CHAPTER XIX
I Look about Me, and Make a
Discovery
I AM DOUBTFUL WHETHER I WAS AT HEART GLAD
OR SORRY, when my school-days drew to an end, and the time came for
my leaving Doctor Strong’s. I had been very happy there, I had a
great attachment for the Doctor, and I was eminent and
distinguished in that little world. For these reasons, I was sorry
to go, but for other reasons, unsubstantial enough, I was glad.
Misty ideas of being a young man at my own disposal, of the
importance attaching to a young man at his own disposal, of the
wonderful things to be seen and done by that magnificent animal,
and the wonderful effects he could not fail to make upon society,
lured me away. So powerful were these visionary considerations in
my boyish mind, that I seem, according to my present way of
thinking, to have left school without natural regret. The
separation has not made the impression on me that other separations
have. I try in vain to recall how I felt about it, and what its
circumstances were, but it is not momentous in my recollection. I
suppose the opening prospect confused me. I know that my juvenile
experiences went for little or nothing then, and that life was more
like a great fairy story, which I was just about to begin to read,
than anything else.
My aunt and I had held many grave deliberations on
the calling to which I should be devoted. For a year or more I had
endeavoured to find a satisfactory answer to her often-repeated
question, “What I would like to be?” But I had no particular
liking, that I could discover, for anything. If I could have been
inspired with a knowledge of the science of navigation, taken the
command of a fast-sailing expedition, and gone round the world on a
triumphant voyage of discovery, I think I might have considered
myself completely suited. But in the absence of any such miraculous
provision, my desire was to apply myself to some pursuit that would
not lie too heavily upon her purse, and to do my duty in it,
whatever it might be.
Mr. Dick had regularly assisted at our councils,
with a meditative and sage demeanour. He never made a suggestion
but once, and on that occasion (I don’t know what put it in his
head), he suddenly proposed that I should be “a Brazier.” My aunt
received this proposal so very ungraciously, that he never ventured
on a second, but ever afterwards confined himself to looking
watchfully at her for her suggestions, and rattling his
money.
“Trot, I tell you what, my dear,” said my aunt, one
morning in the Christmas season when I left school, “as this knotty
point is still unsettled, and as we must not make a mistake in our
decision if we can help it, I think we had better take a little
breathing-time. In the meanwhile, you must try to look at it from a
new point of view, and not as a schoolboy.”
“I will, Aunt.”
“It has occurred to me,” pursued my aunt, “that a
little change, and a glimpse of life out-of-doors, may be useful in
helping you to know your own mind, and form a cooler judgment.
Suppose you were to take a little journey now. Suppose you were to
go down into the old part of the country again, for instance, and
see that—that out-of-the-way woman with the savagest of names,”
said my aunt, rubbing her nose, for she could never thoroughly
forgive Peggotty for being so called.
“Of all things in the world, Aunt, I should like it
best!”
“Well,” said my aunt, “that’s lucky, for I should
like it too. But it’s natural and rational that you should like it.
And I am very well persuaded that whatever you do, Trot, will
always be natural and rational.”
“I hope so, Aunt.”
“Your sister, Betsey Trotwood,” said my aunt,
“would have been as natural and rational a girl as ever breathed.
You’ll be worthy of her, won’t you?”
“I hope I shall be worthy of you, Aunt. That
will be enough for me.”
“It’s a mercy that poor dear baby of a mother of
yours didn’t live,” said my aunt, looking at me approvingly, “or
she’d have been so vain of her boy by this time, that her soft
little head would have been completely turned, if there was
anything of it left to turn.” (My aunt always excused any weakness
of her own in my behalf, by transferring it in this way to my poor
mother.) “Bless me, Trotwood, how you do remind me of her!”
“Pleasantly, I hope, Aunt?” said I.
“He’s as like her, Dick,” said my aunt,
emphatically, “he’s as like her, as she was that afternoon, before
she began to fret. Bless my heart, he’s as like her, as he can look
at me out of his two eyes!”
“Is he indeed?” said Mr. Dick.
“And he’s like David, too,” said my aunt,
decisively.
“He is very like David!” said Mr. Dick.
“But what I want you to be, Trot,” resumed my aunt,
“—I don’t mean physically, but morally, you are very well
physically—is a firm fellow. A fine firm fellow, with a will of
your own. With resolution,” said my aunt, shaking her cap at me,
and clenching her hand. “With determination. With character, Trot.
With strength of character that is not to be influenced, except on
good reason, by anybody, or by anything. That’s what I want you to
be. That’s what your father and mother might both have been, Heaven
knows, and been the better for it.”
I intimated that I hoped I should be what she
described.
“That you may begin, in a small way, to have a
reliance upon yourself, and to act for yourself,” said my aunt, “I
shall send you upon your trip alone. I did think, once, of Mr.
Dick’s going with you, but, on second thoughts, I shall keep him to
take care of me.”
Mr. Dick, for a moment, looked a little
disappointed, until the honour and dignity of having to take care
of the most wonderful woman in the world, restored the sunshine to
his face.
“Besides,” said my aunt, “there’s the
Memorial.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Mr. Dick, in a hurry, “I
intend, Trotwood, to get that done immediately—it really must be
done immediately! And then it will go in, you know—and then—” said
Mr. Dick, after checking himself, and pausing a long time,
“there’ll be a pretty kettle of fish I”
In pursuance of my aunt’s kind scheme, I was
shortly afterwards fitted out with a handsome purse of money, and a
port manteau, and tenderly dismissed upon my expedition. At
parting, my aunt gave me some good advice, and a good many kisses,
and said that, as her object was that I should look about me, and
should think a little, she would recommend me to stay a few days in
London, if I liked it, either on my way down into Suffolk, or in
coming back. In a word, I was at liberty to do what I would, for
three weeks or a month, and no other conditions were imposed upon
my freedom than the before-mentioned thinking and looking about me,
and a pledge to write three times a week and faithfully report
myself.
I went to Canterbury first, that I might take leave
of Agnes and Mr. Wickfield (my old room in whose house I had not
yet relinquished) and also of the good Doctor. Agnes was very glad
to see me, and told me that the house had not been like itself
since I had left it.
“I am sure I -am not like myself when I am away,”
said I. “I seem to want my right hand, when I miss you. Though
that’s not saying much, for there‘s, no head in my right hand, and
no heart. Everyone who knows you consults with you, and is guided
by you, Agnes.”
“Everyone who knows me spoils me, I believe,” she
answered, smiling.
“No. It’s because you are like no one else. You are
so good, and so sweet-tempered. You have such a gentle nature, and
you are always right.”
“You talk,” said Agnes, breaking into a pleasant
laugh, as she sat at work, “as if I were the late Miss
Larkins.”
“Come! It’s not fair to abuse my confidence,” I
answered, reddening at the recollection of my blue enslaver. “But I
shall confide in you, just the same, Agnes. I can never grow out of
that. Whenever I fall into trouble, or fall in love, I shall always
tell you, if you’ll let me—even when I come to fall in love in
earnest.”
“Why, you have always been in earnest!” said Agnes,
laughing again.
“Ohl that was as a child, or a schoolboy,” said I,
laughing in my turn, not without being a little shame-faced. “Times
are altering now, and I suppose I shall be in a terrible state of
earnestness one day or other. My wonder is that you are not in
earnest yourself, by this time, Agnes.”
Agnes laughed again, and shook her head.
“Oh, I know you are not!” said I, “because if you
had been, you would have told me. Or at least,” for I saw a faint
blush in her face, “you would have let me find it out for myself.
But there is no one that I know of, who deserves to love
you, Agnes. Someone of a nobler character, and more worthy
altogether than anyone I have ever seen here, must rise up, before
I give my consent. In the time to come, I shall have a wary
eye on all admirers, and shall exact a great deal from the
successful one, I assure you.”
We had gone on, so far, in a mixture of
confidential jest and earnest, that had long grown naturally out of
our familiar relations, begun as mere children. But Agnes, now
suddenly lifting up her eyes to mine, and speaking in a different
manner, said:
“Trotwood, there is something that I want to ask
you, and that I may not have another opportunity of asking for a
long time, perhaps. Something I would ask, I think, of no one else.
Have you observed any gradual alteration in Papa?”
I had observed it, and had often wondered whether
she had too. I must have shown as much, now, in my face, for her
eyes were in a moment cast down, and I saw tears in them.
“Tell me what it is,” she said, in a low
voice.
“I think—shall I be quite plain, Agnes, liking him
so much?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I think he does himself no good by the habit that
has increased upon him since I first came here. He is often very
nervous, or I fancy so.”
“It is not fancy,” said Agnes, shaking her
head.
“His hand trembles, his speech is not plain, and
his eyes look wild. I have remarked that at those times, and when
he is least like himself, he is most certain to be wanted on some
business.”
“By Uriah,” said Agnes.
“Yes, and the sense of being unfit for it, or of
not having understood it, or of having shown his condition in spite
of himself, seems to make him so uneasy, that next day he is worse,
and next day worse, and so he becomes jaded and haggard. Do not be
alarmed by what I say, Agnes, but in this state I saw him, only the
other evening, lay down his head upon his desk, and shed tears like
a child.”
Her hand passed softly before my lips while I was
yet speaking, and in a moment she had met her father at the door of
the room, and was hanging on his shoulder. The expression of her
face, as they both looked towards me, I felt to be very touching.
There was such deep fondness for him, and gratitude to him for all
his love and care, in her beautiful look, and there was such a
fervent appeal to me to deal tenderly by him, even in my inmost
thoughts, and to let no harsh construction find any place against
him; she was, at once, so proud of him and devoted to him, yet so
compassionate and sorry, and so reliant upon me to be so, too, that
nothing she could have said would have expressed more to me, or
moved me more.
[He was in good spirits and looked well, and we
dined together cheerfully. He talked of the time that had glided
away since I first dined with him, and the change that had stolen
imperceptibly upon myself and Agnes. He sometimes felt that he was
changed too, he said, and not for the better, as we were, but let
that pass—and he drank his wine. He talked of Uriah Heep, and of
the flight of years over his red head (though the mention of its
colour is mine as I write), and spoke of Uriah’s time being out
within a week or two, and of its seeming to have begun but
yesterday.
I took that occasion to thank Mr. Wickfield for all
the friendship and protection I had received at his hands—not very
eloquently, I felt too much for that, but very heartily. He made.
light of it in the same spirit, and said, with a melancholy kind of
smile, which always became him well, that his great hope in life
had been to see his daughter grow up at his side to what she now
was, and yet that he could be well content to live the last five
years of his life again. Then Agnes and I fell to recalling a
number of little incidents which had happened in the course of
those five years, and appealing to his recollection about them; and
I was glad to see that he was carried away from his wine by the
current of our talk, and for the time forgot it.]
We were to drink tea at the Doctor’s. We went there
at the usual hour, and round the study-fireside found the Doctor,
and his young wife, and her mother. The Doctor, who made as much of
my going away as if I were going to China, received me as an
honoured guest, and called for a log of wood to be thrown on the
fire, that he might see the face of his old pupil reddening in the
blaze.
“I shall not see many more new faces in Trotwood’s
stead, Wickfield,” said the Doctor, warming his hands, “I am
getting lazy, and want ease. I shall relinquish all my young people
in another six months, and lead a quieter life.”
“You have said so, any time these ten years,
Doctor,” Mr. Wickfield answered.
“But now I mean to do it,” returned the Doctor. “My
first master will succeed me—I am in earnest at last—so you’ll soon
have to arrange our contracts, and to bind us firmly to them, like
a couple of knaves.”
“And to take care,” said Mr. Wickfield, “that
you’re not imposed on, eh? As you certainly would be, in any
contract you should make for yourself. Well! I am ready. There are
worse tasks than that, in my calling.”
“I shall have nothing to think of, then,” said the
Doctor, with a smile, “but my Dictionary, and this other
contract-bargain—Annie.”
As Mr. Wickfield glanced towards her, sitting at
the tea-table by Agnes, she seemed to me to avoid his look with
such unwonted hesitation and timidity, that his attention became
fixed upon her, as if something were suggested to his
thoughts.
“There is a post come in from India, I observe,” he
said after a short silence.
“By-the-by! and letters from Mr. Jack Maldon!” said
the Doctor.
“Indeed!”
“Poor dear Jack!” said Mrs. Markleham, shaking her
head. “That trying climate! Like living, they tell me, on a
sand-heap, underneath a burning-glass! He looked strong, but he
wasn’t. My dear Doctor, it was his spirit, not his constitution,
that he ventured on so boldly. Annie, my dear, I am sure you must
perfectly recollect that your cousin never was strong, not what can
be called robust, you know,” said Mrs. Markleham, with
emphasis, and looking round upon us generally, “from the time when
my daughter and himself were children, together, and walking about,
arm-in-arm, the live-long day.”
Annie, thus addressed, made no reply.
“Do I gather from what you say, ma‘am, that Mr.
Maldon is ill?” asked Mr. Wickfield.
“Ill!” replied the Old Soldier. “My dear sir, he’s
all sorts of things.”
“Except well?” said Mr. Wickfield.
“Except well, indeed!” said the Old Soldier. “He
has had dreadful strokes of the sun, no doubt, and jungle fevers
and agues, and every kind of thing you can mention. As to his
liver,” said the Old Soldier resignedly, “that, of course, he gave
up altogether, when he first went out!”
“Does he say all this?” asked Mr. Wickfield.
“Say? My dear sir,” returned Mrs. Markleham,
shaking her head and her fan, “you little know my poor Jack Maldon
when you ask that question. Say? Not be. You might drag him at the
heels of four wild horses first.”
“Mama!” said Mrs. Strong.
“Annie, my dear,” returned her mother, “once for
all, I must really beg that you will not interfere with me, unless
it is to confirm what I say. You know as well as I do that your
cousin Maldon would be dragged at the heels of any number of wild
horses—why should I confine myself to four! I won’t confine myself
to four—eight, sixteen, two-and-thirty, rather than say anything
calculated to overturn the Doctor’s plans.”
“Wickfield’s plans,” said the Doctor, stroking his
face, and looking penitently at his adviser. “That is to say, our
joint plans for him. I said myself, abroad or at home.”
“And I said,” added Mr. Wickfield gravely, “abroad.
I was the means of sending him abroad. It’s my
responsibility.”
“Oh! Responsibility!” said the Old Soldier.
“Everything was done for the best, my dear Mr. Wickfield,
everything was done for the kindest and best, we know. But if the
dear fellow can’t live there, he can’t live there. And if he can’t
live there, he’ll die there, sooner than he’ll overturn the
Doctor’s plans. I know him,” said the Old Soldier, fanning herself,
in a sort of calm prophetic agony, “and I know he’ll die there,
sooner than he’ll overturn the Doctor’s plans.”
“Well, well, ma‘am,” said the Doctor cheerfully, “I
am not bigoted to my plans, and I can overturn them myself. I can
substitute some other plans. If Mr. Jack Maldon comes home on
account of ill health, he must not be allowed to go back, and we
must endeavour to make some more suitable and fortunate provision
for him in this country.”
Mrs. Markleham was so overcome by this generous
speech (which, I need not say, she had not at all expected or led
up to) that she could only tell the Doctor it was like himself, and
go several times through that operation of kissing the sticks of
her fan, and then tapping his hand with it. After which she gently
chid her daughter Annie, for not being more demonstrative when such
kindnesses were showered, for her sake, on her old playfellow, and
entertained us with some particulars concerning other deserving
members of her family, whom it was desirable to set on their
deserving legs.
All this time, her daughter Annie never once spoke,
or lifted up her eyes. All this time, Mr. Wickfield had his glance
upon her as she sat by his own daughter’s side. It appeared to me
that he never thought of being observed by anyone, but was so
intent upon her, and upon his own thoughts in connexion with her,
as to be quite absorbed. He now asked what Mr. Jack Maldon had
actually written in reference to himself, and to whom he had
written it?
“Why, here,” said Mrs. Markleham, taking a letter
from the chimney-piece above the Doctor’s head. “the dear fellow
says to the Doctor himself—where is it? Oh!—‘I am sorry to inform
you that my health is suffering severely, and that I fear I may be
reduced to the necessity of returning home for a time, as the only
hope of restoration.’ That’s pretty plain, poor fellow! His only
hope of restoration! But Annie’s letter is plainer still. Annie,
show me that letter again.”
“Not now, Mama,” she pleaded in a low tone.
“My dear, you absolutely are, on some subjects, one
of the most ridiculous persons in the world,” returned her mother,
“and perhaps the most unnatural to the claims of your own family.
We never should have heard of the letter at all, I believe, unless
I had asked for it myself. Do you call that confidence, my love,
towards Doctor Strong? I am surprised. You ought to know
better.”
The letter was reluctantly produced, and, as I
handed it to the old lady, I saw how the unwilling hand from which
I took it trembled.
“Now let us see,” said Mrs. Markleham, putting her
glass to her eye, “where the passage is. The remembrance of old
times, my dearest Annie‘—and so forth—it’s not there. The amiable
old Proctor’—who’s he? Dear me, Annie, how illegibly your cousin
Maldon writes, and how stupid I am! ‘Doctor,’ of course. Ah!
amiable indeed!” Here she left off to kiss her fan again, and shake
it at the Doctor, who was looking at us in a state of placid
satisfaction. “Now, I have found it. ‘You may not be
surprised to hear, Annie,’—no, to be sure, knowing that he never
was really strong; what did I say just now?—‘that I have undergone
so much in this distant place, as to have decided to leave it at
all hazards, on sick leave, if I can, on total resignation, if that
is not to be obtained. What I have endured, and do endure here, is
insupportable.’ And but for the promptitude of that best of
creatures,” said Mrs. Markleham, telegraphing the Doctor as before,
and refolding the letter, “it would be insupportable to me to think
of.”
Mr. Wickfield said not one word, though the old
lady looked to him as if for his commentary on this intelligence,
but sat severely silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground. Long
after the subject was dismissed, and other topics occupied us, he
remained so, seldom raising his eyes, unless to rest them for a
moment, with a thoughtful frown, upon the Doctor, or his wife, or
both.
The Doctor was very fond of music. Agnes sang with
great sweetness and expression, and so did Mrs. Strong. They sang
together, and played duets together, and we had quite a little
concert. But I remarked two things: first, that though Annie soon
recovered her composure, and was quite herself, there was a blank
between her and Mr. Wickfield which separated them wholly from each
other; secondly, that Mr. Wickfield seemed to dislike the intimacy
between her and Agnes, and to watch it with uneasiness. And now, I
must confess, the recollection of what I had seen on that night
when Mr. Maldon went away, first began to return upon me with a
meaning it had never had, and to trouble me. The innocent beauty of
her face was not as innocent to me as it had been; I mistrusted the
natural grace and charm of her manner; and when I looked at Agnes
by her side, and thought how good and true Agnes was, suspicions
arose within me that it was an ill-assorted friendship.
She was so happy in it herself, however, and the
other was so happy too, that they made the evening fly away as if
it were but an hour. It closed in an incident which I well
remember. They were taking leave of each other, and Agnes was going
to embrace her and kiss her, when Mr. Wickfield stepped between
them, as if by accident, and drew Agnes quickly away. Then I saw,
as though all the intervening time had been cancelled, and I were
still standing in the doorway on the night of the departure, the
expression of that night in the face of Mrs. Strong, as it
confronted his.
I cannot say what an impression this made upon me,
or how impossible I found it, when I thought of her afterwards, to
separate her from this look, and remember her face in its innocent
loveliness again. It haunted me when I got home. I seemed to have
left the Doctor’s roof with a dark cloud lowering on it. The
reverence that I had for his grey head was mingled with
commiseration for his faith in those who were treacherous to him,
and with resentment against those who injured him. The impending
shadow of a great affliction, and a great disgrace that had no
distinct form in it yet, fell like a stain upon the quiet place
where I had worked and played as a boy, and did it a cruel wrong. I
had no pleasure in thinking, any more, of the grave old
broad-leaved aloe-trees which remained shut up in themselves a
hundred years together, and of the trim smooth grass-plot, and the
stone. urns, and the Doctor’s Walk, and the congenial sound of the
Cathedral bell hovering above them all. It was as if the tranquil
sanctuary of my boyhood had been sacked before my face, and its
peace and honour given to the winds.
But morning brought with it my parting from the old
house, which Agnes had filled with her influence, and that occupied
my mind sufficiently. I should be there again soon, no doubt; I
might sleep again—perhaps often—in my old room, but the days of my
inhabiting there were gone, and the old time was past. I was
heavier at heart, when I packed up such of my books and clothes as
still remained there to be sent to Dover, than I cared to show to
Uriah Heep, who was so officious to help me, that I uncharitably
thought him mighty glad that I was going.
I got away from Agnes and her father, somehow, with
an indifferent show of being very manly, and took my seat upon the
box of the London coach. I was so softened and forgiving, going
through the town, that I had half a mind to nod to my old enemy,
the butcher, and throw him five shillings to drink. But he looked
such a very obdurate butcher as he stood scraping the great block
in the shop, and moreover, his appearance was so little improved by
the loss of a front tooth which I had knocked out, that I thought
it best to make no advances.
The main object on my mind, I remember, when we got
fairly on the road, was to appear as old as possible to the
coachman, and to speak extremely gruff. The latter point I achieved
at great personal inconvenience, but I stuck to it, because I felt
it was a grown-up sort of thing.
“You are going through, sir?” said the
coachman.
“Yes, William,” I said, condescendingly (I knew
him), “I am going to London. I shall go down into Suffolk
afterwards.”
“Shooting, sir?” said the coachman.
He knew as well as I did that it was just as
likely, at that time of year, I was going down there whaling, but I
felt complimented, too.
“I don’t know,” I said, pretending to be undecided,
“whether I shall take a shot or not.”
“Birds is got wery shy, I’m told,” said
William.
“So I understand,” said I.
“Is Suffolk your county, sir?” said William.
“Yes,” I said, with some importance. “Suffolk’s my
county.”
“I’m told the dumplings is uncommon fine down
there,” said William.
I was not aware of it myself, but I felt it
necessary to uphold the institutions of my county, and to evince a
familiarity with them, so I shook my head, as much as to say, “I
believe you!”
“And the Punches,” said William. “There’s cattle! A
Suffolk Punch, when he’s a good un, is worth his weight in gold.
Did you ever breed any Suffolk Punches yourself, sir?”
“N—no,” I said, “not exactly.”
“Here’s a gen‘lm’n behind me, I’ll pound it,” said
William, “as has bred ’em by wholesale.”
The gentleman spoken of was a gentleman with a very
unpromising squint, and a prominent chin, who had a tall white hat
on with a narrow flat brim, and whose close-fitting drab trousers
seemed to button all the way up outside his legs from his boots to
his hips. His chin was cocked over the coachman’s shoulder, so near
to me, that his breath quite tickled the back of my head, and as I
looked round at him, he leered at the leaders with the eye with
which he didn’t squint, in a very knowing manner.
“Ain’t you?” asked William.
“Ain’t I what?” said the gentleman behind.
“Bred them Suffolk Punches by wholesale?”
“I should think so,” said the gentleman. “There
ain’t no sort of orse that I ain’t bred, and no sort of dorg. Orses
and dorgs is some men’s fancy. They’re wittles and drink to
me—lodging, wife, and children—reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic
—snuff, tobacker, and sleep.”
“That ain’t a sort of man to see sitting behind a
coach-box, is it though?” said William in my ear, as he handled the
reins.
I construed this remark into an indication of a
wish that he should have my place, so I blushingly offered to
resign it.
“Well, if you don’t mind, sir,” said William, “I
think it would be more correct.”
I have always considered this as the first fall I
had in life. When I booked my place at the coach-office, I had had
“Box Seat” written against the entry, and had given the book-keeper
half-a-crown. I was got up in a special greatcoat and shawl,
expressly to do honour to that distinguished eminence, had
glorified myself upon it a good deal, and had felt that I was a
credit to the coach, And here, in the very first stage, I was
supplanted by a shabby man with a squint, who had no other merit
than smelling like a livery-stables, and being able to walk across
me, more like a fly than a human being, while the horses were at a
canter!
A distrust of myself, which has often beset me in
life on small occasions, when it would have been better away, was
assuredly not stopped in its growth by this little incident outside
the Canterbury coach. It was in vain to take refuge in graffness of
speech. I spoke from the pit of my stomach for the rest of the
journey, but I felt completely extinguished, and dreadfully
young.
It was curious and interesting, nevertheless, to be
sitting up there, behind four horses, well-educated, well-dressed,
and with plenty of money in my pocket, and to look out for the
places where I had slept on my weary journey. I had abundant
occupation for my thoughts, in every conspicuous landmark on the
road. When I looked down at the tramps whom we passed, and saw that
well-remembered style of face turned up, I felt as if
the tinker’s blackened hand were in the bosom of my shirt again.
When we clattered through the narrow street of Chatham, and I
caught a glimpse, in passing, of the lane where the old monster
lived who had bought my jacket, I stretched my neck eagerly to look
for the place where I had sat, in the sun and in the shade, waiting
for my money. When we came, at last, within a stage of London, and
passed the veritable Salem House where Mr. Creakle had laid about
him with a heavy hand, I would have given all I had for lawful
permission to get down and thrash him, and let all the boys out
like so many caged sparrows.
We went to the Golden Cross, at Charing Cross, then
a mouldy sort of establishment in a close neighbourhood. A waiter
showed me into the coffee-room, and a chambermaid introduced me to
my small bedchamber, which smelt like a hackney-coach, and was shut
up like a family vault. I was still painfully conscious of my
youth, for nobody stood in any awe of me at all, the chambermaid
being utterly indifferent to my opinions on any subject, and the
waiter being familiar with me, and offering advice to my
inexperience.
“Well now,” said the waiter, in a tone of
confidence, “what would you like for dinner? Young gentlemen likes
poultry in general; have a fowl!”
I told him, as majestically as I could, that I
wasn’t in the humour for a fowL
“Ain’t you?” said the waiter. “Young gentlemen is
generally tired of beef and mutton; have a veal cutlet!”
I assented to this proposal, in default of being
able to suggest anything else.
“Do you care for taters?” said the waiter, with an
insinuating smile, and his head on one side. “Young gentlemen
generally has been overdosed with taters.”
I commanded him, in my deepest voice, to order a
veal cutlet and potatoes, and all things fitting, and to inquire at
the bar if there were any letters for Trotwood Copperfield,
Esquire—which I knew there were not, and couldn’t be, but thought
it manly to appear to expect.
He soon came back to say that there were none (at
which I was much surprised), and began to lay the cloth for my
dinner in a box by the fire. While he was so engaged, he asked me
what I would take with, it, and on my replying “Half-a-pint of
sherry,” thought it a favourable opportunity, I am afraid, to
extract that measure of wine from the stale leavings at the bottoms
of several small decanters. I am of this opinion because, while I
was reading the newspaper, I observed him behind a low wooden
partition, which was his private apartment, very busy pouring out
of a number of those vessels into one, like a chemist and druggist
making up a prescription. When the wine came, too, I thought it
flat, and it certainly had more English crumbs in it than were to
be expected in a foreign wine in anything like a pure state, but I
was bashful enough to drink it, and say nothing.
Being then in a pleasant frame of mind (from which
I infer that poisoning is not always disagreeable in some stages of
the process), I resolved to go to the play. It was Covent Garden
Theatre that I chose, and there, from the back of a centre box, I
saw Julius Cæsar and the new Pantomime. To have all those
noble Romans alive before me, and walking in and out for my
entertainment, instead of being the stern taskmasters they had been
at school, was a most novel and delightful effect. But the mingled
reality and mystery of the whole show, the influence upon me of the
poetry, the lights, the music, the company, the smooth stupendous
changes of glittering and brilliant scenery, were so dazzling, and
opened up such illimitable regions of delight, that when I came out
into the rainy street, at twelve o‘clock at night, I felt as if I
had come from the clouds, where I had been leading a romantic life
for ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted,
umbrella-struggling, hackney-coach-jostling, patten-clinking,
muddy, miserable world.
I had emerged by another door, and stood in the
street for a little while, as if I really were a stranger upon
earth, but the unceremonious pushing and hustling that I received
soon recalled me to myself, and put me in the road back to the
hotel, whither I went, revolving the glorious vision all the way,
and where, after some porter and oysters, I sat revolving it still,
at past one o‘clock, with my eyes on the coffee-room fire.
I was so filled with the play, and with the
past—for it was, in a manner, like a shining transparency, through
which I saw my earlier life moving along—that I don’t know when the
figure of a handsome well-formed young man, dressed with a tasteful
easy negligence which I have reason to remember very well, became a
real presence to me. But I recollect being conscious of his company
without having noticed his coming in—and my still sitting, musing,
over the coffee-room fire.
At last I rose to go to bed, much to the relief of
the sleepy waiter, who had got the fidgets in his legs, and was
twisting them, and hitting them, and putting them through all kinds
of contortions in his small pantry. In going towards the door, I
passed the person who had come in, and saw him plainly. I turned
directly, came back, and looked again. He did not know me, but I
knew him in a moment.
At another time I might have wanted the confidence
or the decision to speak to him, and might have put it off until
next day, and might have lost him. But, in the then condition of my
mind, where the play was still running high, his former protection
of me appeared so deserving of my gratitude, and my old love for
him overflowed my breast so freshly and spontaneously, that I went
up to him at once, with a fast-beating heart, and said:
“Steerforth! won’t you speak to me?”
He looked at me—just as he used to look,
sometimes—but I saw no recognition in his face.
“You don’t remember me, I am afraid,” said I.
“My God!” he suddenly exclaimed. “It’s little
Copperfield!”
I grasped him by both hands, and could not let them
go. But for very shame, and the fear that it might displease him, I
could have held him round the neck and cried.
“I never, never, never, was so glad! My dear
Steerforth, I am so overjoyed to see you!”
“And I am rejoiced to see you, too!” he said,
shaking my hands heartily. “Why, Copperfield, old boy, don’t be
overpowered!” And yet he was glad, too, I thought, to see how the
delight I had in meeting him affected me.
I brushed away the tears that my utmost resolution
had not been able to keep back, and I made. a clumsy laugh of it,
and we sat down together, side-by-side.
“Why, how do you come to be here?” said Steerforth,
clapping me on the shoulder.
“I came here by the Canterbury coach, today. I have
been adopted by an aunt down in that part of the country, and have
just finished my education there. How do you come to be here,
Steerforth?”
“Well, I am what they call an Oxford man,” he
returned, “that is to say, I get bored to death down there,
periodically —and I am on my way now to my mother’s. You’re a
devilish amiable-looking fellow, Copperfield. Just what you used to
be, now I look at you! Not altered in the least!”
“I knew you immediately,” I said, “but you are more
easily remembered.”
He laughed as he ran his hand through the
clustering curls of his hair, and said gaily:
“Yes, I am on an expedition of duty. My mother
lives a little way out of town, and the roads being in a beastly
condition, and our house tedious enough, I remained here tonight
instead of going on. I have not been in town half-a-dozen hours,
and those I have been dozing and grumbling away at the play.”
“I have been at the play, too,” said I. “At Covent
Garden. What a delightful and magnificent entertainment,
Steerforth!”
Steerforth laughed heartily.
“My dear young Davy,” he said, clapping me on the
shoulder again, “you are a very Daisy. The daisy of the field, at
sunrise, is not fresher than you are! I have been at Covent Garden,
too, and there never was a more miserable business. Holloa, you
sir!”
This was addressed to the waiter, who had been very
attentive to our recognition, at a distance, and now came forward
deferentially.
“Where have you put my friend, Mr. Copperfield?”
said Steerforth.
“Beg your pardon, sir?”
“Where does he sleep? What’s his number? You know
what I mean,” said Steerforth.
“Well, sir,” said the waiter, with an apologetic
air, “Mr. Copperfield is at present in forty-four, sir.”
“And what the devil do you mean,” retorted
Steerforth, “by putting Mr. Copperfield into a little loft over a
stable?”
“Why, you see we wasn’t aware, sir,” returned the
waiter, still apologetically, “as Mr. Copperfield was anyways
particular. We can give Mr. Copperfield seventy-two, sir, if it
would be preferred. Next you, sir.”
“Of course it would be preferred,” said Steerforth.
“And do it at once.”
The waiter immediately withdrew to make the
exchange. Steerforth, very much amused at my having been put into
forty-four laughed again, and clapped me on the shoulder again, and
invited me to breakfast with him next morning at ten o‘clock—an
invitation I was only too proud and happy to accept. It being now
pretty late, we took our candles and went upstairs, where we parted
with friendly heartiness at his door, and where I found my new room
a great improvement on my old one, it not being at all musty, and
having an immense four-post bedstead in it, which was quite a
little landed estate. Here, among pillows enough for six, I soon
fell asleep in a blissful condition, and dreamed of ancient Rome,
Steerforth, and friendship, until the early morning coaches,
rumbling out of the archway underneath, made me dream of thunder
and the gods.