CHAPTER 58. ABSENCE
It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.
I went away from England; not knowing, even then, how great the shock was, that I had to bear. I left all who were dear to me, and went away; and believed that I had borne it, and it was past. As a man upon a field of battle will receive a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he is struck, so I, when I was left alone with my undisciplined heart, had no conception of the wound with which it had to strive.
The knowledge came upon me, not quickly, but little by little, and grain by grain. The desolate feeling with which I went abroad, deepened and widened hourly. At first it was a heavy sense of loss and sorrow, wherein I could distinguish little else. By imperceptible degrees, it became a hopeless consciousness of all that I had lost—love, friendship, interest; of all that had been shattered—my first trust, my first affection, the whole airy castle of my life; of all that remained—a ruined blank and waste, lying wide around me, unbroken, to the dark horizon.
If my grief were selfish, I did not know it to be so. I mourned for my child-wife, taken from her blooming world, so young. I mourned for him who might have won the love and admiration of thousands, as he had won mine long ago. I mourned for the broken heart that had found rest in the stormy sea; and for the wandering remnants of the simple home, where I had heard the night-wind blowing, when I was a child.
From the accumulated sadness into which I fell, I had at length no hope of ever issuing again. I roamed from place to place, carrying my burden with me everywhere. I felt its whole weight now; and I drooped beneath it, and I said in my heart that it could never be lightened.
When this despondency was at its worst, I believed that I should die. Sometimes, I thought that I would like to die at home; and actually turned back on my road, that I might get there soon. At other times, I passed on farther away,—from city to city, seeking I know not what, and trying to leave I know not what behind.
It is not in my power to retrace, one by one, all the weary phases of distress of mind through which I passed. There are some dreams that can only be imperfectly and vaguely described; and when I oblige myself to look back on this time of my life, I seem to be recalling such a dream. I see myself passing on among the novelties of foreign towns, palaces, cathedrals, temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets—the old abiding places of History and Fancy—as a dreamer might; bearing my painful load through all, and hardly conscious of the objects as they fade before me. Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was the night that fell on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up from it—as at last I did, thank Heaven!—and from its long, sad, wretched dream, to dawn.
For many months I travelled with this ever-darkening cloud upon my mind. Some blind reasons that I had for not returning home—reasons then struggling within me, vainly, for more distinct expression—kept me on my pilgrimage. Sometimes, I had proceeded restlessly from place to place, stopping nowhere; sometimes, I had lingered long in one spot. I had had no purpose, no sustaining soul within me, anywhere.
I was in Switzerland. I had come out of Italy, over one of the great passes of the Alps, and had since wandered with a guide among the by-ways of the mountains. If those awful solitudes had spoken to my heart, I did not know it. I had found sublimity and wonder in the dread heights and precipices, in the roaring torrents, and the wastes of ice and snow; but as yet, they had taught me nothing else.
I came, one evening before sunset, down into a valley, where I was to rest. In the course of my descent to it, by the winding track along the mountain-side, from which I saw it shining far below, I think some long-unwonted sense of beauty and tranquillity, some softening influence awakened by its peace, moved faintly in my breast. I remember pausing once, with a kind of sorrow that was not all oppressive, not quite despairing. I remember almost hoping that some better change was possible within me.
I came into the valley, as the evening sun was shining on the remote heights of snow, that closed it in, like eternal clouds. The bases of the mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay, were richly green; and high above this gentler vegetation, grew forests of dark fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the avalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey rock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually blending with the crowning snow. Dotted here and there on the mountain’s-side, each tiny dot a home, were lonely wooden cottages, so dwarfed by the towering heights that they appeared too small for toys. So did even the clustered village in the valley, with its wooden bridge across the stream, where the stream tumbled over broken rocks, and roared away among the trees. In the quiet air, there was a sound of distant singing—shepherd voices; but, as one bright evening cloud floated midway along the mountain’s-side, I could almost have believed it came from there, and was not earthly music. All at once, in this serenity, great Nature spoke to me; and soothed me to lay down my weary head upon the grass, and weep as I had not wept yet, since Dora died!
I had found a packet of letters awaiting me but a few minutes before, and had strolled out of the village to read them while my supper was making ready. Other packets had missed me, and I had received none for a long time. Beyond a line or two, to say that I was well, and had arrived at such a place, I had not had fortitude or constancy to write a letter since I left home.
The packet was in my hand. I opened it, and read the writing of Agnes.
She was happy and useful, was prospering as she had hoped. That was all she told me of herself. The rest referred to me.
She gave me no advice; she urged no duty on me; she only told me, in her own fervent manner, what her trust in me was. She knew (she said) how such a nature as mine would turn affliction to good. She knew how trial and emotion would exalt and strengthen it. She was sure that in my every purpose I should gain a firmer and a higher tendency, through the grief I had undergone. She, who so gloried in my fame, and so looked forward to its augmentation, well knew that I would labour on. She knew that in me, sorrow could not be weakness, but must be strength. As the endurance of my childish days had done its part to make me what I was, so greater calamities would nerve me on, to be yet better than I was; and so, as they had taught me, would I teach others. She commended me to God, who had taken my innocent darling to His rest; and in her sisterly affection cherished me always, and was always at my side go where I would; proud of what I had done, but infinitely prouder yet of what I was reserved to do.
I put the letter in my breast, and thought what had I been an hour ago! When I heard the voices die away, and saw the quiet evening cloud grow dim, and all the colours in the valley fade, and the golden snow upon the mountain-tops become a remote part of the pale night sky, yet felt that the night was passing from my mind, and all its shadows clearing, there was no name for the love I bore her, dearer to me, henceforward, than ever until then.
I read her letter many times. I wrote to her before I slept. I told her that I had been in sore need of her help; that without her I was not, and I never had been, what she thought me; but that she inspired me to be that, and I would try.
I did try. In three months more, a year would have passed since the beginning of my sorrow. I determined to make no resolutions until the expiration of those three months, but to try. I lived in that valley, and its neighbourhood, all the time.
The three months gone, I resolved to remain away from home for some time longer; to settle myself for the present in Switzerland, which was growing dear to me in the remembrance of that evening; to resume my pen; to work.
I resorted humbly whither Agnes had commended me; I sought out Nature, never sought in vain; and I admitted to my breast the human interest I had lately shrunk from. It was not long, before I had almost as many friends in the valley as in Yarmouth: and when I left it, before the winter set in, for Geneva, and came back in the spring, their cordial greetings had a homely sound to me, although they were not conveyed in English words.
I worked early and late, patiently and hard. I wrote a Story, with a purpose growing, not remotely, out of my experience, and sent it to Traddles, and he arranged for its publication very advantageously for me; and the tidings of my growing reputation began to reach me from travellers whom I encountered by chance. After some rest and change, I fell to work, in my old ardent way, on a new fancy, which took strong possession of me. As I advanced in the execution of this task, I felt it more and more, and roused my utmost energies to do it well. This was my third work of fiction. It was not half written, when, in an interval of rest, I thought of returning home.
For a long time, though studying and working patiently, I had accustomed myself to robust exercise. My health, severely impaired when I left England, was quite restored. I had seen much. I had been in many countries, and I hope I had improved my store of knowledge.
I have now recalled all that I think it needful to recall here, of this term of absence—with one reservation. I have made it, thus far, with no purpose of suppressing any of my thoughts; for, as I have elsewhere said, this narrative is my written memory. I have desired to keep the most secret current of my mind apart, and to the last. I enter on it now. I cannot so completely penetrate the mystery of my own heart, as to know when I began to think that I might have set its earliest and brightest hopes on Agnes. I cannot say at what stage of my grief it first became associated with the reflection, that, in my wayward boyhood, I had thrown away the treasure of her love. I believe I may have heard some whisper of that distant thought, in the old unhappy loss or want of something never to be realized, of which I had been sensible. But the thought came into my mind as a new reproach and new regret, when I was left so sad and lonely in the world.
If, at that time, I had been much with her, I should, in the weakness of my desolation, have betrayed this. It was what I remotely dreaded when I was first impelled to stay away from England. I could not have borne to lose the smallest portion of her sisterly affection; yet, in that betrayal, I should have set a constraint between us hitherto unknown.
I could not forget that the feeling with which she now regarded me had grown up in my own free choice and course. That if she had ever loved me with another love—and I sometimes thought the time was when she might have done so—I had cast it away. It was nothing, now, that I had accustomed myself to think of her, when we were both mere children, as one who was far removed from my wild fancies. I had bestowed my passionate tenderness upon another object; and what I might have done, I had not done; and what Agnes was to me, I and her own noble heart had made her.
In the beginning of the change that gradually worked in me, when I tried to get a better understanding of myself and be a better man, I did glance, through some indefinite probation, to a period when I might possibly hope to cancel the mistaken past, and to be so blessed as to marry her. But, as time wore on, this shadowy prospect faded, and departed from me. If she had ever loved me, then, I should hold her the more sacred; remembering the confidences I had reposed in her, her knowledge of my errant heart, the sacrifice she must have made to be my friend and sister, and the victory she had won. If she had never loved me, could I believe that she would love me now?
I had always felt my weakness, in comparison with her constancy and fortitude; and now I felt it more and more. Whatever I might have been to her, or she to me, if I had been more worthy of her long ago, I was not now, and she was not. The time was past. I had let it go by, and had deservedly lost her.
That I suffered much in these contentions, that they filled me with unhappiness and remorse, and yet that I had a sustaining sense that it was required of me, in right and honour, to keep away from myself, with shame, the thought of turning to the dear girl in the withering of my hopes, from whom I had frivolously turned when they were bright and fresh—which consideration was at the root of every thought I had concerning her—is all equally true. I made no effort to conceal from myself, now, that I loved her, that I was devoted to her; but I brought the assurance home to myself, that it was now too late, and that our long-subsisting relation must be undisturbed.
I had thought, much and often, of my Dora’s shadowing out to me what might have happened, in those years that were destined not to try us; I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished. The very years she spoke of, were realities now, for my correction; and would have been, one day, a little later perhaps, though we had parted in our earliest folly. I endeavoured to convert what might have been between myself and Agnes, into a means of making me more self-denying, more resolved, more conscious of myself, and my defects and errors. Thus, through the reflection that it might have been, I arrived at the conviction that it could never be.
These, with their perplexities and inconsistencies, were the shifting quicksands of my mind, from the time of my departure to the time of my return home, three years afterwards. Three years had elapsed since the sailing of the emigrant ship; when, at that same hour of sunset, and in the same place, I stood on the deck of the packet vessel that brought me home, looking on the rosy water where I had seen the image of that ship reflected.
Three years. Long in the aggregate, though short as they went by. And home was very dear to me, and Agnes too—but she was not mine—she was never to be mine. She might have been, but that was past!
I landed in London on a wintry autumn evening. It was dark and raining, and I saw more fog and mud in a minute than I had seen in a year. I walked from the Custom House to the Monument before I found a coach; and although the very house-fronts, looking on the swollen gutters, were like old friends to me, I could not but admit that they were very dingy friends.
I have often remarked—I suppose everybody has—that one’s going away from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for change in it. As I looked out of the coach window, and observed that an old house on Fish-street Hill, which had stood untouched by painter, carpenter, or bricklayer, for a century, had been pulled down in my absence; and that a neighbouring street, of time-honoured insalubrity and inconvenience, was being drained and widened; I half expected to find St. Paul’s Cathedral looking older.
For some changes in the fortunes of my friends, I was prepared. My aunt had long been re-established at Dover, and Traddles had begun to get into some little practice at the Bar, in the very first term after my departure. He had chambers in Gray’s Inn, now; and had told me, in his last letters, that he was not without hopes of being soon united to the dearest girl in the world.
They expected me home before Christmas; but had no idea of my returning so soon. I had purposely misled them, that I might have the pleasure of taking them by surprise. And yet, I was perverse enough to feel a chill and disappointment in receiving no welcome, and rattling, alone and silent, through the misty streets.
The well-known shops, however, with their cheerful lights, did something for me; and when I alighted at the door of the Gray’s Inn Coffee-house, I had recovered my spirits. It recalled, at first, that so-different time when I had put up at the Golden Cross, and reminded me of the changes that had come to pass since then; but that was natural.
‘Do you know where Mr. Traddles lives in the Inn?’ I asked the waiter, as I warmed myself by the coffee-room fire.
‘Holborn Court, sir. Number two.’
‘Mr. Traddles has a rising reputation among the lawyers, I believe?’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ returned the waiter, ‘probably he has, sir; but I am not aware of it myself.’
This waiter, who was middle-aged and spare, looked for help to a waiter of more authority—a stout, potential old man, with a double chin, in black breeches and stockings, who came out of a place like a churchwarden’s pew, at the end of the coffee-room, where he kept company with a cash-box, a Directory, a Law-list, and other books and papers.
‘Mr. Traddles,’ said the spare waiter. ‘Number two in the Court.’
The potential waiter waved him away, and turned, gravely, to me.
‘I was inquiring,’ said I, ‘whether Mr. Traddles, at number two in the Court, has not a rising reputation among the lawyers?’
‘Never heard his name,’ said the waiter, in a rich husky voice.
I felt quite apologetic for Traddles.
‘He’s a young man, sure?’ said the portentous waiter, fixing his eyes severely on me. ‘How long has he been in the Inn?’
‘Not above three years,’ said I.
The waiter, who I supposed had lived in his churchwarden’s pew for forty years, could not pursue such an insignificant subject. He asked me what I would have for dinner?
I felt I was in England again, and really was quite cast down on Traddles’s account. There seemed to be no hope for him. I meekly ordered a bit of fish and a steak, and stood before the fire musing on his obscurity.
As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he was, was an arduous place to rise in. It had such a prescriptive, stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced about the room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no doubt, in exactly the same manner when the chief waiter was a boy—if he ever was a boy, which appeared improbable; and at the shining tables, where I saw myself reflected, in unruffled depths of old mahogany; and at the lamps, without a flaw in their trimming or cleaning; and at the comfortable green curtains, with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the boxes; and at the two large coal fires, brightly burning; and at the rows of decanters, burly as if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive old port wine below; and both England, and the law, appeared to me to be very difficult indeed to be taken by storm. I went up to my bedroom to change my wet clothes; and the vast extent of that old wainscoted apartment (which was over the archway leading to the Inn, I remember), and the sedate immensity of the four-post bedstead, and the indomitable gravity of the chests of drawers, all seemed to unite in sternly frowning on the fortunes of Traddles, or on any such daring youth. I came down again to my dinner; and even the slow comfort of the meal, and the orderly silence of the place—which was bare of guests, the Long Vacation not yet being over—were eloquent on the audacity of Traddles, and his small hopes of a livelihood for twenty years to come.
I had seen nothing like this since I went away, and it quite dashed my hopes for my friend. The chief waiter had had enough of me. He came near me no more; but devoted himself to an old gentleman in long gaiters, to meet whom a pint of special port seemed to come out of the cellar of its own accord, for he gave no order. The second waiter informed me, in a whisper, that this old gentleman was a retired conveyancer living in the Square, and worth a mint of money, which it was expected he would leave to his laundress’s daughter; likewise that it was rumoured that he had a service of plate in a bureau, all tarnished with lying by, though more than one spoon and a fork had never yet been beheld in his chambers by mortal vision. By this time, I quite gave Traddles up for lost; and settled in my own mind that there was no hope for him.
Being very anxious to see the dear old fellow, nevertheless, I dispatched my dinner, in a manner not at all calculated to raise me in the opinion of the chief waiter, and hurried out by the back way. Number two in the Court was soon reached; and an inscription on the door-post informing me that Mr. Traddles occupied a set of chambers on the top storey, I ascended the staircase. A crazy old staircase I found it to be, feebly lighted on each landing by a club-headed little oil wick, dying away in a little dungeon of dirty glass.
In the course of my stumbling upstairs, I fancied I heard a pleasant sound of laughter; and not the laughter of an attorney or barrister, or attorney’s clerk or barrister’s clerk, but of two or three merry girls. Happening, however, as I stopped to listen, to put my foot in a hole where the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn had left a plank deficient, I fell down with some noise, and when I recovered my footing all was silent.
Groping my way more carefully, for the rest of the journey, my heart beat high when I found the outer door, which had Mr. TRADDLES painted on it, open. I knocked. A considerable scuffling within ensued, but nothing else. I therefore knocked again.
A small sharp-looking lad, half-footboy and half-clerk, who was very much out of breath, but who looked at me as if he defied me to prove it legally, presented himself.
‘Is Mr. Traddles within?’ I said.
‘Yes, sir, but he’s engaged.’
‘I want to see him.’
After a moment’s survey of me, the sharp-looking lad decided to let me in; and opening the door wider for that purpose, admitted me, first, into a little closet of a hall, and next into a little sitting-room; where I came into the presence of my old friend (also out of breath), seated at a table, and bending over papers.
‘Good God!’ cried Traddles, looking up. ‘It’s Copperfield!’ and rushed into my arms, where I held him tight.
‘All well, my dear Traddles?’
‘All well, my dear, dear Copperfield, and nothing but good news!’
We cried with pleasure, both of us.
‘My dear fellow,’ said Traddles, rumpling his hair in his excitement, which was a most unnecessary operation, ‘my dearest Copperfield, my long-lost and most welcome friend, how glad I am to see you! How brown you are! How glad I am! Upon my life and honour, I never was so rejoiced, my beloved Copperfield, never!’
I was equally at a loss to express my emotions. I was quite unable to speak, at first.
‘My dear fellow!’ said Traddles. ‘And grown so famous! My glorious Copperfield! Good gracious me, WHEN did you come, WHERE have you come from, WHAT have you been doing?’
Never pausing for an answer to anything he said, Traddles, who had clapped me into an easy-chair by the fire, all this time impetuously stirred the fire with one hand, and pulled at my neck-kerchief with the other, under some wild delusion that it was a great-coat. Without putting down the poker, he now hugged me again; and I hugged him; and, both laughing, and both wiping our eyes, we both sat down, and shook hands across the hearth.
‘To think,’ said Traddles, ‘that you should have been so nearly coming home as you must have been, my dear old boy, and not at the ceremony!’
‘What ceremony, my dear Traddles?’
‘Good gracious me!’ cried Traddles, opening his eyes in his old way. ‘Didn’t you get my last letter?’
‘Certainly not, if it referred to any ceremony.’
‘Why, my dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, sticking his hair upright with both hands, and then putting his hands on my knees, ‘I am married!’
‘Married!’ I cried joyfully.
‘Lord bless me, yes!’ said Traddles—‘by the Reverend Horace—to Sophy—down in Devonshire. Why, my dear boy, she’s behind the window curtain! Look here!’
To my amazement, the dearest girl in the world came at that same instant, laughing and blushing, from her place of concealment. And a more cheerful, amiable, honest, happy, bright-looking bride, I believe (as I could not help saying on the spot) the world never saw. I kissed her as an old acquaintance should, and wished them joy with all my might of heart.
‘Dear me,’ said Traddles, ‘what a delightful re-union this is! You are so extremely brown, my dear Copperfield! God bless my soul, how happy I am!’
‘And so am I,’ said I.
‘And I am sure I am!’ said the blushing and laughing Sophy.
‘We are all as happy as possible!’ said Traddles. ‘Even the girls are happy. Dear me, I declare I forgot them!’
‘Forgot?’ said I.
‘The girls,’ said Traddles. ‘Sophy’s sisters. They are staying with us. They have come to have a peep at London. The fact is, when—was it you that tumbled upstairs, Copperfield?’
‘It was,’ said I, laughing.
‘Well then, when you tumbled upstairs,’ said Traddles, ‘I was romping with the girls. In point of fact, we were playing at Puss in the Corner. But as that wouldn’t do in Westminster Hall, and as it wouldn’t look quite professional if they were seen by a client, they decamped. And they are now—listening, I have no doubt,’ said Traddles, glancing at the door of another room.
‘I am sorry,’ said I, laughing afresh, ‘to have occasioned such a dispersion.’
‘Upon my word,’ rejoined Traddles, greatly delighted, ‘if you had seen them running away, and running back again, after you had knocked, to pick up the combs they had dropped out of their hair, and going on in the maddest manner, you wouldn’t have said so. My love, will you fetch the girls?’
Sophy tripped away, and we heard her received in the adjoining room with a peal of laughter.
‘Really musical, isn’t it, my dear Copperfield?’ said Traddles. ‘It’s very agreeable to hear. It quite lights up these old rooms. To an unfortunate bachelor of a fellow who has lived alone all his life, you know, it’s positively delicious. It’s charming. Poor things, they have had a great loss in Sophy—who, I do assure you, Copperfield is, and ever was, the dearest girl!—and it gratifies me beyond expression to find them in such good spirits. The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield. It’s not professional, but it’s very delightful.’
Observing that he slightly faltered, and comprehending that in the goodness of his heart he was fearful of giving me some pain by what he had said, I expressed my concurrence with a heartiness that evidently relieved and pleased him greatly.
‘But then,’ said Traddles, ‘our domestic arrangements are, to say the truth, quite unprofessional altogether, my dear Copperfield. Even Sophy’s being here, is unprofessional. And we have no other place of abode. We have put to sea in a cockboat, but we are quite prepared to rough it. And Sophy’s an extraordinary manager! You’ll be surprised how those girls are stowed away. I am sure I hardly know how it’s done!’
‘Are many of the young ladies with you?’ I inquired.
‘The eldest, the Beauty is here,’ said Traddles, in a low confidential voice, ‘Caroline. And Sarah’s here—the one I mentioned to you as having something the matter with her spine, you know. Immensely better! And the two youngest that Sophy educated are with us. And Louisa’s here.’
‘Indeed!’ cried I.
‘Yes,’ said Traddles. ‘Now the whole set—I mean the chambers—is only three rooms; but Sophy arranges for the girls in the most wonderful way, and they sleep as comfortably as possible. Three in that room,’ said Traddles, pointing. ‘Two in that.’
I could not help glancing round, in search of the accommodation remaining for Mr. and Mrs. Traddles. Traddles understood me.
‘Well!’ said Traddles, ‘we are prepared to rough it, as I said just now, and we did improvise a bed last week, upon the floor here. But there’s a little room in the roof—a very nice room, when you’re up there—which Sophy papered herself, to surprise me; and that’s our room at present. It’s a capital little gipsy sort of place. There’s quite a view from it.’
‘And you are happily married at last, my dear Traddles!’ said I. ‘How rejoiced I am!’
‘Thank you, my dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, as we shook hands once more. ‘Yes, I am as happy as it’s possible to be. There’s your old friend, you see,’ said Traddles, nodding triumphantly at the flower-pot and stand; ‘and there’s the table with the marble top! All the other furniture is plain and serviceable, you perceive. And as to plate, Lord bless you, we haven’t so much as a tea-spoon.’
‘All to be earned?’ said I, cheerfully.
‘Exactly so,’ replied Traddles, ‘all to be earned. Of course we have something in the shape of tea-spoons, because we stir our tea. But they’re Britannia metal.’
‘The silver will be the brighter when it comes,’ said I.
‘The very thing we say!’ cried Traddles. ‘You see, my dear Copperfield,’ falling again into the low confidential tone, ‘after I had delivered my argument in DOE dem. JIPES versus WIGZIELL, which did me great service with the profession, I went down into Devonshire, and had some serious conversation in private with the Reverend Horace. I dwelt upon the fact that Sophy—who I do assure you, Copperfield, is the dearest girl!—’
‘I am certain she is!’ said I.
‘She is, indeed!’ rejoined Traddles. ‘But I am afraid I am wandering from the subject. Did I mention the Reverend Horace?’
‘You said that you dwelt upon the fact—’
‘True! Upon the fact that Sophy and I had been engaged for a long period, and that Sophy, with the permission of her parents, was more than content to take me—in short,’ said Traddles, with his old frank smile, ‘on our present Britannia-metal footing. Very well. I then proposed to the Reverend Horace—who is a most excellent clergyman, Copperfield, and ought to be a Bishop; or at least ought to have enough to live upon, without pinching himself—that if I could turn the corner, say of two hundred and fifty pounds, in one year; and could see my way pretty clearly to that, or something better, next year; and could plainly furnish a little place like this, besides; then, and in that case, Sophy and I should be united. I took the liberty of representing that we had been patient for a good many years; and that the circumstance of Sophy’s being extraordinarily useful at home, ought not to operate with her affectionate parents, against her establishment in life—don’t you see?’
‘Certainly it ought not,’ said I.
‘I am glad you think so, Copperfield,’ rejoined Traddles, ‘because, without any imputation on the Reverend Horace, I do think parents, and brothers, and so forth, are sometimes rather selfish in such cases. Well! I also pointed out, that my most earnest desire was, to be useful to the family; and that if I got on in the world, and anything should happen to him—I refer to the Reverend Horace—’
‘I understand,’ said I.
‘—Or to Mrs. Crewler—it would be the utmost gratification of my wishes, to be a parent to the girls. He replied in a most admirable manner, exceedingly flattering to my feelings, and undertook to obtain the consent of Mrs. Crewler to this arrangement. They had a dreadful time of it with her. It mounted from her legs into her chest, and then into her head—’
‘What mounted?’ I asked.
‘Her grief,’ replied Traddles, with a serious look. ‘Her feelings generally. As I mentioned on a former occasion, she is a very superior woman, but has lost the use of her limbs. Whatever occurs to harass her, usually settles in her legs; but on this occasion it mounted to the chest, and then to the head, and, in short, pervaded the whole system in a most alarming manner. However, they brought her through it by unremitting and affectionate attention; and we were married yesterday six weeks. You have no idea what a Monster I felt, Copperfield, when I saw the whole family crying and fainting away in every direction! Mrs. Crewler couldn’t see me before we left—couldn’t forgive me, then, for depriving her of her child—but she is a good creature, and has done so since. I had a delightful letter from her, only this morning.’
‘And in short, my dear friend,’ said I, ‘you feel as blest as you deserve to feel!’
‘Oh! That’s your partiality!’ laughed Traddles. ‘But, indeed, I am in a most enviable state. I work hard, and read Law insatiably. I get up at five every morning, and don’t mind it at all. I hide the girls in the daytime, and make merry with them in the evening. And I assure you I am quite sorry that they are going home on Tuesday, which is the day before the first day of Michaelmas Term. But here,’ said Traddles, breaking off in his confidence, and speaking aloud, ‘ARE the girls! Mr. Copperfield, Miss Crewler—Miss Sarah—Miss Louisa—Margaret and Lucy!’
They were a perfect nest of roses; they looked so wholesome and fresh. They were all pretty, and Miss Caroline was very handsome; but there was a loving, cheerful, fireside quality in Sophy’s bright looks, which was better than that, and which assured me that my friend had chosen well. We all sat round the fire; while the sharp boy, who I now divined had lost his breath in putting the papers out, cleared them away again, and produced the tea-things. After that, he retired for the night, shutting the outer door upon us with a bang. Mrs. Traddles, with perfect pleasure and composure beaming from her household eyes, having made the tea, then quietly made the toast as she sat in a corner by the fire.
She had seen Agnes, she told me while she was toasting. ‘Tom’ had taken her down into Kent for a wedding trip, and there she had seen my aunt, too; and both my aunt and Agnes were well, and they had all talked of nothing but me. ‘Tom’ had never had me out of his thoughts, she really believed, all the time I had been away. ‘Tom’ was the authority for everything. ‘Tom’ was evidently the idol of her life; never to be shaken on his pedestal by any commotion; always to be believed in, and done homage to with the whole faith of her heart, come what might.
The deference which both she and Traddles showed towards the Beauty, pleased me very much. I don’t know that I thought it very reasonable; but I thought it very delightful, and essentially a part of their character. If Traddles ever for an instant missed the tea-spoons that were still to be won, I have no doubt it was when he handed the Beauty her tea. If his sweet-tempered wife could have got up any self-assertion against anyone, I am satisfied it could only have been because she was the Beauty’s sister. A few slight indications of a rather petted and capricious manner, which I observed in the Beauty, were manifestly considered, by Traddles and his wife, as her birthright and natural endowment. If she had been born a Queen Bee, and they labouring Bees, they could not have been more satisfied of that.
But their self-forgetfulness charmed me. Their pride in these girls, and their submission of themselves to all their whims, was the pleasantest little testimony to their own worth I could have desired to see. If Traddles were addressed as ‘a darling’, once in the course of that evening; and besought to bring something here, or carry something there, or take something up, or put something down, or find something, or fetch something, he was so addressed, by one or other of his sisters-in-law, at least twelve times in an hour. Neither could they do anything without Sophy. Somebody’s hair fell down, and nobody but Sophy could put it up. Somebody forgot how a particular tune went, and nobody but Sophy could hum that tune right. Somebody wanted to recall the name of a place in Devonshire, and only Sophy knew it. Something was wanted to be written home, and Sophy alone could be trusted to write before breakfast in the morning. Somebody broke down in a piece of knitting, and no one but Sophy was able to put the defaulter in the right direction. They were entire mistresses of the place, and Sophy and Traddles waited on them. How many children Sophy could have taken care of in her time, I can’t imagine; but she seemed to be famous for knowing every sort of song that ever was addressed to a child in the English tongue; and she sang dozens to order with the clearest little voice in the world, one after another (every sister issuing directions for a different tune, and the Beauty generally striking in last), so that I was quite fascinated. The best of all was, that, in the midst of their exactions, all the sisters had a great tenderness and respect both for Sophy and Traddles. I am sure, when I took my leave, and Traddles was coming out to walk with me to the coffee-house, I thought I had never seen an obstinate head of hair, or any other head of hair, rolling about in such a shower of kisses.
Altogether, it was a scene I could not help dwelling on with pleasure, for a long time after I got back and had wished Traddles good night. If I had beheld a thousand roses blowing in a top set of chambers, in that withered Gray’s Inn, they could not have brightened it half so much. The idea of those Devonshire girls, among the dry law-stationers and the attorneys’ offices; and of the tea and toast, and children’s songs, in that grim atmosphere of pounce and parchment, red-tape, dusty wafers, ink-jars, brief and draft paper, law reports, writs, declarations, and bills of costs; seemed almost as pleasantly fanciful as if I had dreamed that the Sultan’s famous family had been admitted on the roll of attorneys, and had brought the talking bird, the singing tree, and the golden water into Gray’s Inn Hall. Somehow, I found that I had taken leave of Traddles for the night, and come back to the coffee-house, with a great change in my despondency about him. I began to think he would get on, in spite of all the many orders of chief waiters in England.
Drawing a chair before one of the coffee-room fires to think about him at my leisure, I gradually fell from the consideration of his happiness to tracing prospects in the live-coals, and to thinking, as they broke and changed, of the principal vicissitudes and separations that had marked my life. I had not seen a coal fire, since I had left England three years ago: though many a wood fire had I watched, as it crumbled into hoary ashes, and mingled with the feathery heap upon the hearth, which not inaptly figured to me, in my despondency, my own dead hopes.
I could think of the past now, gravely, but not bitterly; and could contemplate the future in a brave spirit. Home, in its best sense, was for me no more. She in whom I might have inspired a dearer love, I had taught to be my sister. She would marry, and would have new claimants on her tenderness; and in doing it, would never know the love for her that had grown up in my heart. It was right that I should pay the forfeit of my headlong passion. What I reaped, I had sown.
I was thinking. And had I truly disciplined my heart to this, and could I resolutely bear it, and calmly hold the place in her home which she had calmly held in mine,—when I found my eyes resting on a countenance that might have arisen out of the fire, in its association with my early remembrances.
Little Mr. Chillip the Doctor, to whose good offices I was indebted in the very first chapter of this history, sat reading a newspaper in the shadow of an opposite corner. He was tolerably stricken in years by this time; but, being a mild, meek, calm little man, had worn so easily, that I thought he looked at that moment just as he might have looked when he sat in our parlour, waiting for me to be born.
Mr. Chillip had left Blunderstone six or seven years ago, and I had never seen him since. He sat placidly perusing the newspaper, with his little head on one side, and a glass of warm sherry negus at his elbow. He was so extremely conciliatory in his manner that he seemed to apologize to the very newspaper for taking the liberty of reading it.
I walked up to where he was sitting, and said, ‘How do you do, Mr. Chillip?’
He was greatly fluttered by this unexpected address from a stranger, and replied, in his slow way, ‘I thank you, sir, you are very good. Thank you, sir. I hope YOU are well.’
‘You don’t remember me?’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, smiling very meekly, and shaking his head as he surveyed me, ‘I have a kind of an impression that something in your countenance is familiar to me, sir; but I couldn’t lay my hand upon your name, really.’
‘And yet you knew it, long before I knew it myself,’ I returned.
‘Did I indeed, sir?’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Is it possible that I had the honour, sir, of officiating when—?’
‘Yes,’ said I.
‘Dear me!’ cried Mr. Chillip. ‘But no doubt you are a good deal changed since then, sir?’
‘Probably,’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ observed Mr. Chillip, ‘I hope you’ll excuse me, if I am compelled to ask the favour of your name?’
On my telling him my name, he was really moved. He quite shook hands with me—which was a violent proceeding for him, his usual course being to slide a tepid little fish-slice, an inch or two in advance of his hip, and evince the greatest discomposure when anybody grappled with it. Even now, he put his hand in his coat-pocket as soon as he could disengage it, and seemed relieved when he had got it safe back.
‘Dear me, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip, surveying me with his head on one side. ‘And it’s Mr. Copperfield, is it? Well, sir, I think I should have known you, if I had taken the liberty of looking more closely at you. There’s a strong resemblance between you and your poor father, sir.’
‘I never had the happiness of seeing my father,’ I observed.
‘Very true, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, in a soothing tone. ‘And very much to be deplored it was, on all accounts! We are not ignorant, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, slowly shaking his little head again, ‘down in our part of the country, of your fame. There must be great excitement here, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, tapping himself on the forehead with his forefinger. ‘You must find it a trying occupation, sir!’
‘What is your part of the country now?’ I asked, seating myself near him.
‘I am established within a few miles of Bury St. Edmund’s, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Mrs. Chillip, coming into a little property in that neighbourhood, under her father’s will, I bought a practice down there, in which you will be glad to hear I am doing well. My daughter is growing quite a tall lass now, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, giving his little head another little shake. ‘Her mother let down two tucks in her frocks only last week. Such is time, you see, sir!’
As the little man put his now empty glass to his lips, when he made this reflection, I proposed to him to have it refilled, and I would keep him company with another. ‘Well, sir,’ he returned, in his slow way, ‘it’s more than I am accustomed to; but I can’t deny myself the pleasure of your conversation. It seems but yesterday that I had the honour of attending you in the measles. You came through them charmingly, sir!’
I acknowledged this compliment, and ordered the negus, which was soon produced. ‘Quite an uncommon dissipation!’ said Mr. Chillip, stirring it, ‘but I can’t resist so extraordinary an occasion. You have no family, sir?’
I shook my head.
‘I was aware that you sustained a bereavement, sir, some time ago,’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘I heard it from your father-in-law’s sister. Very decided character there, sir?’
‘Why, yes,’ said I, ‘decided enough. Where did you see her, Mr. Chillip?’
‘Are you not aware, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, with his placidest smile, ‘that your father-in-law is again a neighbour of mine?’
‘No,’ said I.
‘He is indeed, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Married a young lady of that part, with a very good little property, poor thing.—-And this action of the brain now, sir? Don’t you find it fatigue you?’ said Mr. Chillip, looking at me like an admiring Robin.
I waived that question, and returned to the Murdstones. ‘I was aware of his being married again. Do you attend the family?’ I asked.
‘Not regularly. I have been called in,’ he replied. ‘Strong phrenological developments of the organ of firmness, in Mr. Murdstone and his sister, sir.’
I replied with such an expressive look, that Mr. Chillip was emboldened by that, and the negus together, to give his head several short shakes, and thoughtfully exclaim, ‘Ah, dear me! We remember old times, Mr. Copperfield!’
‘And the brother and sister are pursuing their old course, are they?’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ replied Mr. Chillip, ‘a medical man, being so much in families, ought to have neither eyes nor ears for anything but his profession. Still, I must say, they are very severe, sir: both as to this life and the next.’
‘The next will be regulated without much reference to them, I dare say,’ I returned: ‘what are they doing as to this?’
Mr. Chillip shook his head, stirred his negus, and sipped it.
‘She was a charming woman, sir!’ he observed in a plaintive manner.
‘The present Mrs. Murdstone?’
‘A charming woman indeed, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip; ‘as amiable, I am sure, as it was possible to be! Mrs. Chillip’s opinion is, that her spirit has been entirely broken since her marriage, and that she is all but melancholy mad. And the ladies,’ observed Mr. Chillip, timorously, ‘are great observers, sir.’
‘I suppose she was to be subdued and broken to their detestable mould, Heaven help her!’ said I. ‘And she has been.’
‘Well, sir, there were violent quarrels at first, I assure you,’ said Mr. Chillip; ‘but she is quite a shadow now. Would it be considered forward if I was to say to you, sir, in confidence, that since the sister came to help, the brother and sister between them have nearly reduced her to a state of imbecility?’
I told him I could easily believe it.
‘I have no hesitation in saying,’ said Mr. Chillip, fortifying himself with another sip of negus, ‘between you and me, sir, that her mother died of it—or that tyranny, gloom, and worry have made Mrs. Murdstone nearly imbecile. She was a lively young woman, sir, before marriage, and their gloom and austerity destroyed her. They go about with her, now, more like her keepers than her husband and sister-in-law. That was Mrs. Chillip’s remark to me, only last week. And I assure you, sir, the ladies are great observers. Mrs. Chillip herself is a great observer!’
‘Does he gloomily profess to be (I am ashamed to use the word in such association) religious still?’ I inquired.
‘You anticipate, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, his eyelids getting quite red with the unwonted stimulus in which he was indulging. ‘One of Mrs. Chillip’s most impressive remarks. Mrs. Chillip,’ he proceeded, in the calmest and slowest manner, ‘quite electrified me, by pointing out that Mr. Murdstone sets up an image of himself, and calls it the Divine Nature. You might have knocked me down on the flat of my back, sir, with the feather of a pen, I assure you, when Mrs. Chillip said so. The ladies are great observers, sir?’
‘Intuitively,’ said I, to his extreme delight.
‘I am very happy to receive such support in my opinion, sir,’ he rejoined. ‘It is not often that I venture to give a non-medical opinion, I assure you. Mr. Murdstone delivers public addresses sometimes, and it is said,—in short, sir, it is said by Mrs. Chillip,—that the darker tyrant he has lately been, the more ferocious is his doctrine.’
‘I believe Mrs. Chillip to be perfectly right,’ said I.
‘Mrs. Chillip does go so far as to say,’ pursued the meekest of little men, much encouraged, ‘that what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance. And do you know I must say, sir,’ he continued, mildly laying his head on one side, ‘that I DON’T find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone in the New Testament?’
‘I never found it either!’ said I.
‘In the meantime, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, ‘they are much disliked; and as they are very free in consigning everybody who dislikes them to perdition, we really have a good deal of perdition going on in our neighbourhood! However, as Mrs. Chillip says, sir, they undergo a continual punishment; for they are turned inward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. Now, sir, about that brain of yours, if you’ll excuse my returning to it. Don’t you expose it to a good deal of excitement, sir?’
I found it not difficult, in the excitement of Mr. Chillip’s own brain, under his potations of negus, to divert his attention from this topic to his own affairs, on which, for the next half-hour, he was quite loquacious; giving me to understand, among other pieces of information, that he was then at the Gray’s Inn Coffee-house to lay his professional evidence before a Commission of Lunacy, touching the state of mind of a patient who had become deranged from excessive drinking. ‘And I assure you, sir,’ he said, ‘I am extremely nervous on such occasions. I could not support being what is called Bullied, sir. It would quite unman me. Do you know it was some time before I recovered the conduct of that alarming lady, on the night of your birth, Mr. Copperfield?’
I told him that I was going down to my aunt, the Dragon of that night, early in the morning; and that she was one of the most tender-hearted and excellent of women, as he would know full well if he knew her better. The mere notion of the possibility of his ever seeing her again, appeared to terrify him. He replied with a small pale smile, ‘Is she so, indeed, sir? Really?’ and almost immediately called for a candle, and went to bed, as if he were not quite safe anywhere else. He did not actually stagger under the negus; but I should think his placid little pulse must have made two or three more beats in a minute, than it had done since the great night of my aunt’s disappointment, when she struck at him with her bonnet.
Thoroughly tired, I went to bed too, at midnight; passed the next day on the Dover coach; burst safe and sound into my aunt’s old parlour while she was at tea (she wore spectacles now); and was received by her, and Mr. Dick, and dear old Peggotty, who acted as housekeeper, with open arms and tears of joy. My aunt was mightily amused, when we began to talk composedly, by my account of my meeting with Mr. Chillip, and of his holding her in such dread remembrance; and both she and Peggotty had a great deal to say about my poor mother’s second husband, and ‘that murdering woman of a sister’,—on whom I think no pain or penalty would have induced my aunt to bestow any Christian or Proper Name, or any other designation.