'

'But, my Ury -'

'Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?'

Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his
pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of
the extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off.
The suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it
was useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed;
the leer with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he
had done - all this time being desperate too, and at his wits' end
for the means of getting the better of us - though perfectly
consistent with the experience I had of him, at first took even me
by surprise, who had known him so long, and disliked him so
heartily.

I say nothing of the look he conferred on me, as he stood eyeing
us, one after another; for I had always understood that he hated
me, and I remembered the marks of my hand upon his cheek. But when
his eyes passed on to Agnes, and I saw the rage with which he felt
his power over her slipping away, and the exhibition, in their
disappointment, of the odious passions that had led him to aspire
to one whose virtues he could never appreciate or care for, I was
shocked by the mere thought of her having lived, an hour, within
sight of such a man.

After some rubbing of the lower part of his face, and some looking
at us with those bad eyes, over his grisly fingers, he made one
more address to me, half whining, and half abusive.

'You think it justifiable, do you, Copperfield, you who pride
yourself so much on your honour and all the rest of it, to sneak
about my place, eaves-dropping with my clerk? If it had been ME,
I shouldn't have wondered; for I don't make myself out a gentleman
(though I never was in the streets either, as you were, according
to Micawber), but being you! - And you're not afraid of doing this,
either? You don't think at all of what I shall do, in return; or
of getting yourself into trouble for conspiracy and so forth? Very
well. We shall see! Mr. What's-your-name, you were going to refer
some question to Micawber. There's your referee. Why don't you
make him speak? He has learnt his lesson, I see.'

Seeing that what he said had no effect on me or any of us, he sat
on the edge of his table with his hands in his pockets, and one of
his splay feet twisted round the other leg, waiting doggedly for
what might follow.

Mr. Micawber, whose impetuosity I had restrained thus far with the
greatest difficulty, and who had repeatedly interposed with the
first syllable Of SCOUN-drel! without getting to the second, now
burst forward, drew the ruler from his breast (apparently as a
defensive weapon), and produced from his pocket a foolscap
document, folded in the form of a large letter. Opening this
packet, with his old flourish, and glancing at the contents, as if
he cherished an artistic admiration of their style of composition,
he began to read as follows:

'"Dear Miss Trotwood and gentlemen -"'

'Bless and save the man!' exclaimed my aunt in a low voice. 'He'd
write letters by the ream, if it was a capital offence!'

Mr. Micawber, without hearing her, went on.

'"In appearing before you to denounce probably the most consummate
Villain that has ever existed,"' Mr. Micawber, without looking off
the letter, pointed the ruler, like a ghostly truncheon, at Uriah
Heep, '"I ask no consideration for myself. The victim, from my
cradle, of pecuniary liabilities to which I have been unable to
respond, I have ever been the sport and toy of debasing
circumstances. Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, have,
collectively or separately, been the attendants of my career."'

The relish with which Mr. Micawber described himself as a prey to
these dismal calamities, was only to be equalled by the emphasis
with which he read his letter; and the kind of homage he rendered
to it with a roll of his head, when he thought he had hit a
sentence very hard indeed.

'"In an accumulation of Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, I
entered the office - or, as our lively neighbour the Gaul would
term it, the Bureau - of the Firm, nominally conducted under the
appellation of Wickfield and - HEEP, but in reality, wielded by -
HEEP alone. HEEP, and only HEEP, is the mainspring of that
machine. HEEP, and only HEEP, is the Forger and the Cheat."'

Uriah, more blue than white at these words, made a dart at the
letter, as if to tear it in pieces. Mr. Micawber, with a perfect
miracle of dexterity or luck, caught his advancing knuckles with
the ruler, and disabled his right hand. It dropped at the wrist,
as if it were broken. The blow sounded as if it had fallen on
wood.

'The Devil take you!' said Uriah, writhing in a new way with pain.
'I'll be even with you.'

'Approach me again, you - you - you HEEP of infamy,' gasped Mr.
Micawber, 'and if your head is human, I'll break it. Come on, come
on!'

I think I never saw anything more ridiculous - I was sensible of
it, even at the time - than Mr. Micawber making broad-sword guards
with the ruler, and crying, 'Come on!' while Traddles and I pushed
him back into a corner, from which, as often as we got him into it,
he persisted in emerging again.

His enemy, muttering to himself, after wringing his wounded hand
for sometime, slowly drew off his neck-kerchief and bound it up;
then held it in his other hand, and sat upon his table with his
sullen face looking down.

Mr. Micawber, when he was sufficiently cool, proceeded with his
letter.

'"The stipendiary emoluments in consideration of which I entered
into the service of - HEEP,"' always pausing before that word and
uttering it with astonishing vigour, '"were not defined, beyond the
pittance of twenty-two shillings and six per week. The rest was
left contingent on the value of my professional exertions; in other
and more expressive words, on the baseness of my nature, the
cupidity of my motives, the poverty of my family, the general moral
(or rather immoral) resemblance between myself and - HEEP. Need I
say, that it soon became necessary for me to solicit from - HEEP -
pecuniary advances towards the support of Mrs. Micawber, and our
blighted but rising family? Need I say that this necessity had
been foreseen by - HEEP? That those advances were secured by
I.O.U.'s and other similar acknowledgements, known to the legal
institutions of this country? And that I thus became immeshed in
the web he had spun for my reception?"'

Mr. Micawber's enjoyment of his epistolary powers, in describing
this unfortunate state of things, really seemed to outweigh any
pain or anxiety that the reality could have caused him. He read
on:

'"Then it was that - HEEP - began to favour me with just so much of
his confidence, as was necessary to the discharge of his infernal
business. Then it was that I began, if I may so Shakespearianly
express myself, to dwindle, peak, and pine. I found that my
services were constantly called into requisition for the
falsification of business, and the mystification of an individual
whom I will designate as Mr. W. That Mr. W. was imposed upon, kept
in ignorance, and deluded, in every possible way; yet, that all
this while, the ruffian - HEEP - was professing unbounded gratitude
to, and unbounded friendship for, that much-abused gentleman. This
was bad enough; but, as the philosophic Dane observes, with that
universal applicability which distinguishes the illustrious
ornament of the Elizabethan Era, worse remains behind!"'